The Return of Ellie Black: A NovelAudiobook

Chapter ONE

CHELSEY WAKES TO HER PHONE ringing.

“No,” her husband, Noah, groans. “Make it stop.” The mattress squeaks as he shifts away from her.

Rising on an elbow, Chelsey fumbles for her phone on the nightstand. It’s a little after midnight. She silences the ringer and peers at the screen. “It’s work.”

“Somebody better be dead,” Noah mutters.

Chelsey smiles at Noah’s wry sense of humor. She is a police officer, a detective. Most likely, somebody is dead.

“Detective Calhoun,” she answers, switching on the light and moving to the edge of the mattress, a shiver racing up her spine. Spring in Coldwell Beach is always frigid. Summer, too. Residents are lucky if there are a few days above sixty-five degrees. This stretch of coastline in Washington is situated between two rocky bluffs and is known for its temperamental weather. Lewis and Clark marked it on their map as uninhabitable.

“Chelsey.” It’s her boss, Sergeant Abbott. She no longer blinks when he uses her first name. It doesn’t matter that he addresses her male counterparts by their last names. Doesn’t matter at all. “Got a call. A girl has been found.” Sergeant Abbott waits for a beat. “She identified herself as Elizabeth Black.”

At this, Chelsey does blink. Ellie Black. Alive? It’s been two years. She stands abruptly and switches the phone to speaker.

Noah flicks on his bedside lamp. A gold chain with two pendants hangs from his neck—twenty-one, his old basketball number, and a saint medallion. Chelsey doesn’t remember which, some spiritual warrior in the battle of good versus evil. “What?” He sits up and scratches at his beard.

She presses a finger to her lips and then fishes a pen and paper from the nightstand drawer while Abbott rattles off information. Hikers in the Capitol State Forest found Ellie Black. He gives her their phone numbers. Ellie has been transported to Legacy Memorial. No word yet on her condition. Chelsey googles the location. Olympia. Two hours southeast of Coldwell. “I want you at the hospital.”

“I’m on my way.” She yanks on her jeans.

“I’ve got Douglas heading toward the trail she was found on.”

A slow, hot pause. Douglas. Sergeant Abbott’s son. She has known him since they were children. Both their dads were cops. Chelsey’s had been higher ranking, the police chief. And Doug’s dad, still a uniform, not yet a sergeant, not yet Chelsey’s boss. Doug is a couple years older than Chelsey. He fucked around for a few years before following in his father’s footsteps. Abbott recently promoted his son to detective, same as Chelsey, though she’d logged more hours. Chelsey had no problem with it. Really. They rarely crossed turfs, anyway. She works in Family Services, and Doug in Narcotics.

She flashes back to one of the precinct picnics. Back when they’d been young. When Lydia, Chelsey’s sister, had been alive. Doug had been in a group of boys making fun of Chelsey. Asked if she’d arrived in a bento box. Chelsey was adopted. Full Japanese. The rest of her family was fair-haired and milk-skinned. Even now, thirty plus years later, the memory is visceral. Watermelon spoiling in her stomach. Clouds covering the sun. Laughter bleeding away to tears shed quietly under an oak. After that, Chelsey walked with her neck bent, gaze pointed at the ground. A boyfriend once made fun of her for it, mimicking how she stooped. Chelsey has come a long way since then. Still she remembers Doug, her ex-boyfriend, and other people like them in the world, as arms trying to hold her down.

“Chelsey, you there?”

She swallows twice. “I’m here.”

“If this is Ellie Black, I want the guy responsible found. I want an arrest, and I want it soon.”

Chelsey bristles against the command but pushes the feeling away. “Got it.” She punches her arms through her shirt, keeping the phone in one hand.

“Media is going to be all over this,” he continues. “They’re going to be watching closely. I will be, too. No mistakes.”

“I’ll keep you posted.”

“Do,” he says.

Chelsey hangs up, finishes dressing, and ties her hair back in a tight low ponytail. Shoes. Where are her shoes?

“Did I hear right? Ellie Black has been found?” Noah follows her through the apartment. It is a nice place. Temporary. The walls are white. The ceiling popcorn. A couch. A dining table. Mostly Noah’s stuff. Including two framed Battlestar Galactica posters—one with a fist raised to the air with the words SO SAY WE ALL underneath and another a silhouette of a beautiful woman, a Cylon, that states NEVER FORGET WHO THE ENEMY IS. Chelsey and Noah are both sci-fi geeks.

“Hasn’t been verified yet,” she tells Noah.

It doesn’t happen often, but there has been a time or two over the course of Chelsey’s career when someone came forward, professing to be a missing child, all in the hopes of defrauding some grief-stricken parents out of their money. Ellie’s parents mortgaged their house to offer a fifty-thousand-dollar reward a few weeks after Ellie disappeared. The timing isn’t right for fraud, though. Ellie hasn’t been gone long enough to be physically unrecognizable. Two years, two weeks, and one day to be exact. Chelsey keeps a calendar with the anniversary marked.

“Jesus, what are the chances?” Noah pauses by the fireplace. On the mantel are photographs—one of Noah in a cap and gown the day he graduated with his master’s in Education. Another of him and his family at the rodeo—parents and all six kids in jeans and cowboy hats. A wedding picture from the courthouse where he and Chelsey eloped. And last, one of Chelsey as a teen, head to toe in camo, rifle slung over her shoulder, dead deer at her feet—her first kill. Her years at Coldwell High School had been filled with buckshot, stripping hide, and using a compass to navigate home.

Chelsey crosses the room to the kitchen, where remnants of the curry they had for dinner still spice the air. A safe sits atop the laminate counter. She spins the dial; nestled inside are her gun and holster. Noah rubs the back of his neck. He’s uncomfortable with firearms. Even though he grew up on a farm, shooting coyotes on the weekends. Even though he married a detective.

“I guess we won’t be looking at houses tomorrow.” He scoops her keys from the counter and hands them to her.

She fists the keys. “Sorry.” The apology is half-hearted. They dated for a year and a half. Have been married for a little over six months and searching for a house since then. A place to settle down. Chelsey has found something wrong with each property.

“It’s all right. I get it.” But disappointment lingers in his eyes. When you’re married to a cop, there are hundreds of you in the relationship—you, him, and all his cases, their families, Chelsey’s mom used to say.

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to reschedule,” she says.

He scratches his brow. “Don’t worry about it.” Again, a flicker in his expression. Is he tiring of this dance? Chelsey stepping back while he’s stepping in. When they met, it had been the same way. Noah chasing Chelsey.

Peet’s had been crowded that night two years ago. It was the eve of Chelsey’s promotion to detective. Ellie Black would disappear the next day. Cops pounded her on the back, offering congratulations, asking to buy her a beer, but she’d refused. She’d already stayed too long. Noah bellied up to the bar, squeezing in next to her. I’m Noah, he introduced himself. I just finished my master’s in Education. I’m subbing at the high school but looking for something full time.

Chelsey was always suspicious of someone who gave too much information.

I want to teach gym, physical education, he shouted over the noise.

Chelsey signaled Tim, the bartender, for her tab.

Noah pressed a hand against his chest as if offended. You’re leaving? Was it the gym teacher part?

Nope, nothing against teachers, Chelsey said, scribbling her name on the check. Tim slipped a plastic bag of takeout in front of her.

Tell the chief I said hi, he said, eyeing Noah.

She thanked Tim, then slid her gaze to Noah. I have to get dinner to my dad. Her father was midway through chemo and sicker than a dog. Crankier than a donkey. Almost everything tasted like metal to him. He could only stomach hot wings and Sour Patch Kids. She shoved her way through the bodies, Noah on her heels.

Let me come with you, he’d said outside, breath fogging in the evening spring air, hands jammed into his pockets.

She paused and leveled him with a stare. I’m flattered, but I’m not interested in dating right now. My job is busy. My dad has cancer… She waited for the C-word to do its work. Scare Noah off.

He puffed up with a smile. Let me come with you, he repeated. I’ll help.

She scoffed. Does it look like I need help?

Nope. But those are usually the people who need the most help.

She did not want to like him. You got some weird kind of savior syndrome?

Only when it comes to pretty girls. He grinned then, white teeth flashing against his beard.

Fine. She let him come with her. Made him leave his car and drove them both, making sure her gun was visible. He whistled low when he saw the house. Nice place, he said, peering up at the gabled roof.

Come on. She unlocked the door. Her dad was on the couch, Homeland on the television.

Who the hell are you? her dad whistled out, seeing Noah. All his hair was gone, his cheeks sunken in, and his skin pallid. An oxygen tank rested nearby, the nose cannula discarded on a rose-colored cushion. Her mom had loved that couch.

Dad, she chided. You’re supposed to be wearing this. She fitted the hose back around his head.

I asked a question, her father ground out.

This is Noah. He followed me home.

Her dad refused to shake Noah’s hand. Cancer, huh? Noah said, dropping his arm back to his side. The farm I grew up on, we had a horse with cancer. She liked these CBD pills the vet prescribed. Maybe that’ll help.

You comparing me to a horse, boy?

Chelsey didn’t try to intervene. She waited to see how Noah would handle it. If he would ask for a ride back to the bar. She kept her coat on.

No, sir, Noah answered, straight-faced and stoic. The horse was much nicer.

Chelsey’s dad gave a startled laugh, coughed up some blood, and offered Noah a seat.

Chelsey blinks away the memory and stares at Noah, keys loose in her hand now. “I have to go.”

He pecks her cheek. “Be safe.” It’s what he always says. A futile request. As if she could stop a bullet or a fist or a car with a heavy-limbed drunk behind the wheel.

She jams her feet in her shoes and jogs down the stairs into the cool night. Noah waits at the top, leaning against the doorjamb. She keeps him in her line of sight as she climbs into her car, an Oldsmobile she inherited from her father. On the back window is a Firefly sticker. Noah had brought it to her on their third date. Over that dinner, she’d opened up to him about the responsibilities of being a cop. She’d unburdened herself.

They’d brought the leftovers to her father. Then, while her father slept, lost in the ether of pain medication, Chelsey walked Noah to his truck. He kissed her. The night was still, calm, satin black. She unbuttoned her blouse. He opened his car door. They climbed in, shed their clothes, ground their hips.

She’d fallen in love with him quickly.

For the most part, Chelsey shares everything with Noah. He knows about Lydia, her dead sister. He knows about her parents’ divorce. He knows the day after Chelsey’s eighteenth birthday, her mother skipped town to Scottsdale. He knows about her father’s death, because he’d been there, standing by her as the cancer took him. And Noah knows about the house she inherited after he died, a place full of forty years of outdated furniture and bad memories.

But he does not know everything.

Behind the wheel, Chelsey gives Noah a wave, swallowing against the guilt, the fear. The slow drip of dread. She doesn’t want to lose him but can’t seem to hold on to him without letting go of something else. She starts the car, puts it in reverse, and backs away, Noah caught in the snare of her headlights.