The words fell out of her mouth and she shot her gaze back down at her feet. She had only spoken that out loud to a few people, and yet the pain of saying it still always hit her.

Warren’s voice was a bit softer when he spoke.

“Well, Mills.” He paused briefly as he picked his next words carefully. “First, you need to know that that was not your fault. Oftentimes we take blame irrationally, when really we were powerless in the situation.” He shot her a glance as though to double-check that she was okay and then looked back out onto the road. “If you blame yourself, you need to also learn to forgive yourself.” There was a brief silence. “And you need to be raw and honest with yourself,” he added.

Raw and honest. She let the words roll around in her head.

“You need to face that past if it’s still troubling you. You can’t just bury it. A wound that big needs more than a Band-Aid to heal or it’ll never close properly and then the pain will seep out of you in other ways…like that day,” Warren added, referring to her panic attack.

Tara nodded. “Thanks, Warren.”

“Of course,” he responded. “What’s the GPS say, by the way? How long we got?”

Tara reached for it on the dashboard and took a quick look. They had about five minutes and once she let him know, she turned again toward the window and untangled Warren’s words in her mind.

She had already faced her past. She had gone to therapy, she had come to terms with the fact that she was a child and that there was nothing she could do. But something else still sat like a splinter in her memory, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she had to face that too.

Chapter Sixteen

Tara and Warren pulled onto the side street and were immediately met with a swarm of news vans and reporters. Warren put the car in park.

As they stepped out of the car, Tara saw a female cop walk over. She was a tall woman with a perfectly poised posture that made her look even taller. Her black hair was tightly slicked back into a bun on her head. The reporters quickly caught on and were soon behind her.

“Agent Warren?” she asked once she was close enough.

Warren nodded. “Sheriff Brady?”

It was clear that he had already spoken to her by phone, and Warren had mentioned her briefly on the ride over. She was the sheriff of this territory in Vermont.

He was about to introduce Tara but the swarm of reporters gathered around them like vultures, and he lost his words.

“Sir, can we ask you a couple questions?” one reporter asked.

“Any idea on the whereabouts of the missing hikers?” another shouted out.

Sheriff Brady yelled over the chaos for the agents to follow her as she turned and quickly made her way through the mob. They followed her to a footpath just beyond the parking lot, where yellow tape lined the trees. When the sheriff was close enough, she lifted up the tape and stepped behind it and continued to walk a few more feet. Once they were out of earshot, she turned toward Warren.