Page 3 of Due North
Dawn joined me at the table and set her mug down. “It’s Wisconsin, not to mention you’re from North Dakota. Yet, you still complain every time the temp drops below fifty.”
“I like to be consistent.” I took another bite of the roll, but my appetite was lacking today. What should have been delicious just felt sad.
“We have a problem on our hands, Tex.”
I guess she was done with small talk. My appetite disappeared completely, and I dropped the roll back to the plate. “Cece?”
“I still can’t locate her. Have you heard anything?”
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head slightly. “Not since Tuesday. She asked Amity to take over the cooking and took off like the devil’s hounds were on her heels. All my texts and calls go unanswered. She’s been gone almost a week. I’m beside myself.”
“Same.” She leaned back in her chair and tapped the table absently. “Neither Heaven nor Amity have heard from her either.”
“Something feels off. Cece has never been irresponsible or uncaring. Something happened. I could see it in her eyes. I can feel it here.” I tried to explain by shaking my fist at my belly. “I don’t like it.”
“I agree. When Cece didn’t show up or call after twenty-four hours, I knew something was wrong. Here we are almost a week later and still nothing. We need to find her. I have Sheriff Nash on the lookout for her Jeep. He’s going to alert me if anyone sees it in town.”
“That’s a good idea, but I don’t think we’re going to get that lucky.” I cocked my head to the side. “Did she put anything on her application for family contacts?”
“About as much as you did,” she answered pointedly.
I sighed and avoided eye contact. I didn’t put any family on my application because I didn’t have any. I wasn’t going to tell her that, though. “That’s a lot of judgment out of someone in the same sinking boat I’m in.”
“It wasn’t meant to be a dig at you, Tex. I was saying I don’t have any information about her family.”
It was funny how that worked at Heavenly Lane. It seemed to be a place where the orphans gathered. Some of us were orphans by choice and some of us by chance, but we all found a family here on this cold, beautiful plain together.
I rubbed the back of my neck and sighed again. “I don’t like this. Something could have happened to Cece. What if she’s hurt somewhere?”
Dawn reached her hand out and patted mine. “I’ve called the hospitals, but they don’t have anyone fitting her description. Sheriff Nash has checked her plates in the system and with his colleagues around the area. There haven’t been any hits on vehicle or person. Wherever she is, I think she’s safe, at least for now.”
I nodded once and swallowed over the lump in my throat. Cecelia Douglas, Cece as she was known here, was the sweetest thing this side of Lake Superior. She was a little spitfire at just a hair over five feet tall, wore her long red hair in wavy curls around her face and down her back, and sported a pair of hips on her that caught my eye every time she walked by. I spend a lot of time trying to hide my desire for her. Considering we worked together every day, I could never let on how I felt about her.
She was a few years younger than me at twenty-four, but otherwise, she was more intelligent, more competent, and had far more worldly experience than I did. That was the only thing that brought me the slightest amount of comfort. Wherever she was, she could take care of herself.
“Safe might be a relative term. She might be alive, but if she can’t contact us, I don’t think we can quantify her as safe. We know she doesn’t have her apartment in town anymore, so where else could she be? Maybe an internet search for family members is in order, or do you think Nash can trace her phone?”
“I asked him about that with the same hope. He said not until we file an official missing person report.”
“Then we do that,” I answered immediately.
Dawn chewed on her lip. “Before we do that, we should send her one more text. If we don’t hear from her, we'll be clear that we will file a missing person report by noon. Even if she just replies with, I’m fine. Then we know.”
“Okay, but we’ll both text her. If she doesn’t answer one or the other, we make the call to Sheriff Nash.”
Her head bobbed once. “Agreed.”
We both took out our phones and started typing. The entire time my mind’s eye was focused on her bright, crisp blue ones that reminded me of the sky on a warm Wisconsin day. Cece was a powerhouse in every sense of the word, her size the exception, which made her disappearance out of character. That was the reason my chest vibrated with fear. It had been that way since she jumped in her Jeep with her hair flying wild around her head and her tires tossing gravel behind them as she sped away.
I slid my phone back in my pocket and stood, my appetite for breakfast long gone. “We don’t have any guests coming in for a few weeks now, correct?”
“Not at the men’s bunkhouse,” Dawn said, standing. “I have a couple of short retreats for women, but they won’t impact what you’ll be doing. We need to insulate the bunkhouse better before winter hits. As we learned last year, those windows aren’t cut out for the brutal cold. You also have to work on the riding ring and get it ready for winter.”
“Good enough,” I said with a nod. “The summer and early fall were booked solid, and we never got a breather. I have some work to do in the barn to get it ready for the rest of the winter, too. That’s where I’ll be. Let me know if she texts you?” I stepped back into my boots and zipped up my coat.
“I will. You do the same,” Dawn said, handing me a container filled with warm cinnamon rolls. “For later.”
I accepted them and kissed her cheek, giving her a wink before I headed back to my cottage. Each footfall of my boots was heavy with dread. Dread that my text would go unanswered, which would change our lives forever.
