Page 9

CHAPTER

EIGHT

Nearly as soon as Duke and Andi had left Morgan’s place, Reeves called Logan with a hit on Morgan’s cell phone. The device had last pinged four days ago.

Four days.

The night of the award ceremony.

As soon as Logan had the phone’s coordinates, he left Morgan’s cabin and rushed toward the location, still praying for the best.

He attempted to push all the tragic scenarios out of his mind. But if he were honest with himself, he expected the worst. He halfway expected to find Morgan dead in the forest still clutching her phone.

He prayed that wasn’t the case.

The location was twenty minutes from Fairbanks, between Morgan’s cabin and the lodge where the award ceremony had taken place.

Logan pulled his SUV onto the narrow shoulder of Parks Highway.

The dashboard clock read 10:17 p.m., its green glow the only light aside from a waning crescent moon partially obscured by passing clouds.

The darkness here was profound—not the soft darkness of city outskirts, but the absolute black of deep wilderness.

He grabbed his Maglite from the center console, the familiar weight steadying his hand as he stepped out into the biting cold. His breath immediately crystallized in the beam of his flashlight.

The area where Morgan’s phone had last pinged was unremarkable by Alaskan standards. It was a stretch of highway carved through dense boreal forest, with black spruce standing like sentinels, their spindly silhouettes jagged against the night sky.

Snow had been plowed into dirty berms along the roadside, now frozen into miniature mountain ranges streaked with gravel. Beyond the immediate shoulder, the forest floor remained blanketed in pristine white, unmarred except for occasional moose tracks and the delicate trails of snowshoe hares.

A hundred yards back, Logan spotted the turnout—little more than an indentation in the tree line where emergency vehicles or travelers might pause, unmarked on any tourist map.

His boots crunched through the crust of ice that had formed over earlier snowfall as he swept his light in methodical arcs. The wind whispered through the spruce boughs, carrying with it that uniquely Alaskan scent of resin and ice.

In the distance, something large moved through the underbrush—likely a moose, though the darkness made it impossible to confirm.

“Morgan!” His voice sounded flat in the cold air, absorbed by the dense forest rather than echoing back.

There was no response except the startled flutter of an owl taking flight from a nearby branch.

The coordinates from the cell tower triangulation led him fifty feet from the road’s edge, where the trees grew closer together and the snow deepened.

Logan’s light caught a splash of color against the monochrome landscape—a disturbance in the snow beneath a gnarled spruce. Its lower branches had formed a natural shelter from recent precipitation.

Partially buried by the day’s light snowfall lay Morgan’s phone.

He instantly recognized its distinctive hand-tooled leather case—one she’d bought from an artisan at last summer’s fair in Talkeetna.

Logan remembered that day well. Remembered how much fun they had strolling beside each other as if they were a couple.

He crouched, his light splaying across the device.

He pulled on some gloves and lifted the phone, tapping the cracked screen.

The screen remained dark.

Was the battery dead or the phone broken beyond repair?

His lips twitched with a frown. He needed to find out.

The answers he needed might be on this cell.

Logan hoped one of the computer techs he knew could fix this for him. He knew her code—she’d shared it once while exclaiming she had no secrets to hide. So why did she seem like she was holding on to some unspoken truth? Why did she seem so haunted herself sometimes?

He needed to see who sent the text Morgan had received while in the bathroom with Andi.

He slipped the device into an evidence bag.

Then he lifted his gaze to the expanse of dark forest around him. Unbroken wilderness stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction—perfect for making someone disappear.

Whoever had taken Morgan—which he was convinced had happened—had chosen this spot carefully. It was in the middle of nowhere. Remote enough to avoid witnesses, yet accessible.

Disposing of her phone in a place like this had been calculated.

Almost as if someone had been driving by and thrown it out their window.

The bad feeling in Logan’s gut only solidified.

As if to emphasize the isolation, the aurora suddenly flickered to life overhead—ribbons of green and violet dancing across the stars, illuminating the landscape in an otherworldly glow that only heightened the emptiness around him.

Logan reached for his radio, knowing that what had begun as a search for a cell phone had become something much darker.

Logan called the owner of the lodge where the award ceremony was held. Though it was late, the man agreed to meet with him. When Logan told Duke and Andi the update on Morgan’s phone, they asked if they could meet him there and offer another set of eyes.

He wasn’t going to refuse their offer of help.

After he dropped off the phone with Reeves and filed a missing person’s report on Morgan, he headed to the lodge.

Duke and Andi waited there, and they gathered in the office to review the security camera footage.

The owner—David Arnold, a balding man in his late sixties who considered himself a reformed redneck—sat behind the desk, and Andi and Duke sat in chairs on either side of him.

Logan couldn’t sit. He had too much energy.

Instead, he watched the screen from behind the three of them. He wished the process of reviewing the video footage was faster and more efficient. He told himself to be patient even as urgency pressed in on him.

Finally, after ten minutes of scanning the footage, he spotted Morgan on the screen.

His heart skipped a beat as he pointed. “There!”

David rewound the footage.

Logan leaned closer as he watched.

Based on the time stamp, this image of Morgan was from only ten minutes or so after the two of them had kissed.

The best moment of his life followed by the worst. An ache filled his heart at the thought of it.

He watched as Morgan walked toward one of the exits and paused. As she turned to look at everyone in the room, he thought he saw tears glimmering in her gaze.

Grief gripped his heart again at the sight.

She used a finger to wipe beneath her eyes before turning toward the door and stepping outside.

Then he saw it.

The shadow on the other side of the door.

“Stop it right there!” he said.

As David did as he asked, Logan pushed himself closer to the screen. “Can you zoom in?”

“Let me see what I can do.” David managed to enlarge the image.

But all Logan could see was a shadow.

Someone had been waiting on the other side of the door for Morgan.

Whoever it was, Logan couldn’t make out any of their details. This person had probably planned it that way.

His jaw clenched.

“Do you have any cameras on the outside?” he asked.

“The one by that door was vandalized about a week ago,” David said with an apologetic frown. “I’m still waiting for the company to replace it.”

Did the person waiting outside for Morgan know that? Was this person the one who’d vandalized the camera?

Andi said Morgan got a message on her phone. Had the sender lured her outside?

He needed to see her messages. He desperately hoped Reeves would be able to access Morgan’s information.

“What are you thinking?” Duke stood and paced away from the computer, his hands on his hips as he processed everything.

Logan’s muscles flexed and unflexed as he fought to keep his emotions in check.

He turned back to David. “Can you send me copies of all the videos you have for that evening? I’d like to review them all more thoroughly.”

“Of course.” David turned away from the desk and nodded.

“And what about the footage from right before the camera was vandalized?”

David grimaced. “Whoever did it approached the camera from the side—just out of sight. We already looked at all the footage. There was nothing.”

Disappointment bit deeply into Logan. “That’s unfortunate.”

“It will take me a little time to get the footage over,” David said. “I’ll need my tech guy to compress it. At least, I think that’s the way it works. I know art more than I know technology.”

“The sooner you can get it to me, the better. I believe the woman in the video is in grave danger.” As the words left Logan’s lips, a sick feeling filled his stomach.

How could this be happening?

Morgan’s disappearance had happened on his watch. Logan had been there.

If he hadn’t let his emotions get involved, he would have been paying more attention. Maybe he would have known that something was wrong before Morgan disappeared.

Maybe she wouldn’t have disappeared at all.

This was his fault.

Just like Bobby’s death.

He couldn’t bring Bobby back.

But he wasn’t about to lose Morgan too.

Now he needed to make this right.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, his phone buzzed.

His breath caught when he saw the name on the screen.

It was Morgan. She’d texted him.

He quickly scanned the words.

Don’t look for me. I’m taking some time to sort out my thoughts, and I just need space.

His chest tightened.

Morgan hadn’t sent this. Her phone was unusable.

No, the killer had sent this to try to throw Logan off his trail.

But now, more than ever, he was determined to figure out what was going on.