Kyler waited at Ruby’s until eight-thirty. Dahlia didn’t show up. He felt like she’d ripped his lungs out and hung them up to dry on a clothesline. He couldn’t get a proper breath, and he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling until utter exhaustion forced his eyes closed and his body to rest.

She didn’t come to the family dinner on Wednesday either. Thankfully, he hadn’t told anyone she would be there, so he didn’t have to endure endless questions about why she hadn’t made it.

They ran through his mind though. She texted him several times throughout the day, and he responded. Nothing too serious, he realized. She was letting him know she was safe, still working on the case, and that she hoped it would be wrapped up soon.

Kyler pushed the potato salad around his plate, wondering if it even mattered if this case ended soon. As she’d said, there’d always be another one.

“What’s wrong with you?” Berlin, the youngest Fuller child, asked as she sat down next to him. “You usually inhale the potato salad and have seconds before we’ve all had some.”

“Nothing,” he muttered, forking a bite of the salad into his mouth. It tasted too acidic today, and he could barely swallow it.

Milt sat down directly across from him, putting his son’s plate beside him. The long picnic table had been built to accommodate the whole family, and Kyler usually loved sitting out in the yard, the tall trees above them whispering in the breeze as they ate.

“Oh, boy,” Milt said after one glance at Kyler. “Things over with Dahlia already?”

Kyler cut a look at Milt and then Berlin. “Dahlia?” she asked. She hadn’t been at the last family dinner, where the rest of his sisters had grilled him mercilessly.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know?” Milt took a bite of his hot dog.

Kyler shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Milt wiped the ketchup from his mouth. “How do you not know if you’re dating someone or not?”

“I just don’t.”

“What did she say?”

“She said we shouldn’t see each other anymore, but then she calls me and texts me and…I don’t know what we are.” She wouldn’t go out with him, hadn’t met him here tonight though he’d texted the address and menu and what time they ate hours ago. She hadn’t responded to that message at all.

Wren sat down on his other side, her baby balanced carefully on her hip. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Kyler said, shooting Milt and then Berlin a look.

Like that would stop them. “Dahlia somebody broke up with Kyler,” Berlin said.

Kyler growled, but Wren paused and looked at him. “Oh, I’m sorry. I know you really liked her.”

“Did he?” Milt asked as if Kyler wasn’t right there, in the middle of all these siblings. “How do you know that?”

“The way he talked about her last week.” Wren fed a potato chunk to Etta. “It was obvious with what he said and how he glowed.”

“I didn’t glow,” he grumbled.

“Hmm,” Milt said. “Maybe he’s in love with her.”

“I’m not in love with her.”

“Seemed like he could probably get there,” Wren said, like Kyler hadn’t even spoken. “They went to church together on Sunday too. Kept her way down on the end though, like he didn’t want to share her with us.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at Kyler. “So maybe he is in love with her.”

“It’s been two weeks,” Kyler practically yelled. “I’m not in love with her.”

“There is such a thing as love at first sight,” Wren said to Milt. “Don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Milt said, sliding his eyes past Kyler in the most annoying way. “And Kyler’s been out with at least a dozen women in the past six months. I think he knows who he likes and who he doesn’t.”

“I hate you guys,” Kyler said, rising to his feet. Berlin and Wren sat so close, he couldn’t get out from under the picnic table. “I’m not in love with her.” He’d said it three times now, and he doubted himself a little more each time. “I’m going to the cabin.”

“No, you can’t,” Wren said, putting her hand on his forearm. “You’ve got two big jobs tomorrow, and you’re scheduled all weekend too. The Oscars’ wedding, remember?”

He glared down at her. “Can I go next weekend then?”

“I’ll check and let you know. And I won’t schedule anything new if you’re free.”

“Sit down,” Milt said, scooping his potato salad onto Kyler’s plate. “We’ll stop teasing you.”

Kyler sat, only because moping around his house alone was worse than enduring conversations with his family. He was so tired of being alone. Working alone. Eating breakfast and lunch and dinner alone.

Is it too much to ask for a companion? he asked the Lord. You gave Adam Eve. Why can’t I have someone?

He knew he didn’t just want someone.

Dahlia Reid, he thought, closing his eyes and laying his head in his folded arms. I want Dahlia Reid, Lord. Is that too much to ask?

The wind in the trees picked up, and Kyler wasn’t sure if that was his answer or not. If it was, he didn’t know what God was trying to tell him.

When his sisters left, and only Milt remained at the table, Kyler asked, “How do you know when you’re in love?” He looked up at his oldest brother, his best friend since Brennan had left for California. “I mean, I thought I was in love with Katie, and she left me with a note on the front door. Maybe I’m just really bad at this.”

Milt’s eyes softened. “You just know, Kyler. And you’re not bad at this.”

“I’m thirty-five-years-old.”

“So what? That’s not that old or anything.”

“I’m tired of being alone.”

“I know you are, bud. I know you are.” Milt looked genuinely sympathetic. “Get up to the cabin, and you’ll know what to do.”

The days until Kyler could get to the cabin seemed impossibly long and also incredibly short. He made sure the Oscars had a beautiful yard for the wedding, and he got all the soccer fields done in time for the weekend games.

Dahlia’s calls dwindled to zero, and her text frequency fell off too. Kyler wasn’t sure if he should push her or let her come to him. What he was sure of was that he couldn’t survive another weekend in the same town as her and not be with her. So, on Friday afternoon, he loaded up BB and his bike in the back of his truck and headed to the cabin.

As he crested the hill and the cabin came into view, warring emotions hit him. A sense of relief that he’d arrived at his sanctuary came first, followed by a sharp sensation that something wasn’t right at the cabin.

He stopped the truck before the tires crunched over the gravel parking area out front. The cabin looked the same. Square structure, with a big front porch that extended from corner to corner. The white door sat closed, with the two windows flanking the door showing nothing but the curtains.

Maybe it was because the crime scene team had been here for days after Kyler left. Maybe they’d changed the aura of the place, moved little things that caught Kyler’s eye, like the hose coming off the front of the porch. That hadn’t been there before.

He scanned the small yard, which only had a couple of trees, and saw a shoelace tied to a low branch on the tree closest to the forest on the west side. Where had that come from? Who had put it there?

An image of Jose Garces flashed through his mind, but Kyler dismissed it. That man was long gone, as Gray, Dahlia, and every law enforcement agency in this county had been looking for him for months.

BB yipped, and Kyler startled, his heart suddenly racing with adrenaline. The little dog could’ve been wondering why Kyler was just sitting in the truck. But he’d put his front paws up on the dashboard of the truck, his gaze trained on the cabin, and barked again.

“What is it?” Kyler asked, straining to see what the corgi could.

BB barked again and again, and Kyler pulled out his phone just as two people came around the west corner of the cabin. Disbelief tore through him that other people were at his property. Both women, they approached the truck at a steady clip.

He glanced down at his phone as BB went nuts, barking and jumping from the seat to the dashboard and back again and again.

Kyler opened Dahlia’s text thread when someone knocked on the driver’s side window. Five sharp bangs and Kyler turned to stare straight into the glittering, dangerous eyes of Jose Garces.

The coyote.