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Because even if Raven had reached her limit on beinghere,she shouldn’t be out there on her own. “Her mom called her last night.”
“Fuck.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
“So, are we doing the search grid?”
Connor’s eyes flicked to the clock. He had exactly one hour before he had to be at the hospital. If he was late, that meant someone was stuck covering for him. Something Raven understood, probably better than most. Distract him with food, delay him, implore his loyalty to his coworkers so he didn’t fuck over shift change. Still, he left the coffee, the cinnamon rolls, grabbed his jacket and keys. “Yeah, man,” he muttered as he shrugged it on. “We’re doing a search grid.”
Then he hung up, called in one of the last of the favors he had to call on, and got someone to take his shift.
He had a fucking search grid to complete.
Seven
Raven
It would have been easier if she hadn’t needed to haul her bag up several flights of stairs in order to make it to the front door.
It would have been easier if she’d just gotten a hotel room.
But they would check the hotels, and Darlington was a small town withonehotel and several B&Bs, so it wouldn’t take long for her to be found.
She needed…
Distance.
Which was why she’d gotten a Lyft back to her place, put her new set of car keys (something that had cost her five hundred bucks to replace after the fire) to good use and had driven away from the construction site that was her home.
She’d driven for four hours, winding along the coast, the ocean to her left until she made her way to the house she’d rented for the next two months.
Just…stairs.
Thathadn’t been on the listing—that the house was on stilts. That the house with the killer view of the Atlantic Ocean breaking along an expanse of pale beige sand was actually located high above that pretty sand. The height provided her that killer view, but the copious number of stairs made it difficult for her—with recovering lungs and healing burns—to get to the front door.
And with a duffle on each shoulder.
Anda backpack slung between them.
Well, she supposed this was her PT time—only to the extreme.
“Almost there,” she puffed, muscles burning, lungs aching, her healing skin pinching. “Almost.There.”
Then shewasthere.
Within a couple of paces of the door, black was crawling through her vision, blurring her view of her hand as she reached for the keypad. It took three times to press the buttons on the lock and input the code correctly.
A littlewhir.
Her palm hit the knob.
She gripped. Turned. Pushed.
And stumbled inside.
A shrug and her bags slid from her shoulders, dropped onto the floor. She managed to get the door shut, the lock reengaged.
Then her legs gave out.
