Last Resort. Hannah Alexander

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.”

      “That’s what Cecil and Melva keep insisting,” Nathan said. “But you know Carissa can be headstrong, and she and her parents did have a little confrontation yesterday.”

      “What about?”

      “Gladys.”

      Noelle’s steps slowed. “What about her?” she asked quietly.

      “She wants to see Justin and Carissa again.” Gladys had given up any right to see her children when she had abandoned them and their father. Her lack of concern for their suffering had outraged the whole community. “Carissa wants to see her, and Melva’s pitching a major fit.”

      Noelle stepped around a mud puddle and ducked beneath a tree limb. “Does Gladys think she can just suddenly walk back into their lives and stir everything up again? When she left, Carissa was devastated. For at least a year, I think she continued to hope her mother would come back to them.”

      “As you said, Carissa’s strong-willed,” Nathan said. “So it could be possible that she’s in hiding somewhere, maybe protesting.”

      “No.”

      “But if she were hiding, where do you think she’d hide?” He gestured around him, indicating the expanse of ground they would have to cover. “Where would you hide?”

      “Not around here, and no, I’m not feeling any kind of leading.”

      “But just for the sake of a place to look, where would you hide?”

      “Does that old dirt track still wind through the woods to the national forest a couple of miles back?” she asked.

      “I think so. I heard Pearl complaining about people trespassing on Cooper land from the logging trail in national forest land. Why? Do you—”

      She turned and looked up at him, and he glimpsed an interested quickening in those intelligent eyes. “Where did we go when we were kids? You know, when we got in trouble.”

      “The caves?” he asked. There were at least four in the vicinity that ranged from mere indentations in the rock to caverns that cut deeply into the hillside.

      She gave him a look of approval. “Exactly. Is Bobcat Cave still sealed?”

      “I think it is. At least, I hope it is.”

      She bent over and tucked the cuffs of her jeans into her socks. “We may be beating some brush. Still ticks and chiggers here, I suppose.”

      “Not in this section, there ain’t.” A deep, strong female voice suddenly spoke from the trees a few yards ahead.

      Chapter Six

      Pearl Cooper’s tall, rawboned figure emerged from the woods along one of the wildlife trails that intersected the lane. Her hand patted her chest in a long-familiar gesture—Aunt Pearl had claimed heart palpitations for as long as Noelle could remember. The family affectionately accused her of using sympathy to get what she wanted. She never denied it. Aunt Pearl could always charm people into giving in to her, and when she couldn’t charm them, she pulled rank—though Cecil and Jill had incorporated the business to save on taxes, Pearl owned the property and everything on it. It had passed to her through the Cooper family trust.

      Pearl’s iron-gray hair stuck out in haphazard tufts, straggling over her forehead to frame deep-blue eyes—Cooper eyes that saw more, sometimes, than one wanted them to see. She seldom wore anything other