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“You.”
“We can cover twice the distance twice as fast if we use something else.”
“Hard to argue with your logic, Miss Jacobs.” He ran his fingers along the side of her face. “How about your flannel?”
She’d worn a long sleeve shirt since it had been cool yesterday morning. After taking it off, she handed it to Owen, who tied it to a high branch so they could see it from a decent distance.
He pointed what she imagined was east. “You go that way. Try to stay in a straight line. And I’ll go that way.” He pointed west.
“Make sure you can always see the shirt.” He kissed her cheek. “See you in a few.”
They went and came back, then went out from the starting place once again. This time Owen went north, and Chloe went south.
She looked over her shoulder about twenty yards from their starting point and waved at Owen, who sent her a sloppy salute.
That was the last time she ever saw Owen.
Chloe snapped herself out of the memory. The memory of Owen’s tender lips against her cheek triggered the more recent memory of Josh kissing her head.
Josh.
Her heart ached in a new way. Regret. For how long had she kept him at arm’s length? To what end?
That stupid old adage of “better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all” had always seemed like a cruel joke. Losing someone you loved was the worst kind of hurt. But she was beginning to see that maybe not loving when you could have,shouldhave even, was perhaps just as painful.
Where was Josh now? And why on earth had she come into the woods by herself?
Chapter Eleven
GabepacedbyBuck’sdesk. Poirot sat at attention next to the chair that Gabe had occasionally sat in over the last hour and a half. The poor dog refused any food or water. He wouldn’t even eat the half a donut Martinez offered him. And Gabe couldn’t blame the dog.
Where was Chloe? What had happened? And where was Josh? Had something happened to him too?
“Would you sit down already?” Buck spun toward Gabe. “Come on, even the dog knows that pacing around is just wasting energy.”
“Where’s my sister, Buck?”
“I don’t know, but your pacing around is breaking my ability to concentrate.”
“Gabe!” Aliza’s voice called from behind him.
He spun around and took his fiancée into his arms.
“We got here as soon as we could. But we closed our case, so we’re all yours.”
“We?”
She thumb-pointed over her shoulder. The rest of her FBI team stood there, ready to dive into action.
Dylan Harris, one of her teammates and his friend, came over and hugged him. “We’ll find Chloe.”
“Please.”
“What do we know so far?”
Gabe went through all the pieces he knew, from the note yesterday morning to Poirot finding him to Chloe’s SUV and no scent trail beyond the parking lot.
“Does Chloe have any enemies?”
