Miles

The next six hours were the longest of my life. Detective Reyes moved fast, an alert went out on Paige's car, and Dad paced the length of the living room so many times I stopped counting.

It was Grandma Ruth, of all people, who broke it open. She sat very still at the kitchen table, replaying old conversations in her head, and suddenly said, "The Whitmore cabin. She mentioned a cousin with a cabin near the state line once, at Christmas, in passing. I only remember because I thought it was odd she brought it up at all."

Reyes's team was already running down leads independently, and a gas station camera two hours north had caught Paige's car passing through just after dusk, which meant Ruth's memory and the case file had just pointed at the exact same stretch of road.

It was the Coopers' pattern again, Reyes said grimly in the car. Go somewhere quiet. Wait for the noise to die down. Reappear somewhere new with a new name and a new story, the way she had after Sadie.

Except this time, someone had remembered the cousin's name before Paige ever reached the property line.

By the time local units arrived at the cabin, night had fully settled over the tree line, and Dad and I were still forty minutes out, following behind in Ruth's car with the radio silent because none of us could stand to hear anything but our own breathing.

When we finally turned onto the gravel road, headlights sweeping across a dark porch, I saw a single small shape framed in the cabin window, sitting very still and very alone, waiting for something none of us could promise yet would be good news.