I ignored them and kept staring at the map we had tacked to the wall of my living room. Sheriff Sherwood had put out a BOLO on Cecily’s van. Law enforcement all over the state had their eyes peeled. I doubted Cecily would drive far. Too risky. She’d hunker down somewhere.
Amos had provided the missing puzzle piece there.Cecily lived in a built-out camper van. He didn’t know where, but he did know that the day Lennon and I got back from camping, Cecily had driven it to work. My guess was she’d planned on grabbing Lennon the second she could. She hadn’t been expecting Lennon to get attacked, but it provided her with an opportunity.
I tore open the protein bar and took off the corner with my teeth, still contemplating the map. I didn’t taste a single bite.
Right now, we were focused on secluded areas where Cecily could park her van. Trailheads, campsites, back roads, rental cabins. Green tacks denoted areas we had checked. Red tacks were places we hadn’t gotten to yet. Right now there were more red than green, but we were making progress.
Wyoming was a big state and sparsely populated. They could be anywhere.
But this was what we did. Holly, Mateo, Seb, Liam, and me. We found people. The only difference this time was that it was personal. Fear for Lennon’s safety clouded my head. I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t see the clues that I knew were right in front of me.
I had to find her. Desperation clawed in my chest. We’d been at this two days now, and it already felt like a lifetime since I’d had her safe in my arms under the stars.
I’d promised her she’d be safe, and I’d failed her. The knowledge of that nearly buckled my knees. Theonly thing that kept me upright was knowing that wherever she was, Lennon was alive. Cecily—Dana Matthews—didn’t want her dead.
But Cecily wasn’t exactly in her right mind, either, and that worried me. Two years ago, her boyfriend had beaten the crap out of her, causing her to miscarry their baby at twenty-one weeks. Cecily had landed in the hospital. I had no idea how she had stumbled onto Lennon’s camming account, but she had, and best as we could figure, she’d developed a fixation. A parasocial relationship, Ciaran called it. He believed it was platonic in nature, but that didn’t make it any less dangerous.
“There’s an illusion of intimacy,” he’d explained. “Cecily feels like they’ve had this very real, very emotional bond for much longer than Lennon has even been truly aware of her existence. If Lennon denies the bond, it is very possible that Cecily will treat it as a betrayal. There’s no telling how she’ll react. But we do know that she is capable of violence. She’s already proven that.”
“I think I’ve got something,” Mateo said. We all crowded around. “Cecily has an unpaid speeding ticket for Millhouse Road.” He shoved his chair back from the kitchen table and moved to the map. “Right here.” He pushed a yellow thumbtack into the spot.
“There’s no campground near there,” I noted. “Maybe she was on her way to somewhere else.”
“No campground, but there’s a fire road that turns off from there. See? I checked it out on some hikingwebsites. Apparently there is a single campsite there. From there, hikers backpack the rest of the way to a fire lookout tower.”
My brow furrowed as I studied the map. “Could she get her van to the campsite? Some fire roads are only passable by four wheelers.”
“Hikers say yes. It’s not very popular because it’s so hard to get to. Remote, not enough room for more than one vehicle.”
“Perfect for Cecily,” I muttered.
“Exactly.”
“Let’s go.”
41
LENNON
Two daysin and I was starting to feel like maybeIwas the crazy one.
Run!every cell in my body screamed at me over and over. Sitting around waiting to be rescued wasn’t in my DNA. No one had ever rescued me—except maybe Cecily, but it turned out she was actually kidnapping me, so that probably didn’t count.
I rescued myself. That was how I survived.Iinstalled the bolt lock on my bedroom door.Ifiled the paperwork to get emancipated.Ifigured out how to pay my bills. And when that creepy Uber driver pulled into an alley that was definitely not the way home,Ijumped out of the car while it was still moving and ran three blocks on a twisted ankle.
My brain told me to run. My heart told me to stay put and wait for Jeremiah to find me. And when I listened to my heart, my brain conceded that several excellent points were raised.
First of all, I had no idea where I was. As best as I could tell, we’d gotten here on an old fire road. We could be miles away from a real road, miles away from a town. She’d knocked me out cold, so I didn’t even know how long it had taken us to drive here.
The odds of me finding help before I starved or froze to death were not good. My survival skills pertained to city streets and creepy men, not rugged terrain and wild animals. If I ran, I’d be making it even harder for Jeremiah to find me.
Secondly, Cecily might be crazy, but she wasn’t stupid. She was fairly certain I was still lusting after Jeremiah and that made me a flight risk. She wasn’t wrong, and something told me that if I pretended I was over him this early in the game, she wouldn’t believe me. I needed to gain her trust. Right now, she kept me handcuffed to her at night, but she didn’t tie me up during the day.
No, she locked up my shoes instead.
If I ran, I’d be running barefoot.
Jeremiah would find me. I knew he would. The truth of that thrummed inside me, the only thing that kept me sane. For the first time in my life, I trusted someone else to take care of me and make me safe.
