Shadow let out a whine from the back seat as Nash drove like a bat out of hell down the mountain.
Grae’s phone rang for the third time before she picked up. “If you have my best friend in some sort of sexual haze and that’s why she’s late to lunch, tell her she’s being demoted.”
“G?” My voice was so raw I barely even recognized it.
Grae’s entire demeanor changed in a flash. “What’s wrong?”
“Wren isn’t with you?”
“No, I’ve been waiting at Dockside for the past fifteen minutes. I thought she was with you.”
My gut twisted in an ugly tangle of fear and rage. The camera feeds at the cabin were dead, and the backlog of video for the past two hours erased. Everything was wrong.
I tried to speak and couldn’t. How could I find the words to voice what I feared most in the world? I cleared my throat. “I can’t get ahold of her—”
“I’ll go to the cabin—”
“No,” I barked.
“Holt,” Grae whispered.
“I’m sorry, G. I just—Law is on his way there now. Until we know what’s going on, just go to the station.”
I didn’t want Grae anywhere near this if it ended up being my worst nightmare come to life.
“Holt—”
“Please, Grae. Just go to the station.”
“Okay.” She was quiet for a moment. “Call me the second you find her. And tell her I’m really freaking pissed she missed our lunch. And that she owes me two viewings of Little Women and at least three desserts.”
I wanted to smile and give my sister the chuckle I knew she was trying for, but I couldn’t get there. “I’ll tell her.”
Grae didn’t say anything, but she didn’t hang up either.
“Go to the station.”
“I’m going.”
I hung up. I couldn’t even find it in me to say goodbye.
Nash sent a quick look in my direction before taking a sharp curve like a Nascar driver. “G hasn’t seen her?”
I swallowed, trying desperately to clear the lump in my throat. “No. She never showed at Dockside.”
Dad leaned forward and squeezed my arm. “I’m sure there’s an explanation—”
My phone ringing cut off his words. Lawson’s name flashed on the screen.
“Do you have her?” I clipped.
“She’s not here.”
I cursed. “What do you see?”
“Someone’s been here. The hub for all your cameras and security system is smashed to hell.”
My pulse pounded in my neck. Wren was okay. She had to be. I would know if she weren’t. I would feel it. She was still on this planet. Still breathing.
“They would’ve needed access to her phone to erase the video.” Even I could recognize the robotic air to my voice.
A million nightmares played in my mind. All the ways someone could’ve gotten Wren’s phone. How they could’ve unlocked it.
Dad squeezed my shoulder, hard. “Don’t go there. We’re gonna find her.”
We had to. There wasn’t another option. Because I couldn’t live another ten years without Wren. I couldn’t live another second.
“We’ll meet you at the cabin,” I told Lawson.
“The crime scene techs are on the way. I put out an APB for her, too.”
“Thanks,” I said, a gruff edge coating my voice.
I hit end on the call and stared at my phone. It was the same photo background. The one of Wren, her head tipped back, taking in the rise of twilight.
“Dad’s right. We’re gonna find her. Law will have his people on it and—”
Another incoming call cut Nash off. Jude’s name flashed on my screen.
Hope sprang to life in my chest. Maybe he knew something. Had a lead. Anything.
I hit accept and pressed the phone to my ear. “Is Wren with you?”
A dark chuckle cut across the line. One I’d never heard slip from Jude’s lips in all our years of friendship. “She is.”
Everything around me slowed as dread took root in my gut. But still, some part of me hoped I was wrong. “Can I talk to her?”
“She’s a little indisposed at the moment.”
“I’m okay,” Wren shouted.
Relief swept through me, quickly mixing with sickening fear.
“Shut up,” Jude snapped.
I motioned to my dad in the back seat, mouthing words I hoped he could read. Text Law. Jude has Wren. Track the call to my phone.
Dad’s eyes widened, but he began furiously typing on his phone.
I shoved down the panic threatening to swallow me whole. “Where are you, Jude?”
“I’m going to tell you because it’s time for us to have a proper reunion. But I’m gonna need a few things from you first.”
“Name them.” I would’ve given him anything, ripped the still-beating heart from my chest if it meant Wren would be okay.
“Lose the cops. I see one sign of a badge, and I blow Wren’s pretty little head off and save us all the trouble of a get-together.”
Fury swept through me, melting the ice in my veins and turning it to lava. “Done. I’m in Nash’s SUV, though.” He didn’t need to know that Nash was with me, not until it was too late for him.
Jude cursed. “Fine. Park at the start of the access road behind Wren’s cabin. I’ll give you more instructions once you get there. You’ve got ten minutes.”
“Don’t hurt her.” The plea was guttural, pulled from the depths of my soul.
He chuckled. “She’s already a little hurt. Only time will tell how much worse it gets.”
Bile swirled in my gut, and images of Wren flashed in my mind—a slideshow of the worst things I could imagine interspersed with the best memories I had of her. It was a special kind of torture having those two paired together.
My breathing grew ragged as I struggled to keep it under control. “Don’t.”
“Then you don’t want to test my patience. Where are you?”
I searched our surroundings. “Just hitting town now.”
Nash blew through the picturesque street, his lights flashing but without the sirens.
“Good. Call me when you get to the access road. Every minute you’re late, Wren will pay the price.”
Jude hung up before I could get another word out. I slammed my fist into the dashboard.
“Tell me you’re not actually doing what this asshole is asking,” Nash growled.
My pulse was the only thing I could manage to feel beyond the terror that had me in a vise-grip. “There isn’t another option.”
“Not going in there alone would be a start,” Nash shot back.
My head jerked in his direction. “And what would you do? If it was the woman you loved more than life, what would you do?”
Nash’s throat worked as he swallowed, but he didn’t say anything.
“We’re going to play this smart,” Dad said, his voice remarkably calm.
“Jude said any hint of cops and he’d kill her.” The words dug the terror in deeper. Because I believed him. The man I’d thought was a friend. A brother. And for half our lives, he’d harbored the kind of hatred that ended in death. Something that had festered, turning into an obsession.
All of this pain… Because I’d brought a monster into our lives.
Dad squeezed my shoulder. “You’re going to take my phone and put it on speaker. That way, we can hear everything that’s going on. All you have to do is give us enough information to make out the location. Then we’ll come for you.”
My throat tightened. My dad had always been good in a crisis. Maybe it was the decades of SAR experience. Perhaps it was just an innate calmness that settled in his bones. But all I could think in the moment was that I couldn’t imagine facing this without him—without my family at my back.
“It’s a good plan.”
Dad tried to force a smile. “See, your old man’s not so useless, after all.”
“No one has ever thought you were useless a day in your life,” I said.
He patted my shoulder. “Doesn’t hurt to hear that now and again. Lawson and Roan are meeting us at the access road.”
“Jude could see—”
“Just them. No one else. But you need backup when it’s time. And Roan knows these woods like no one else.”
Dad had a point. Roan could’ve made his way through the forests surrounding the lake blindfolded if he needed to.
I swallowed hard, hoping this was the right move. “Okay.”
Nash turned onto the road that would’ve taken us to the cabin. Home. To where Wren should’ve been. But instead of veering left toward the lake, he went right and up the hillside toward the access road.
Gravel spit as he pulled to a stop next to Lawson’s SUV and Roan’s truck. The vehicle wasn’t even off before I was out and checking my weapon.
Lawson strode toward me, tension lining his jaw. “You can’t go into this alone—”
I held up a hand to halt his words. “Don’t. I’m going in. Dad has a plan that should work, though.”
Because if Jude wanted me dropped off here without a car, they were within walking distance. My gut tightened as Wren’s face flashed in my mind, and I imagined her scared and alone with a monster.
Dad relayed the plan to Lawson and Roan as I slid my weapon back into its holster. Jude would know I’d come armed, and he’d be prepared. But he hadn’t spent years working on his marksmanship and reaction time. I’d had nothing but time to hone the skills that would help me keep the people in my care safe.
Roan strode toward me, his expression stony. “This was all Jude?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” There were too many pieces unassembled in my mind. “I’d say it’s likely.”
Barely restrained fury swept over Roan’s expression. There had been a time when the cops had looked for Wren’s third shooter. It hadn’t lasted long, but they’d circled around one person in particular. Roan.
Maybe because he’d always been a loner and happier with the company of nature than the chatter of people. Maybe because the town was desperate to believe that someone older had been pulling the strings, even if Wren had told them there was no way in hell.
They had questioned Roan twice. And with no alibi other than the fact that he’d been backpacking in the mountains, people looked at him differently—with doubt and suspicion. With fear.
It had broken something in my brother. And now he was the one suspicious of everyone. And his loner tendencies had been intensified to the extreme.
If Jude had been a part of this—all of it—Roan would want him to pay.
Roan’s hands clenched and then flexed at his sides. “We’ll get him.”
Lawson surveyed us both, pressing Dad’s phone into my hand. “We’ll get him together.”
I looked at Roan. “Where are the most likely places Jude could be keeping her within walking distance of here?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “There are the caves down by the lake. A couple of vacation homes that might be vacant. An old barn on the property to the west. And if he’s not looking for shelter? Just about anywhere.”
I replayed the phone call in my mind. I hadn’t heard anything that would give away a location. “All right. I need to call him.”
Lawson held up a hand. “We need to consider the fact that he could have an accomplice. That you could be walking into an ambush. You talk to Chris lately?”
Nausea swept through me, but I scrolled through the contacts on my phone and hit Chris’s name.
It rang twice before he answered. “This is Chris.”
A saw sounded in the background, and I heard a few guys yelling.
“It’s Holt. You seen Jude lately?”
“No, he went on a supply run. Why?”
“I thought we were supposed to meet up for a beer, but I must’ve had the wrong day.”
“I’m not his damn secretary,” Chris muttered.
“Sorry, man.”
“Whatever,” he clipped and then hung up.
I looked at my brothers and dad. “I don’t think he’s in on it. He’s at a construction site. I could hear that and guys in the background.”
Lawson scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “I don’t know—”
“It’s too late. I’m not leaving her with that monster. If he has help, I’ll deal with it.” I lifted my phone to call the person I’d once counted among my closest friends.
Roan motioned to Nash. “Conference me in on your call so I can hear an updated location. I’m heading north to swing around. There are a few areas I want to check.”
“I said together,” Lawson argued.
Roan’s eyes flashed. “I know what I’m doing.”
“I know you do.”
Nash dialed another number on his phone, and a second later, Roan’s phone rang. It was a miracle we were getting service at all, but we were up a little higher here, giving us better reception.
“Mute yourselves,” I ordered, not giving Lawson a chance to further argue with Roan. “I’m calling Jude.”
Roan took that as his signal and took off at a jog into the woods.
I pressed the speakerphone button, and Jude picked up on the first ring. “Just in time. My fingers were getting a little twitchy.”
I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. “Tell me where you want me to go.”
“Are you alone, Holt? Don’t forget, I know how your voice sounds when you lie.”
But he didn’t. Jude hadn’t spent any real time with me in a decade. He didn’t know how my demons had changed me.
“I’m alone. Now tell me where the hell you want me to go.”
“Don’t, Holt!”
Everything in me seized at the fear in Wren’s voice.
“Shut up!” Jude snapped.
A smack sounded, and then a muffled cry.
My fingers tightened around the phone so hard I thought for sure it would splinter. “Touch a hair on her head and I’ll end you,” I growled.
Jude’s dark laugh was back. “A little too late for that, my friend. Start walking west.”
I took one last look at Nash, Lawson, and my dad as I strode in the direction Jude had instructed. I cemented their image in my mind. I didn’t want to lose it. Needed to remember how much they cared for me. How they always had my back, even when I hadn’t had theirs nearly enough lately.
“I’m walking. What now?”
Jude was quiet for a moment. Waiting, I realized.
“Take the path that veers off the road. In half a mile, you’ll come to a barn. Knock real nice, and I might let you in.”
“Don’t do it, Holt! He’s just going to kill us both. Please, don’t—”
A sickening sound cut across the line. Not a slap. The sound of a fist meeting flesh.
“Shut the hell up, bitch!”
Another punch sounded, and then a crash. Wren let out an agonized cry.
“You are going to pay every second until he gets here,” Jude gritted out.
Then the line went dead.
