Chasing Freedom

XXVIII

Myles paced. Back and forth. Front to back door. Kitchen to bedroom hall. For the last twenty minutes, it was all he'd done. Since this morning, she hadn't responded to any of his texts. The two times he'd called her, it had gone straight to voicemail.

At first—hours ago now—Myles hadn't been worried. Despite how often she liked to complain—although, he knew enough now to differentiate when it was half-hearted—he wasn't overbearing. Mira's life was her own. There was every chance she was busy or her phone had died. Given she'd taken the car out with her, he knew that even if she'd gotten lost on the pack lands, she'd be able to find her way back somewhere familiar with enough trial and error. Eventually, on her own time, she'd get back to him, one way or the other.

Eventually had quickly lapsed into the late afternoon. Then the setting of the sun and well into the night. And now, a snow storm so heavy, he could barely see out in the white fog.

He'd checked in with everyone possible, asking if they'd heard from Mira: Vara, his mother, his aunt. Vara not too long ago. The answer had been the same across the board.

Knowing that, worry became panic in an instant, his skin crawling with agitation each minute that went by and Mira wasn't back—

As his phone rang, Myles cut back to the kitchen. He picked up without bothering to check the caller.

When it was his father's voice that came through, not Mira's, he went back to pacing.

"Myles, you called?"

His father had been the only one to not answer the phone and he hadn't bothered leaving a voicemail. By the trickle of voices in the distance, his assumption that a meeting had been the why was correct.

"Has Mira been in contact with you?"

A long pause. No doubt his father was frowning, because the question was the last thing he'd expected. Mira, after all, went out of her way to avoid him unless Myles or his mother was there as a buffer. Still, on the slightest chance that in this instance, she had reached out, Myles had to know. He had to exhaust all his options.

"Why are you asking? Has something happened?"

"Yes. No." Myles scratched at his jaw, rolling his shoulders back. "I have a gut feeling."

No hesitation this time. "Talk to me, cub."

"Mira isn't back yet," said Myles. "I've reached out to everyone I can think of and they haven't seen her. Or heard from her. I'm worried she got stuck out in the storm somewhere. Unprepared."

"Did she take the car out?"

He found himself nodding. The he remembered that his his father couldn't see. "She did."

"If she's lost somewhere, she can turn on the heater—"

"Until the car battery dies," Myles cut in.

Another beat of silence.

"How long has she been gone?"

"Couple hours."

"Is there a chance she took herself up to the cabin?"

Myles had considered that. And then worried some more if it were the case. "In these conditions, she'd never make it up there, even if she'd remembered the way."

"Mira is smart," said his father. "If she'd gone up there, she would have driven up well before the storm. Reception is non-existent once she's made it."

The calmness in his father's tone was like a grate on Myles' nerves. He knew his father wasn't doubting him, instead fielding rational scenarios. Trouble was, Myles had already gone over those on repeat in his own head.