Page 61 of Chasing Shelter (Sparrow Falls #5)

TRACE

The station had turned into a chaotic command post, with endless law enforcement personnel moving about the space while even more combed the streets.

We’d called in everyone we could think of while my family was split between consoling Keely and peppering the streets with flyers in case someone had seen something.

But it was as if Ellie had disappeared into thin air. The problem with temporary carnivals was that they didn’t come with the sort of security and endless cameras a normal amusement park had. Instead, we were left hoping against hope that someone had noticed something.

And all I could do was sit at the damn conference table that’d become the command center and stare at the giant map that had been put up opposite me. Pushpins marked places of interest in different colors. The place Ellie was last seen. Her home. Mine. Linc and Arden’s. Colson Ranch.

And then there were the darker ones. The places Jasper haunted. The trailer he rented. The bar he frequented. The residences of all his known connections .

Rainer had been brought in for questioning and held—one less avenue for Jasper to use.

But what was he doing to Ellie in the meantime? What was she enduring because she loved me ? She’d already paid far too high a price trying to keep the people she loved happy, and now she was paying more. Sure, the circumstances were different, but what did that matter at the end of the day?

Voices swirled around me: the sound of Dex’s fingers flying across his keyboard as he stared intently at the screen, the crackle of police radios, and the words hurled across them. Each one built on the other, but I made no move to alleviate the pain. I deserved it all.

So, I just kept staring at the map as if it would somehow miraculously tell me where Ellie was. As if I would feel some flicker of knowing when I looked at a place’s name or a landmark. But I felt nothing.

Nothing but the hollowness that was life without Ellie.

“Holding it together?” Anson asked, his voice quiet as he moved behind the chair next to mine.

“Sure.” My voice didn’t sound like it belonged to me. It sounded numb. The kind of numbing blanket I’d tried to pull on the day my father nearly ran Ellie over. Only I felt everything now. Every ounce of pain and fury. Every flicker of guilt and anguish.

“Might want to work on those acting skills,” Anson muttered.

I didn’t care. I just kept staring. Waiting for something. Anything.

Anson gripped my shoulder. “You were there for me when I almost lost Rho. You helped me hold it together when I nearly broke. I’m here, Trace. We’re going to get through this, and we’re going to get Ellie back.”

I wasn’t sure what finally broke me. The kind touch? The words that felt like a vow? Whatever it was, it was too much.

I jerked back, sending the chair tumbling behind me. “You don’t know!” The words tore from my throat like barbed brambles, shredding everything in their path. “You don’t fucking know!” I grabbed the chair and hurled it at the wall, making it shatter into pieces.

The room erupted as I reached for another chair. Anson grabbed it from my hands as Dex moved in behind me. I whirled on him, but he was too quick, and I was too out of my mind. He ducked below my swing and moved in to grab my arm and snap it behind me.

The move forced me to bend at the waist, grunting as pain ripped through my shoulder. Good. I needed to feel that pain. But I still fought against it, needing to destroy everything around me.

“Breathe,” Dex ordered. “Breathe, or I’m gonna use a pressure point and put you down.”

That had some semblance of sanity returning to my mind. A little of the fight left me, and Anson stepped in closer, crouching low. “Come on, Trace. Pull it together. She needs you.”

His words took the rest of the fight clean out of me. Sobs racked my body, violent and vicious. “I can’t lose her.”

Dex released me, and Anson grabbed me in a hard hug, holding on and not letting go. “You’re not going to lose her,” Anson gritted out. “It’s not fucking happening.”

I struggled to pull it together. To reel it in. Just long enough to find Ellie. To get her back. “She’s everything,” I whispered. “She made me see what life could be.”

“I know,” Anson rasped. “I know.”

“Trace.”

At the sound of Gabriel’s voice, I pulled myself from Anson’s hug, trying to read my best friend’s face. “Tell me you have a lead.”

Gabriel looked between Anson and me, uncertainty written all over his face.

“Tell him,” Anson said. “You keep something from him now, and your friendship will never recover.”

A muscle fluttered in Gabriel’s jaw. “I need to know you can keep your head.”

I shoved every ugly, roiling thing I was feeling down and locked it away so it couldn’t see the light of day. “Under control.”

“Ben Vera called dispatch. Someone tripped the camera at his hunting cabin. Feed’s black now, but they probably didn’t expect it to have a motion-detection trigger.”

It was rare for hunters to have any kind of security up there, and if they did, it generally wasn’t hooked up to notify at motion because there was too much wildlife that could trigger it. But that cabin was Ben’s pride and joy, and he wasn’t about to let anyone break into it.

I struggled to swallow, needing to clear the dryness from my throat. “Did he get a visual?”

“It’s Jasper. He’s got Ellie at gunpoint.”

Law enforcement personnel gathered at a tactical point down the gravel road that led up one of the Monarch peaks.

It was an area known best for hiking, camping, and fishing.

But seeing as the temperatures had dropped lower, and we could be getting snow at any time, those pursuits had waned for the season.

Still, seeing men and women don Kevlar and check a variety of guns felt more than wrong. But I was grateful, nonetheless. Each of these people was putting their life on the line for Ellie. Some knew her. Some didn’t. But to them, it didn’t matter.

Beth and Gabriel pored over a map, plotting out the different approaches we would make.

Laney, Frank, and Allen talked to the deputies who’d volunteered from the next county over.

The only person I expected to see but didn’t was Fletcher.

I started to search him out, but a hand clamped on my shoulder.

I turned to see Gabriel, a worried expression on his face. “Trace, are you sure you can do this?”

I appreciated that he wasn’t trying to argue the validity of my being there. It was a conflict of interest, at the very least. But in small communities, emergencies meant all hands on deck.

“I’ll keep my head,” I promised.

“And we’ve got his back,” Anson said, stepping forward with Dex at his side. Both were kitted out in tactical gear, surprising me again when it came to Dex.

Gabriel’s expression hardened. “You swear he knows how to handle himself? ”

Anson scoffed. “Hates firearms but knows his way around them better than anyone I know. Best shot I know at the bureau, too.”

I couldn’t help but wonder how that mix of things came to be, but for now, I was just grateful he was here.

“All right,” Gabriel said begrudgingly, then turned to face the crowd. “You all know your groups and your routes. Move quietly and quickly. Only use the radio when absolutely necessary.”

Everyone began moving. My group was comprised of Anson, Dex, and Beth. We took a game trail that wove up the eastern side of the mountain, none of us saying a word as we walked. We moved quickly, but at a pace we could all keep. There wasn’t time to stop for breaks.

A twig snapped off to the right, and all of us moved into instant formation, guns at the ready. My pulse thrummed as I forced myself to keep breathing. Jasper? Ellie? Both? Three elk appeared through the trees.

Beth muttered a curse, and we all lowered our weapons.

“Come on,” Anson said. “We’re getting close. Heads on a swivel.”

We started up again, the path winding through the thick trees. And then it happened. A flicker of color appeared on the forest floor. My heart hammered in my ears as I picked up my pace.

What had Ellie been wearing this morning? I struggled to remember. A deep orange sweater, maybe? Or was that yesterday?

I pushed into a run when I saw that the form was human. Sprawled across the path, unmoving.

But it was too big to be Ellie. I said the words to myself over and over until we reached the fallen figure. The moment we did, I sucked in a breath. The person’s chest had three holes in a tight grouping that spoke of training. And the face was one that had haunted my nightmares.

Jasper lay there, blood seeping into the earth, a cell phone at his side. One Ellie would’ve grabbed to call for help, even if she was scared out of her mind. If she wasn’t under duress.

I struggled to keep breathing as my gaze found Anson’s. “If Jasper’s dead, who the hell has Ellie?”