“Willow, will you ask Rose if she wants to grab lunch now or after the ceremony?” Charity asked, walking over with her boyfriend.

I noted with a smile that she’d finally brought him out in public and that the Salida resident was wearing a unicorn pin.

“What? You ask her,” I teased. “Hi, I’m Willow,” I introduced myself.

“Travis.” He smiled as he shook my hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Same here.”

“Yes, yes, now you know each other. Willow, seriously, grab Rose for me.” She looked over at the train and waved to Thea and Julie.

I blinked in confusion. “Rose is with you.”

Charity moved her sunglasses to the top of her head. “No. She was with me. She said you needed her for some kind of ore hunt with the kids and ran off to find you.”

Dread filled every cell in my body, and the noise of the crowd faded in my head, only to be replaced by a roaring in my ears. “When?”

“It must have been an hour ago.” Her eyes flew impossibly wide. “Willow, where is Rose?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, my head swiveling left to right, searching for her familiar braid.

“Well, when is the ore hunt? Maybe she’s setting up for it?” Travis asked.

“There’s no ore hunt.” I looked Charity square in the eye. “I never asked her to help me with it because it doesn’t exist.”

“Oh God.” She pushed past me and ran for the reconstructed gatehouse that served as a ticket booth and launchpad for the train.

“She never lies,” I told Travis. “Something is wrong.”

“Excuse me,” Charity said into the microphone, and her voice blared across the crowd through the speakers Cam and his team had rigged for the event. “Has anyone seen Rose Maylard?”

The crowd murmured, but no one threw up a hand or answered.

“Rose?” Charity shouted into the microphone, the panic in her voice grating on my heart like nails on a chalkboard.

I scanned the crowd again, then looked at the trains…and past the trains.

“Oh no.” My heart sank. “Tell Charity to wait here,” I ordered Travis. Then I ran into the crowd, pushing my way through the thickest parts until I reached the construction trailers that had been moved to the far end of the cleared space to accommodate the crowd.

I took the stairs two at a time and flung the door open. Everything looked the same at first glance. But there, above Cam’s desk. No. There sat Cam’s hard hat and my hard hat, but Rose’s was missing.

I barely felt the ground under my feet as I sprinted from the trailer, jumping the stairs and racing through the crowd, which was now thickest at the steps that led up to the gatehouse.

“Move,” I ordered as someone blocked my path.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but only—”