Chapter Thirty

"LEFT UP HERE." DANNY POINTSand Chelsey flicks on her blinker to veer onto 101. A sign reads OLYMPIC NATIONAL FOREST VISITOR CENTER, 68 MILES.

Her police radio is on, and it is heavy with chatter. An APB for a 1996 Corolla, Ellie's mother's car; a directive to not engage and wait for Homeland Security. The suspect is considered armed and dangerous. Chelsey blinks and imagines Ellie again, cornered by some cop with a sweaty trigger finger.

Danny holds his phone, map open, blue dot blinking with Ellie's location. She is moving fast. They're an hour and forty-seven minutes behind her. His lips are pressed together in a single fearful line.

"You don't have to come with me," Chelsey tries again. They haven't spoken much on the drive. Both lost in their own thoughts. But every few minutes, Chelsey feels a pinch of hot regret. She should not have let him get in the car. "You can give me your phone, and I'll drop you off somewhere. I can radio a local unit to pick you up."

A shake of his head. "I can't…" He scrunches his eyes shut, and tears squeeze out. It makes Chelsey shift in her seat, his sensitivity somehow unbearable. "I didn't show up for her once before."

His resolve, his remorse, is plain in Chelsey's ears. She thinks about interrogating him at the station. Approaching him at the bar. How she could have handled both situations differently. Better. She is part of the dark shadow passing through Danny. "Listen, I'm sorry about the bar. I shouldn't have asked you to spy on Ellie. It's not how I usually operate—"

"Yeah, well, turns out you were right to want to keep tabs on her. This is some fucked-up shit." Danny stares out the window. It's pretty rural now. Houses set on acres of land with horses and cows and even some llamas. The occasional gas station. No hotels. "Look, I… I shouldn't have said what I said about your sister. It's not how I was raised. Throwing someone's personal tragedy in their face."

His words hover in the car, combining with the musty air, and Chelsey swallows against a scalding in her throat.

A red light on her dash blinks on. "Shit, we need gas," she says.

A mile down the road, she spies a gas station and turns in. Danny stays in the car. At the pump, she scrolls through her phone, checking various news websites.

They're still using the footage from earlier this morning. Screenshots of the governor's mansion, a SWAT team lining up behind shields, dogs straining on leashes. Chelsey can't hear, but she is sure the anchors are speculating on Ellie's motives, so she may be tried in the court of public opinion.

Chelsey's phone lights up with a text. From Noah: I'M WORRIED ABOUT YOU.

She deletes it. The passenger door slams, and Danny stands beside it. "We've got a problem," Danny addresses her above the car.

Chelsey nods at him. "What?" She removes the nozzle from the tank. "What's wrong?" She studies his grim face.

"I lost Ellie. She's out of service."

Chelsey parks the car in the gas station lot. On the hood, she spreads out a map of the Olympic National Forest. Danny has a second map up on his phone, too. With a black pen, she's circled Ellie's last-known location. An old logging road that splinters off in five directions, then splinters again and again.

"It will take us hours to search each one," says Danny. "Too long. This is impossible."

Chelsey nods. She scans the horizon. Looking at the tangerine and blush-pink sky. She keeps waiting to hear the thump of a helicopter. For the radio to announce that they've found Ellie. She puts her hands to her hips and hangs her head. What is she not seeing? What question is she not asking? What string has she not yet plucked?

"Why the governor?" she says aloud. She conjures an image of Pike. What she's seen on television. Polished and glossy haired, waving to the cameras, standing at a podium, lip curled, fervently promising women's rights. Chelsey remembers the precinct picnic. Back to when she was a kid. To when the governor was not the governor. To when she was Abbott's wife. Chelsey sees her. Sitting in the bleachers, baseball game in progress, a weird pained smile on her face, body wound tight, a tether about to snap.

"What?" Danny asks at the prolonged silence.

"Nothing," Chelsey says. "My boss used to be married to the governor. A long time ago."

"Your boss used to be married to Regina Pike?"

Chelsey shakes her head. "That wasn't her name then. She changed it after she divorced him." Discarded her first name for her middle, traded in her last for her maiden. "She was Destiny Abbott when I knew her."

Danny's face goes ashen. "Ellie told me they called her Destiny."

"What?" A bony-fingered chill runs up her spine.

"Whoever took her called her Destiny."

The memory reemerges. Destiny Abbott perched on the metal bleachers. Back straight, hands gripped between her thighs clad in pedal pushers. The picture pans out. There is Abbott next to her, standing, hand balled into a fist, rooting one of their kids on. Is that right? How had Chelsey forgotten this part? One of Abbott's kids stumbles, botches a play. Abbott launches himself from the stands, stomps onto the field to scream at his child, at Doug. Yes, Chelsey remembers the flop of Doug's hair, how it covered his eyes. How Destiny popped up from the bleachers, the barest quiver in her lip, and marched right onto the field to draw Doug away from Abbott. A few terse words passed between Destiny and Abbott. Abbott stomped off. Then Destiny sat with Doug in the stands, hand under his shirt, using her nails to rub comforting circles on his back.

Fast-forward, and Chelsey sees herself in the precinct, in Abbott's office. When he professed to still loving his ex-wife. Did he hate the thing he loved the most? Could Abbott have taken these girls? No, Chelsey thinks sharply. It couldn't be Abbott. She cycles through the crime timelines. Who went missing and when. She'd been with Abbott. No way he could have orchestrated this. But… doubt lingers. "See what you can pull up about Patrick Abbott. He's my sergeant, the governor's ex-husband."

"You think he had something to do with this?"

"I don't know." Chelsey's mind is spinning. "But whoever did this, it's personal for them. Very personal. Abbott and the governor's marriage didn't end well."

Danny's thumbs move over his phone. "There's a bunch about Abbott. Mostly career-related stuff. He has three kids. Two sons and a daughter…"

"West, Douglas, and Annie," Chelsey fills in. "Look up the kids. Start with West Abbott," she tells Danny, feeling a rush, the sensation of water breaking over rocks. Maybe mommy issues, Noah said, and Chelsey had laughed it off. But now she thinks of her own mother. How angry she'd been when she left. How she'd wanted to punish her. She flicks the thought away.

Instead, she joins Danny in researching Abbott's kids. Information is sparse. Not much online. Chelsey switches and logs into DMV records using her police credentials. West Abbott's last-known address is an apartment building in Seattle, long ago demolished, an upscale grocery store in its place. Annie lives in Coldwell, same as Doug. His vehicles are listed. Vehicles? A Prius she has seen him drive to work. And another car… a 1995 blue Ford station wagon.

Chelsey tightens with alertness. "Doug owns a car like the one seen at Ellie's and another girl's abduction sites." She thinks of Doug. Seeing him sporadically at the station. He could have done this, but not alone. "West Abbott, we need to find West Abbott," Chelsey hurries out. She is letting the wave carry her, certain she will end in the right place. Certain she'll wash up near Ellie, at Doug's and West's feet.

"A Sunshine LLC is registered under his name." Danny casts Chelsey a bright-eyed, feverish look. "Ellie… we listened to music one night. I put on the song ‘You Are My Sunshine,' and she nearly broke the record in half." He squints at Chelsey, keen assessment in his eyes.

Chelsey inhales. She digs into Sunshine LLC. Two businesses are listed: a farm co-op and a kennel. Chelsey stops. The dog hairs found on Ellie. The bite marks imprinted on Gabby's bones. "Sunshine LLC operates a kennel. Here. It's a property in the Olympic National Forest—an old World War II bunker the government auctioned off." She punches in the address, forty-three miles away.

"We found them," Danny says.

Chelsey can only nod. The whoosh of the discovery winds her. West and Doug Abbott, two men she knows. How deeply it cuts. How good it feels, this brutal certainty. Finally. Finally.

"This could be really dangerous," she says once they're in the car, her hands on the wheel. "We don't know what these two guys have, what kind of arsenal." She pauses. "We might not come back."

"I'm coming," Danny says. There is stark fear on his face, but something else blazes in the depths of his eyes—all the love he carries for Ellie. He is desperate to sacrifice himself.

Chelsey backs the car out of the parking lot and takes a right, heading toward Doug and West Abbott. Toward Ellie. Toward whatever they might find.

"Why is she going back there?" Danny finally says once they're down the road. He's tapping his thumbs against his jeans. Afraid but undaunted.

Chelsey nods, acknowledging his question and remembering Danny doesn't know everything about Willa, the other girls. She thinks about herself. About Danny. What they are risking. Why they are risking it. Her thoughts flip to Ellie, the way she touched Willa's photograph, a tenderness to it, a mother cradling her baby's cheek. Love can push you to make the ultimate sacrifice. "I think she's going back for someone she cares about."

They travel on. And Chelsey thinks about her sergeant and his sons. How they'd been right under her nose. How smart they must have felt. Like they'd won. Playing hide-and-seek. But Chelsey wasn't really in the game before. Now, she is. Now, the tables are turning. Come out, come out wherever you are.