not dismiss any possibility.”
Nathan pulled up to the sawmill. The paved parking lot surrounding the huge, barnlike building was crammed with cars, trucks, SUVs and trailers, which had apparently carried all-terrain vehicles.
Ordinarily, Cecil wouldn’t thank anyone for tearing up his pastureland and traumatizing more than a thousand head of cattle and horses, but if the volunteer searchers found his little girl, he would most likely be willing to give them permanent rights to the land—if those rights were his to give. Though he managed all of the Cooper enterprises, he hadn’t yet inherited.
Nathan parked between a van and another truck, then turned to Noelle again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I told you, I’m fine. A little rattled, but what would you expect? I want to focus on finding Carissa.”
“We’ll do that.”
Noelle stared at the corrugated aluminum siding on the huge building. Even after ten years, the sawmill brought back the memories of the accident that had killed Dad and Grandma and Grandpa. Carissa’s disappearance only resurrected those memories more distinctly.
“We might as well walk from here,” she said. “We’ve got to start looking somewhere.”
They climbed from the truck to be greeted by the music of the crickets and the scent of moist earth. Noelle took a deep breath, her gaze traveling over the mossy green of the cedar trees, the splashes of orange and apricot on the tips of maple trees and the rippling green of the hay field, punctuated by huge, silver-gold bales stacked side by side in the field to the right of the lane.
This lane led around the side of the building to the Cooper settlement about a quarter of a mile away. Noelle’s ancestors had lived and farmed here for generations, expanding this property into a valuable asset that, combined with the successful sawmill, generously supported family members and dozens of employees. As a Cooper family member, Noelle received a sizable check every six months, even though she didn’t work on the property.
Noelle avoided looking at the sawmill, allowing her memories to carry her back to a safer time. She loved country life, especially the privacy and peace of this hollow in the hills. Though she also loved living in Springfield, every time she came home to Hideaway she felt a distinct tug of the heart. She loved the town of Hideaway. Even though she wouldn’t admit it to Nathan, the idea of working at the clinic appealed to something inside her that she thought had dried up and died when she’d lost her last nursing position.
Still, too many memories attacked her here on Cooper land.
“Did anyone search the mill for signs of a possible problem?” she asked. “Maybe a struggle of some kind?”
“They checked, but all they found was the ledger alongside the lane, covered in mud. Carissa obviously had been to the mill and gone, and if there’d been a problem at the mill, she certainly wouldn’t have bothered with the ledger.”
“Could Cecil and Melva have heard a car engine from the house?”
“Not necessarily, but the dogs are usually pretty quick to pick up on the scent or sounds of a stranger, and they never sounded an alarm.”
Noelle reached into the back of Nathan’s truck, where she’d placed water flasks and a backpack with supplies, including a first-aid kit. “Want to hike from here?”
“I’d love to,” he said. “But let me carry the backpack. It looks heavy.”
She strapped herself into her pack. “Think I can’t carry my own load?”
“No,” he said dryly. “I just thought, after all these years, that competitive streak of yours might have mellowed a little.”
“I’m not competitive.” She shifted the shoulder straps. “You should know that by now.”
She gazed along the lane. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone in her family right now, especially since no one had called her about Carissa. Still, the lane was the quickest and safest route into the rest of the hollow, with connecting lanes and cattle trails beyond Cecil’s place. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and make it past the houses without anyone noticing us,” she said as they set off.
Nathan sniffed the tealike scent of early autumn leaves and listened to the crickets chirping from the forest on either side of the lane. Cedar Hollow—two thousand acres of fertile farm valley settled deep in the tree-lined hills—had changed little since he’d grown up here. His family’s dairy cows had grazed just across the road from the Cooper beef cattle. He and Noelle had played along Willow Creek, which followed the curve of the land until it reached Table Rock Lake, a little over two miles away.
Noelle turned and glanced over her shoulder at the field to the south as the sound of an all-terrain vehicle reached them. “That’s Carissa’s favorite place to ride Gypsy,” she said.
“It’s where we loved to ride, too,” he reminded her. “The field is level with amazingly few rocks to trip the horses.” He and Noelle had often played in the field and along the creek when they were growing up.
“Why do some things stay the same, when other things change so drastically?” Noelle murmured.
“I’ve asked that enough times myself,” Nathan said. “Remember how many times we walked down this lane when we were kids?”
“Or rode our bikes.”
“And tried to hide from my little sisters.”
“And my big sister.” Noelle chuckled. “I felt so secure, so protected then. I mean, I had family all around me, and my best friend lived right down the road.” She glanced sideways at Nathan.
He nodded. How many times in the past few years he had thought about those days, wondering if he would have done things differently, given the chance.
“Two thousand acres of Cooper property, joined by Trask property,” Noelle said. “The searchers couldn’t have covered everything yet, could they?”
“Not every inch, of course, but—”
“But Carissa knows this hollow so well. All she has to do is find Willow Creek and follow it down.”
Nathan glanced at Noelle. “Maybe Carissa’s done just that. She might be home by the time we get to the house.”
“You don’t sound convinced.” Noelle pulled the cell phone from her pocket, punched numbers again, asked whoever answered about the status of the search without identifying herself, and then expressed thanks. “Not yet,” she reported to Nathan, kicking a rock to the side of the track. “Carissa knows this land as well as we did at her age.”
“That’s true, but everything looks different in the dark. My friend Taylor Jackson thinks it’s possible she got lost, and he’s working on that premise while others are searching farther afield.”
“Taylor’s the ranger who’s dating Karah Lee Fletcher at the clinic?”
“Yes. He’s been helping coordinate the search. The sheriff suggested Carissa might have run away for some reason.”
“Ridiculous. Greg should know better.”
