Free Flee the Night by Susan May Warren

he’d been riding on hope from the minute Dannette had presented the teddy bear to Sherlock at the LKP site and the sniffer had picked up the trail almost immediately. Through bramble and shrubbery and across felled trees, they’d zigzagged through the forest until the dog stopped at a trampled well between the thick roots of a hickory tree. He’d circled the area until Dannette caught up. Micah wasn’t more than two steps behind, but when he’d found only the matted outline of a little person’s presence, his heart took a dive to his gut.
    It had stayed there for the better part of the last hour. “It’s like she vanished.” He tore off his hood, letting the breeze soothe the sweat on his brow. “Andee, do you have a fix on our location yet?”
    Andee had struggled to keep them oriented as they slogged through the forest—no easy task in the darkness under direction of flashlight. At best, she had them in a five-hundred-yard radius of her guesstimation. The advent of the highway lent some indication of their position. At least it was marked on the topo map.
    “I think so,” she answered and knelt on the road.
    The ELS and GPS systems that logged the position of the base camp would reel the team back in. But Micah wanted to move faster. The body posture of the dog—perked ears, tail up—told Micah that Sherlock had been after someone—Emily or another human. Micah didn’t want to waste time finding the ranger or the local, exhausted SAR team and talking them into an official call-out.
    He toggled the radio. “SAR-1 to Base.”
    “Base, SAR-1. Go ahead.” Sarah’s voice over the radio sounded tight, as if she were dealing with her own frustrations and not well.
    “Our POS is negative. We need a CERT team. We’re 10-19 but need a pickup.”
    “10-4, SAR-1. What’s your 10–20?”
    Micah handed the radio to Andee, who rattled off their estimated position.
    “What’s your ETA?” Sarah asked.
    “Give us twenty minutes,” Andee responded.
    “And tell Micah that we have a 10–14.”
    Micah frowned at Andee. Sarah had someone on her tail? He motioned for the radio. “Come again, Base.”
    “Local ranger type. Wants to talk to you.”
    Micah remembered his conversation with Ranger Hank Billings that ended with, “I’ll take a look around, but I don’t want you tromping through the woods, ending up another casualty.” Obviously Ranger Billings hadn’t decided to head for the local pub after work. Maybe Micah had acquiesced too quickly for the man to be fooled.
    He made a face. “Copy that.” It was probably time to get the locals involved anyway.
    Dannette gathered in Sherlock and attached him to his lead while they waited for Conner and Sarah to pick them up. An overhead cluster of thunderheads, still jockeying for position, obscured the moon and released a miserable, fine drizzle. Micah couldn’t pry the image of Emily—dirty, scared, and nearly hypothermic—from his mind. He stomped along the ditch, wanting to hit something hard.
    Micah didn’t know what made it worse—that Lacey had had a daughter all these years and he hadn’t known it or that he had stood at the foot of her bed and called her a liar.
    What part, exactly, of the last seven years was fiction … or fact?
    Conner pulled up first, followed by Sarah in Dannette’s truck. Dannette loaded Sherlock into the dog carrier in the back—a long box filled with straw, food, and water—while Sarah trudged up to Micah, murder in her expression.
    The woman was from New York City, a paramedic who didn’t rattle easily. Micah had seen her stare down a frantic gang of townspeople bent on running into the woods after a missing teenager—and becoming victims themselves—without flinching. Someone had shaken Sarah off her moorings.
    “Get this guy off my back,” Sarah growled as she met him.
    Micah raised his eyebrows and looked past her. “Hank Billings?”
    “Yeah. Says the park closes at dusk. Says we’re breaking the