Page 110 of Savage Surrender

Tristan is already running.

I snatch my phone from the table and race down the deck steps behind him. My feet hit sand, then boards. Tristan throws one look over his shoulder without slowing.

“Can you tell where she is?”

“No.” The wind is making it hard to track her.

I drag in another breath while we run. Salt. Tristan. No Bianca.

My phone vibrates in my hand, and I see missed calls from Owen.

There’s a message from Bianca.

Havershams in the village.

“Go to the village,” I shout to Tristan. “The Havershams found her.”

Tristan changes direction and runs ahead of me. I try Bianca’s number. No answer.

Missed calls are piling up from Owen on the screen before the first roofs appear through the trees. I call him back.

I can tell immediately that something is off. He’s agitated and loud. When he mentions her and that they have the location, my heart drops and I push myself to run even faster. Did our fathers set Bianca up?

Tristan has reached the brick path ahead of me. People move slowly around him with coffee cups and shopping bags, annoyed when he cuts between them until they see his face and get out of his way. He stops outside the souvenir shop, head turning as he pulls the air into his lungs.

The woman behind the register is standing in the open back door.

“If you’re looking for a girl with long blonde hair, she ran that way. There were some men - acted like they knew her.”

Tristan is already through the door.

“Weller.”

Tristan stands where the alley meets the trees, staring down the boardwalk. His nostrils flare once. We run.

“Bianca!” Tristan’s voice tears through the trees.

He shouts Bianca’s name again. Then I do.

She doesn’t answer.

The boardwalk bends around a live oak. Tristan clears it first, then stops so abruptly I nearly run into his back. A scuffed patch cuts through the sand beside the boards. Palmetto fronds have been bent inward, and blood marks the base of one in a thin wet line.

This blood smells like her.

I go over the side. Sand gives beneath my shoes. There’s a torn strip of dark fabric hanging from a broken branch, and several strands of Bianca’s hair stuck in leaves.

Tristan turns toward the ocean.

“She’s bleeding.”

“She’s going into heat.”

Her scent reaches me a second later, but fear has turned it sharp.

The trail in front of me drops through thick brush, but every broken frond gives me a direction. The surf is louder to our right, and Bianca’s scent is stronger there, but the dunes hide the beach. We have no idea where she broke through.

Tristan looks at the blood, then toward the water. His whole body pitches that way before his feet move.