Small Town Vanishing
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Nicole Helm
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Chapter One
Kate Phillips was no stranger to being alone. When your father disappeared the same day as your sixteen-year-old friend, an entire town who had once treated you like a cute eccentric could decide you were pariah by association.
Her mother hadn’t helped. Marjorie Phillips had blamed everyone in the town of Wilde, Wyoming, for the disappearance of her husband—in dramatic, screaming theatrics for a decade now.
Which, yet again, made Kate guilty by association. Or at least, someone to avoid.
Kate could have withstood that, she was certain, if she hadn’t lost her best friends in the process. The problem was that Kate’s only friends growing up had been the Hart triplets. Different though they were, the four of them had been an inseparable group. Constantly in each other’s pockets.
Then Amberleigh had disappeared the same day as Dad, and Hazeleigh and Zara had treated her differently ever since. Hazeleigh had slowly come around. Hard not to when both Kate and Hazeleigh worked at the Fort Dry Historic Site, Wilde’s historical landmark. Hazeleigh doing research for the supervisor at the fort, Mr. Field, and Kate as a living history interpreter and tour guide.
But Zara had not come around. Pointedly so.
So, Kate’s life had come down to two things: her angry mother and her job. At least Kate loved the job. She knew Wildeans tended to pity her when they weren’t suspicious of her, but this job was the one thing that felt...normal in a life that had changed a decade ago.
Normal to be alone, doing some work dressing mannequins, the day after Christmas. In a drafty old historical building that likely wouldn’t have visitors until the summer months.
Still, she liked to change out the displays. Focus on the past, rather than her present.
Mr. Field was in his office, so she wasn’t totally alone. He might shut himself up in there and not say two words to her, but that was still more companionship than she had in her small attic room with Mom. Mostly, despite living in the same sprawling house, their paths rarely crossed. Mom’s choice. Insistence, really.
It was for the best. Kate had been happier since they’d nonverbally agreed to keep their distance—as long as Kate did all the errands and everything that was expected of her. But happier didn’t negate the loneliness. She’d get some kind of animal if she weren’t allergic, but everything hypoallergenic gave her the creeps.
Kate sighed. She could do lonely. She was good at lonely. But lonely at Christmas—a holiday Mom hadn’t celebrated in ten years—was a different kind, a deeper kind of lonesome, and she couldn’t wait for the calendar to switch over to the new year. Put the ten-year anniversary behind her.
She heard the door squeak open and finished tying the apron on the mannequin, telling herself not to run to see who the visitor was like a desperately sad inmate.
“Did you hear?” came Hazeleigh’s voice, a few seconds before she appeared—all pastel layers and wild curly brown hair. “They found Eli Mayfield.”
“Really?” The missing boy had disappeared from Wilde some time the night of Christmas Eve, at least that’s what Kate had read in the paper. According to the sporadically updated town Facebook page, the police had begun to get desperate last night due to the frigid temperatures and the boy’s young age, and Kate had been reminded of all the awful ways a disappearance could strangle just about everyone in town.
“Safe, and sound, and not a moment too soon,” Hazeleigh continued, unwinding a fluffy pink scarf she no doubt had knitted herself. “The doctors are saying he could have been dead from exposure if he’d been out there another few hours.”
“Thank goodness.” Kate meant it, though she wasn’t sure she sounded as relieved as she should have. A seven-year-old didn’t deserve to just disappear, or worse. But Kate couldn’t help but think of her own father. Dead? Alive? Gone on purpose? Gone against his will?
It had been ten years, and she knew she should move on. Give up. Wasn’t that what her mother always told her? But Kate never could bring herself to.
And finding out last week that it was very possible Amberleigh’s same-day disappearance had very little to do with her father brought up new questions.
“How...how was he found?” Kate asked, trying to find the right way to handle this. She was relieved the young boy had been found. Not jealous someone had been found when her father hadn’t.
“It was Jake’s brother Brody who found him,” Hazeleigh said. The six Thompson brothers had bought the Hart Ranch and had been working it for the past almost two months. Kate didn’t know all of them by name, but she knew Jake as he’d been instrumental in helping get Hazeleigh cleared of the murder charge that had been leveled against her.
December had been a busy month in Wilde.
“Jake was telling Zara that if something is lost, Brody’s always the one to find it. I’m not sure how Brody managed, but apparently he was out all last night and found the boy. I’m so glad he did. Apparently poor Eli just got turned around trying to prove to his friend he could climb Mount Hopkins higher than anyone.”
Kate nodded. “I suppose it’s a relief to everyone he just wandered off.” Wasn’t stolen. Wasn’t like when Art Phillips went off with a teenager.
“I’m going to go tell Mr. Field.”
Kate nodded as Hazeleigh wafted over to Mr. Field’s office. Kate looked at the mannequin she’d been dressing, but for once she wasn’t thinking about the frontier. She was thinking about her own past.
Where something had been lost.
Jake was telling Zara that if something is lost, Brody’s always the one to find it.
Well, maybe the mysterious Brody Thompson was someone she should get to know.
“IT HAD TO be done.” Brody looked at Cal, scowling in the driver’s seat. After spending a few hours with the police and a very grateful Mayfield family, Brody wanted quiet, something hot to eat and maybe a beer. But as many questions as the police might have asked him, he knew it was only a precursor to this.
Getting chewed out by his brother. “We’re talking about a missing kid here.”
“I know what we’re talking about,” Cal returned, his grip on the truck’s steering wheel tight enough to make his knuckles white. “I just don’t know how you all seem to expect me to be able to keep us here if you and Jake are constantly getting your name in the papers.”
Because somehow Wilde, Wyoming, still depended on the local paper for its news. It was like stepping back in time, this new life Brody found himself in.
He was surprised to find he didn’t hate it, and much like their brother Jake, Brody wanted to stay.
“You were part of the search, Cal,” Brody reminded the man who’d once been his commanding officer, but these days had to pretend to be nothing more than his ranching brother.
Cal didn’t do blending in as well as he thought he did. He also wasn’t as hard as he fancied himself. Though he’d tried to keep it on the down low, Brody knew that Cal had stood up to the boss when Jake had found himself in some trouble.
Brody wasn’t comfortable thinking about how much trouble Jake had gotten himself in, or how jumping in front of a bullet meant for Cal had almost cost him his life. Jake was alive, and the boss was off their backs.
Perhaps not now that Brody had gotten a little local notoriety—even if Wilde local meant about fifty people.
The issue was that Brody would have his name in the paper so closely after Jake’s. No time for the town to get bored of the Thompson brothers. Which meant attention and perhaps poking into their pasts. Which was a no go.
Because the men of Team Breaker—who didn’t exist anymore—were supposed to move to Wilde and disappear. Not make a name for themselves.
But it was a kid. “The boss is going to have to accept that anywhere we live, we’re part of the community. It’s ecosystems, plain and simple.”
Cal grumbled some intelligible words but didn’t otherwise mount an argument.
Who could argue against ecosystems?
Cal turned off on the gravel road that would take them to the ranch. Brody had been born and bred in the Chicago suburbs. He might have had more awareness of the existence of agriculture than his friends from New York City, but that didn’t mean squat in the face of the reality of a ranch.
But he’d learned. He’d tackled the task of learning how to be a rancher like he’d taken to the task of becoming an army ranger. Ordinary didn’t suffice for Brody Calhoun—Thompson these days. No, his parents had been so below ordinary and capable that Brody did everything in his power to stay as far above the pack as he could.
He was always the first to volunteer for whatever task their ranch hand, Zara Hart, had to teach them. It was winter, so the learning curve wasn’t too steep. Come spring, they better know what they were doing.
Come hell or high water, Brody would know what he was doing. And exceptionally well.
They drove under the archway that still read Hart Ranch, though the Harts didn’t own it anymore. Zara Hart had stayed on as ranch hand, and she and her sister Hazeleigh still lived in a cabin on ranch property, but the ranch was now the property of Team Breaker.
Known in Wilde as the Thompson brothers.
Cal drove the winding lane toward the house. Brody appreciated the Wyoming views. They were pretty, as grand and picturesque as everything he’d been told about the Wild West as a kid, but it was the house that did something to him.
Brody had grown up in apartments, spent months on the street when his dad had gone through a “rough patch” and Mom had disappeared. The big rambling house situated in the rolling hills, bracketed by far off mountains was...beyond a dream. Brody’s dreams had been excellence in the military.
This was something else, and he still wasn’t comfortable with the way that something else swelled inside him like a storm. A wild howling thing that would die if it ever got taken away.
Dramatic.
“Who the hell is that?” Cal grumbled as he pulled up to the house. A woman paced the big wraparound porch, something clasped in her hands.
Brody frowned. Something about her was familiar but he couldn’t put his finger on it, so he and Cal got out of the truck at the same time and surveyed the woman from afar.
She stopped pacing, staring right back at them, but she neither approached nor offered a greeting until they walked up to the porch.
She stood on the top stair like she belonged there and was greeting strangers to her house. But when they both came to stop at the bottom of the stairs, she attempted a smile. It frayed around the edges.
“Hi.”
Brody and Cal exchanged glances.
“I’m... K-kate. Kate Phillips? I work with Hazeleigh. Uh, the last time we met I was dressed up like a pioneer.”
Brody knew laughing wasn’t the polite thing to do, but it was a hard-won thing. She had been dressed like a pioneer at that crazy little fort where Hazeleigh worked. When Jake had begged him to go along with Zara and Hazeleigh to some living history Christmas thing, Brody had done it simply because Jake had been shot, and that and Christmas had softened Brody enough to agree.
This woman had been there, dressed up in pioneer clothes, lecturing the small group on Christmas in Wilde, Wyoming, something like centuries ago. He remembered finding himself a little interested against his will. Brody couldn’t say he hated the way she’d been dressed either. There was something...endlessly interesting about all those layers and what they might be hiding underneath.
But Kate Phillips looked just as prim and pretty in jeans and a big puffer jacket standing on his porch.
Funny how it could feel like his porch.
“I brought cookies,” she blurted out, shoving a plastic bag at him.
“For Jake?” Cal asked, clearly confused.
“Not exactly.” She sucked in a deep breath, and she didn’t look at Cal. She stared right at him, brown eyes deep and a little heartbreakingly desperate. “I have someone I need help finding.”
Brody didn’t wince, he’d been in the military too long to outwardly react. Besides, Cal reacted enough for the both of them.
“I’m sorry, that won’t be possible.”
Kate’s entire expression fell, like a building taken out by an inside explosion. But she managed to stop the crumple right before it destroyed everything. She straightened her shoulders and looked at Cal coolly. “I wasn’t asking you.”
Cal was clearly taken aback by how quickly she’d changed from nervous stutter to cold put-down. It made Brody smile.
“Why don’t you go on inside, Cal? I’ll handle this.”
“Yeah, I just bet you will.” He glared at Kate. “Look, miss, you might be friends with Hazeleigh, but this isn’t some—”
“Cal, it’s only neighborly to hear her out. You go on inside. Think ecosystems.”
Cal turned his glare on him, shook his head, but didn’t say another word before stalking inside, the door slamming behind him.
Kate frowned after him. “He’s charming.”
Brody didn’t say what he wanted—that she should see him supervising a deadly mission in the Middle East—because here he wasn’t Brody Calhoun, army ranger, and Cal wasn’t Cal Young, lead on a secret mission to take down a terrorist target.
They were just ranchers. From here on out.
So he smiled at Kate and went for sarcasm instead. “Devastatingly so.” Brody studied the cookies in the bag she’d shoved at him. He’d been up all night looking for the Mayfield boy and he’d barely eaten. He pulled one from the bag. “Is someone missing?” Brody asked.
“In a manner of speaking. Hazeleigh said Zara said Jake said—”
“Maybe you shouldn’t take everything you hear fourth-hand so seriously.”
“Technically it was only third-hand.”
He held up his fingers and put them down with every point. “Jake. Zara. Hazeleigh. You.”
She mimicked his position. “Jake told Zara.” She put down one finger. “Zara told Hazeleigh.” Another finger. “Hazeleigh to me. That’s three.”
Brody laughed. He knew humoring this woman wasn’t going to make his life any easier, but he couldn’t help it. Someone needed help—and it had been seared into his bones to help where he could.
He was well aware of all the places he couldn’t help.
He popped the cookie into his mouth. Good. No, not just good. Exceptional. “You can bake, Kate Phillips. Are these supposed to be a bribe?”
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “Did they work?”
“We’ll see. Why don’t you come inside, and we’ll talk it over where it’s warm?”
She pulled the coat she wore tighter around her. “I’m fine out here.”
“Cal won’t bite. Promise.”
“No, but Zara will.”
“Uh, well...” Brody didn’t know what to say to that. Zara might live in the cabin on the property, but ever since Jake had come home yesterday, Zara had been a constant presence in the house, repeatedly telling the likes of them that men were terrible at caring for the wounded.
No one had dared argue with her.
It was a strange phenomenon Brody hadn’t fully worked out, considering the six of them had stood up to a lot worse than a mouthy ranch hand.
But Jake was in love with Zara, whatever that meant, and Jake was hurt, and...
Bottom line was Brody had gotten himself into enough hot water. Time to slow things down. “I’d like to help, but...”
“But you won’t. Because of Zara.”
“Listen—”
“No, I get it. Believe me,” she said, pushing past him, “I get it.”
It was the glimmer of tears in her eyes that just about killed him. Brody could withstand a lot of things. But he was a sucker for tears, even ones that didn’t fall.
“You haven’t even told me who’s missing,” he called after her.
She stopped at the little sedan that seemed so out of place in this harsh Wyoming winter. “My father disappeared ten years ago,” she shot at him. “With Zara’s sister, at least that was the rumor. That...speculation has been my life for ten years. Now we know Amberleigh Hart is dead, and she wasn’t with my father. I want to find him, but if Queen Zara is in charge here, then—”
Brody heard the screen door squeak behind him, and he knew without looking Zara would be standing there. Just by the shocked, guilty, then back to furious expressions that stormed over Kate’s pretty face.
“What am I queen of?”
Kate stood there for a moment, somehow looking both furious and deeply wounded at the same time before she got into her car and slammed the door. She didn’t peel away, but she certainly drove off in a hurry.
“What was that about?” Brody asked, turning to face Zara.
Zara shrugged, her eyes on the retreating car. “Let me guess. She wants you to find her father.”
“Yeah.”
“You should.”
“Huh?”
Zara blew out a breath. “Look, I don’t know if I really believe her dad didn’t have anything to do with Amberleigh’s disappearance, but he didn’t kill Amberleigh.” Zara frowned at where Kate had disappeared. “Trying to find closure sucks, but Kate deserves some.”
“I don’t think I’m the one to give it to her.”
Zara turned her dark gaze on him. “You find things, Brody.” She smiled faintly. “That’s your expertise, isn’t it?”
He supposed it was, and the need to live up to it had him taking the address Zara gave him and following Kate home.
