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Once again, no sign of her.
It seemed like a breeze was blowing in from the loft. I nodded toward the stairs and started up.
If it was hard to tell anything from the ground floor, the loft was another story. Something had clearly gone down. The bed was at an odd angle, pushed up against the one wall with a window in it. The glass was broken out almost completely and cold air streamed in. My eyes widened as I saw there was a sheet tied to the bed, hanging out the window.
She’d escaped. My badass woman had escaped out the window.
“Outside,” I said, rushing past Garrett and flying down the stairs.
He followed and we raced around the building. A quilt was on the ground below the window and shards of broken glass sparkled, even with the sun hidden behind dark clouds.
“That way,” Garrett said, pointing to the ground.
Her path was clear, footsteps in the wet ground leading to the trees. I took a deep breath so I could start calling for her, but Garrett stopped me.
“Wait,” he hissed. “We don’t know who’s out here.”
We followed the tracks into the trees. I was no expert, but I’d grown up running around the woods, and it looked to me like there was more than one set of footprints. In some places, there were multiple tracks on top of each other.
Someone following her? Had she been caught?
Then the footprints stopped.
Garrett went ahead a little farther, but came back shaking his head. “They stop here. She must have turned around.”
“Was she followed?” I asked, pointing to what looked like a sneaker print. “That doesn’t look like her shoes.”
Garrett tilted his head, looking at the ground. “That’s not very big. It’s either a woman’s shoe or a guy with really small feet.”
I looked around, my heart sinking into the pit of my stomach. Where was she?
What might have been another set of footprints led toward the front of the cabin. “I see them too,” Garrett said. “I have a feeling she got out the window and someone caught up with her here, then left in a vehicle. But I don’t know why Preston would bring her all the way out here only to move her again so soon.”
“Other than the fact that she broke a window and escaped?”
“True.”
“What the fuck do we do now?”
He put his gun away and pulled out his phone. “I need to get back to where I have a signal so I can call in this location. Get search and rescue out here in case she’s still on foot. And make sure state patrol knows to be on the lookout this far north.”
A coal of rage simmered in my gut. I was not giving in to despair. She wasn’t here, but she’d been here. I was sure of it. That meant we were on the right track. We were going to find her.
Garrett kept trying to get a call to go through as we hurried to my truck. I went back inside the cabin to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. Maybe she’d left a clue behind. But there wasn’t anything I could see, and we needed to get closer to civilization so Garrett could get in touch with the cops back in Tilikum.
I went outside and paused at a noise. Was that a vehicle? Garrett looked up in alarm. He’d heard it too.
There was only one road in or out, at least that I could see. If someone was coming down that road, we were trapped.
We didn’t have time to think about a plan before a black full-size sedan appeared. The driver stopped abruptly and the door flew open.
Preston Bradford stepped out of the car.
“Where the fuck is she?” I started toward him, ready to tear him to pieces, but Garrett grabbed me before I could get far. “What did you do with her?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m asking the questions. Where is she?”
