Page 2 of All Along The Watchtower

She let the implication hang until we were all moving to grab our shoes.

My moms came downstairs, both in their bathrobes, eyes heavy from sleep.

Mom’s eyes cleared when she spotted the four of us. “Is there news about Willa?”

“Not yet. Gwen Busby never made it home last night. They’re organizing a search,” I explained.

Mom and Mimi exchanged a look.

Mimi clutched the lapels of her robe together, her dark eyes full of worry. “We’ll go dress.”

Forty minutes later, we were spread out near Osprey Beach, where the party had been held last night. In the wake of the storm, there was no sign of the hundred or so teens who’d been here, except for the blackened pile of wood that was all that remained of the bonfire. Seaweed and driftwood were scattered all across the beach, along with the usual mess following a storm. If there’d ever been any footprints or other obvious signs to follow, they were definitely gone now.

An incident command tent had been set up at the edge of the boardwalk. The officer running things had organized all the searchers into a line to begin walking the area in a grid pattern. Hatterwick Island was only thirteen miles long and three miles across at its widest point. While it wasn’t a big island, there were still plenty of places for someone to disappear, like the woods that occupied the center of the island going north. Maybe Gwen had tried to find shelter from the storm and injured herself. Sprained an ankle or something and hadn’t been able to make it out.

“Gwen!” I shouted her name, my voice dying out in the heavy, humid air.

We made our way into the woods, continuing forward in our grid pattern. The morning ticked slowly by with her namebecoming a chorus from all the searchers. I wondered again if she’d gone off with some guy. Had anybody been creeping on her? Was there some asshole out there who’d pressured her to do something she hadn’t wanted to? I tried to think back to last night, to whether I’d seen anything. But the truth was, Gwen was someone at my periphery. Friend of a friend. I knew her, but she was younger. Only fifteen to our eighteen. She wasn’t a direct part of our group, and all I’d been concerned with last night was enjoying myself and the start of the last summer I’d spend on the island with all the Wayward Sons before we split up in the fall.

Up ahead, someone bolted through the trees. “Gwen? Gwen! Where are you?”

I recognized that panicked voice as belonging to Miles Busby, Gwen’s college-age older brother.

I picked up my pace and caught up with him. “Hey, man.”

Miles whirled on me, his eyes almost feral with panic.

I lifted my hands in peace. “You okay? You need some water?”

“I need my sister.”

“I get it. We’re all looking. But maybe you should drink down some water. If you keel over from dehydration, you won’t do her any good.” I offered him some of my own water.

After a long hesitation, he took it, drinking down half the bottle. His eyes closed on a defeated sigh. “I’m her big brother. I was supposed to look out for her. And now she’s...” His voice choked off.

“Hey, you don’t know that. She might be fine.”

But I could see he didn’t believe that. And as the day progressed, and the search continued, with no word, no sign of her whatsoever, I was starting to get a really bad feeling that something terrible had happened to Gwen Busby.

CHAPTER 1

FORD

Present

MISSING

The word caught my attention, as it always did, though I already knew every word of the poster by heart. I’d been seeing variations of it all over Sutter’s Ferry for years. This summer would be the fourteenth anniversary.

Gwen Busby. Brown hair. Hazel eyes. Age at time of disappearance: 15. Age now: 28.

This poster was a newer one, with a computer-rendered, aged-up photo of what she might look like now next to the original smiling image that had come to haunt everyone on Hatterwick Island. The open question of what had happened to her had irrevocably marked our community. No trace of her had ever been found, and all had gone quiet—until last summer, when Willa had inadvertently blown things open again.

She’d never been the same after that summer, after her drowning. She’d had no memory of how she’d ended up in the water. We’d all chalked it up to very real trauma, but the truth had turned out to be far more chilling.

It turned out she’d been the last person to see Gwen alive. The two of them had left the bonfire together. They’d been nabbed in the woods. But only Gwen had been the target. Willa was a mistake. Wrong place, wrong time. Or so they’d said. They’d rectified the situation by throwing her overboard and leaving her to drown. It would’ve worked, if not for Sawyer.

When Willa didn’t die, the man behind the kidnapping had gone to incredible lengths to make absolutely certain she wouldn’t remember a thing. I didn’t know the full details of the additional trauma she’d endured, only that once she’d found the courage to face her demons and started to remember, she’d nearly been killed for her trouble.

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