Page 35 of A Little Christmas Wish

“I’m just going to go check on Zippy as well.” She had this weird feeling. A sense of urgency.

“No, you’re not. Get back into bed. I’ll let Bandit out and check on Zippy.”

“But, Ink,” she protested as he started to get up. “I was already up.”

“And now you can get back into bed where it’s nice and warm and let me take the dog out.” He walked around and gently settled her back into bed. Then he kissed her forehead. “And go check on Zippy. It’s my job.”

The man certainly had a lot of ideas on what was his job. But she’d give this to him if it meant she got to keep her feet warm.

She yawned and snuggled in, waiting for him to come back.

A few minutes later, she heard him running down the passage. She sat up, alarm filling her as he ran into the bedroom to grab his phone off the nightstand.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Zippy’s gone.” Ink was looking at something on his phone.

“Is he here? Oh my God! Did he get to her?” How could he possibly have gotten to her?

“The alarm is down. Someone turned it off. Bandit must have heard something although I can’t understand why he didn’t bark.” He brought his phone to his ear and started speaking rapidly to someone as he got dressed.

Getting out of bed, she hastily got dressed as well. Panic made her clumsy and it took her three tries to pull her pants on.

Where could she be?

Oh God. Oh God.

Ink put down the phone and walked over to her. “I’ve got Brody working on hacking into any traffic cameras we have. I’m going to go look at our camera feeds. If he took her, we’ll figure out where he’s going with her.” Ink shook his head. “But I don’t understand how he got past the alarm, knew the code, and got up here to her without me hearing.”

Betsy didn’t know that either. She followed Ink to his home office. He settled in front of the monitor, moving through the camera feed.

“There!” she said. “The door is opening.”

And out walked Zippy.

By herself.

“What . . . what is she doing?” she whispered.

Zippy was carrying a backpack and she looked to be dressed in a bulky jacket.

“I don’t know,” Ink said, following the camera feed along the house. He switched to the next camera and they saw her move down the driveway to the road.

“Why did she leave?” Betsy whispered. “Is she running away from home? She doesn’t like it here?”

“Hey, listen to me. I need you to stay calm. Okay, Button?” Ink turned and grasped hold of her hands. “There’s an upside to this. At least it looks like Leon hasn’t found her. Yeah?”

“But he could,” she said, every bad scenario running through her head. “Or someone else could find her and hurt her. Ink, she’s just a little girl!”

And they’d so clearly failed her.

She’d hated it here so much that she’d run away. Betsy hadn’t seen any sign of it, but what other reason could there be for her running off in the middle of the night like this?

“Betsy, all we can focus on is what we know and getting her back, all right? Just keep breathing, baby.”

“I’m fine.” Other than feeling really guilty for wasting his time with her worries when he could be doing something else. “I really am. Go. Do what you need to do. Just keep me informed.”

“I’m going to call Brody again. And then I’m going to go out looking for her. I’ve got Matthieu and Butch on their way here. I need you to stay inside by the phone with the alarm on. Can you do that for me?”

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