Safe Haven

Gone Missing

"That's not fair!" Sage hissed, unable to believe what he'd just said. "You let him hurt me like that and then keep taking his side just because you're related? That's just handing me the short end of the stick every time!"

"Let me ask you this. Did you even give him a chance to fight for you back then?" Without waiting for an answer, Will continued, "No. You didn't. You told him to end it and leave and every time he came back to see you, you managed to find a reason to get out of town. He told me ahead of time that he was coming, and I didn't bother telling you because if I did, you would've high-tailed it out of here. But in retrospect, maybe I should've told you so you would leave. At least then I wouldn't have to watch you set him up to rip his heart out."

"Then close your eyes! I'd hate to force you to watch!" Her voice dripped with sarcasm as she yanked on her shoes, the hot chocolate long forgotten. Sage stormed out the backdoor, ignoring Will as he called after her. Knowing they'd be able to track her more easily if she took a horse, she simply opted to run into the woods with no clue as to where she was headed.

She muttered incoherent words to herself while the cold nipped at her. She really was an idiot. Nobody walks out into snow in a pair of boots and pajamas. But if Will hadn't made her so angry, then she wouldn't have walked out without dressing with more layers.

Sage kicked a pile of snow out of her way, the impact of it not making her feel any better. The cold had gotten so far to her that it started hurting to walk. She was feeling breezes in places she shouldn't.

"Why is it I'm the victim and everyone takes his side?" Sage shrieked, kicking up a foot of snow. Sage felt as though she needed to beat the snot out of something. Nobody ever understood her. At least they did until Bo came around. "It used to be I was the way I was and everybody excepted that! And then he comes along and suddenly I'm always in the wrong and he's the only one that's important!"

Sage swung her fist around, scraping her knuckles across a nearby tree trunk and tearing some of her skin. She hoped to get lost somewhere in the woods and never be found. She hoped to just disappear and be free from putting up with the rest of the human race.

She hoped to just lay down and die.

The angry tears singed her face as they slid down her cheeks, blazing a hole in the snow below. Farther and farther Sage walked into the woods, and farther and farther the sun crept into the sky. The one time she wanted to die was the one time her stalker hadn't shown.

The tears blurred her vision so she didn't see the tree root snaking up out of the ground that gripped her ankle and tossed her down the ragged hill and into the pile of rocks below. She felt the rocks cut her knees, slice into her hands, and bruise her face. Whimpers of desperation escaped her lips as she struggled to her feet and stumbled on through the woods.

"Fine. Don't want to let me off easy?" Sage muttered, coming to a stop in the center of a meadow blanketed in snow. "I'll do it myself." With that, Sage threw caution to the wind, lied down in the snow, and stared at the sky, waiting to freeze to death.

* * *

"Sage? Sage?" each one of them called out, hands cupped around their mouths to expand the sound of their desperate cries. The snow had started picking up again and none of them had seen her since Will had watched her storm out of the house. They'd gotten the police involved in finding her and even the neighbors but no one had had any luck.

"Where could she have gone?" Liz questioned, tugging her cap down to cover her ears. "This isn't a very big town, and she obviously left on foot."

"You'd think we'd at least find her tracks since she did trudge through the snow," Cooper stated, watching as Bo raked a distressed hand through his hair. "Bo, she couldn't have gone far. She's around here somewhere."