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That was because of everything that had happened with Lauren, which she hadn’t had time to tell him and didn’t know where she should start. At least, now, with a work crisis to manage, things between them felt more cooperative and less strained.
"I can't believe this, May," he said. "It makes me wonder if we did the right thing with the missing person report. Should we have gone big with it, even though Chloe’s mother didn’t want to?"
"I feel the same. I’m also second guessing myself," May admitted. "But she had taken time out before, and her mother said it was so important not to jeopardize her career. She was very conflicted herself. If she’d asked us to publicize it immediately, I would have felt more comfortable – but she was trying to do the right thing for her daughter."
"I guess so," Owen said. "What are we doing now? The search party is making a start from the trail head and working this way. But I came to see if you needed me here."
"Let's work forward, "May decided. “They will reach this place, so let's search ahead. We need to look for anything we can find. Footprints, torn clothing, trace evidence."
And signs of a struggle or fight, she knew.
"Shoes?" Owen suggested.
"Yes, shoes. Maybe she was holding her shoes as she ran and dropped them," May agreed, glad that her deputy was thinking through every angle. "And we also need to look out for any signs that the man chasing her caught up."
Owen nodded soberly, and May could see that he was thinking the same way she was. If he had caught up, there might be other signs. Signs they didn't want to find but would need to look out for.
They headed through the forest, looking carefully, with May checking back behind her to make sure they were on the approximate route that the footsteps led.
As she walked, she realized that the silence between them did feel slightly uneasy. It was rather strained. As if there were things on Owen's mind that he wanted to talk about but wasn't saying. He took a breath as if he was about to broach the subject, but before May realized his intention, she’d turned away to examine a gnarled tree. By the time she did realize, and turned back, he was looking away.
May shook her head in frustration. She’d been so preoccupied in the last few weeks with the hunt for Lauren. And it was such a painful topic to her, so private, that she hadn't shared enough. She knew she'd let Owen down in that regard. She should have been more open with him and explained exactly what was going on. What she was doing and why.
But she kept on thinking that she should wait, that she should only tell him when there was more to be said, instead of a frustrating lack of evidence and facts. And she didn't want to drag Owen with her on her early morning and late evening escapades which were quite frankly exhausting in addition to her workload. She felt she was thinly stretched at this moment.
Even so, May knew it was a strange turn of events that after hours recently, she'd been communicating more with Kerry, who she'd always had a conflicted relationship with, than she had with her own boyfriend. It was wrong, and she needed to fix it. Especially since Owen, who had a relentless work ethic, didn't talk about personal matters during work hours. And nor did she. So, the important conversations they had needed to have just hadn't happened.
Now, she worried that he had things he needed to tell her too. Relationships were not easy. They needed lots of work, lots of communication. And she’d been bad about it recently. He couldbe wanting to tell her something that was weighing on his mind. Perhaps he thought this wasn’t working, she wondered with a chill.
But now was not the time to discuss things, not while they were trudging through the woods, looking for any sign, any hint, of where Chloe might have run to or of a struggle.
Behind her, in the distance, she heard the whistles and shouts of the search party, and May felt hopeful that they might find where she'd been kept. Perhaps she'd been imprisoned in a cabin somewhere. Every possible building along the way would be searched, May knew that. But the problem was that the woods were so huge. There were so many vast spaces where she could have been held, and no guarantee at all that a few people, moving through these thick, seemingly endless trees, would find where she'd been kept.
"I wonder how far she ran," Owen said, and May nodded.
"Yes. I wish we knew. She might even have escaped from a car and run into the woods."
"Or from the edges. There are quite a few houses and cabins on the borders," Owen agreed.
Searching every one of those residences would be possible, but it would take time. May guessed that to fully comb the woods would take weeks. It might not even be possible because it would require massive manpower. And she didn't want to think of this search stretching out for weeks. That would be the worst case in every way.
It was starting to rain. The first patters of raindrops were hitting the leaves, and soon, May knew, it would be streaming down.
But then, suddenly, Owen pointed to a tree to his left. With a note of excitement in his voice, he said, "Look. Over there. There's something there, May! Those hanks of hair attached to the tree branch. Could that be a sign or a warning of some kind?"
CHAPTER FOUR
May rushed over to see what Owen was pointing at, and as she did so, her heart sped up.
Her deputy's eye must have been drawn by the unusual shape of this tree. It was hunched over like a crooked old man, its dark branches twisted.
But it was what was on the tree that the sharp-eyed Owen had picked up.
"Look at that! Two hanks of different colored hair," May said.
Her heart was hammering now as she moved forward. Two hanks of long hair, one blond, one dark, had been tied to the branch of the tree. She narrowed her eyes against the worsening rain, looking for any other sign or any trace of footsteps nearby. But she could see nothing. Only those two locks of hair.
But the platinum blond lock looked a lot like the color of Chloe's hair.
