CHAPTER 25
“God damn it. Why aren’t they there yet?” Sean asked the dispatcher.
“They haven’t spotted the car. Right now both units are heading southbound on Highway 46.”
Sean ended the call and brought up a map on his phone, desperate for something to do as they sped across town and tried to catch up to Brooke.
“Where would they be going?” Sean looked at Jasper behind the wheel. “What’s their destination?”
“No idea.”
Sean zoomed out on the map. “Hays County, Seguin, Marshall County. That’s it! That’s where they’re going. Has to be.”
Sean dialed Callie, who answered right away. “Where are you?” he asked.
“I just left Delphi. Why?”
“Go back. Find Alex Lovell.”
“What? I’m on my way to the judge’s house to help with the search warrant.”
“Mahoney’s missing and so is his bailiff. We think they may have kidnapped Cameron Spence and are now heading southbound on Highway 46, in the direction of Marshall County.”
“Wait, what? Why would they—”
“We don’t know! We don’t even know if it’s them yet, but you need to find Alex and get her to pinpoint the location of that Marshall County computer network Mahoney was using to check his email. Maybe he’s got a second home there, or a buddy does or something. The bailiff’s name is Joe Hurd.”
“But—”
“Just do it and get back to me.” Sean lowered his voice. “We haven’t caught up to them yet. Brooke is tailing their car, and I’m going crazy here.”
Silence as Callie digested this news. “Okay, I’m on it.” She clicked off.
Jasper switched on his siren briefly as they shot through an intersection. “Think that’s where they’re going? Marshall County?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would they go there?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Sean looked out the window as acid churned in his stomach. Why hadn’t their patrol units spotted the Audi yet? He picked up his phone to contact Brooke as a call crackled over the radio.
“Shit, what was that?” Sean turned up the volume.
The message came again—multiple reports of a carjacking at Benny’s Truck Stop on Highway 46. The vehicle was a silver Audi.
Sean’s heart lurched.
“A carjacking?” Jasper glanced at him. “What the hell?”
Sean reached over and switched on the siren. “Floor it.”
• • •
Pain roared through Brooke’s skull, so loud it dominated all her senses. It had a sound, an odor, a taste. It had a definite feel, like someone thumping relentlessly against her brain with a hammer.
Where am I?
Her thoughts were murky, as if she were waking up from a dream or a nightmare to the world’s worst hangover.
But it wasn’t a nightmare. No. With an icy blast of clarity, she realized this was real. She wasn’t asleep and she wasn’t hungover. She was awake and in agony and . . . moving. The surface under her vibrated, adding a steady hum to the bursts of pain already pulsing through her head.
She tried to open her eyes. But she couldn’t. They wouldn’t move. Panic zinged through her until she realized they were open, and she was staring into darkness because she had something over her head. That realization brought another zing of fear.
Breathe, she told herself. Don’t panic. And definitely don’t move.
She wasn’t sure why or how, but she somehow knew that moving wouldn’t be good. Moving would draw attention, and she was better off staying still.
Brooke’s body jolted, sending darts of pain everywhere. She realized she was in a car.
Cameron.
The silver car.
The man with the ice.
Flashes of memory emerged from the void, but she couldn’t get a clear picture.
Where the hell am I?
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force her brain to remember. She pictured the bumper of the silver car as she approached it. She pictured tapping on the trunk, and she remembered the burst of hope at the answering thud.
Cameron was in this car with her.
He was in the trunk, and she . . . was in the backseat. Curled on the floor with something dark wrapped around her head. A blindfold? A T-shirt? She didn’t know. Slowly, carefully, she tried to move her hands, but they wouldn’t budge. Her wrists were bound together in front of her, bound so tightly she couldn’t feel her fingers as she tried to flex them.
And there were voices. Low, male, close by. They’d notice if she moved or made the slightest sound.
Cold sweat seeped from her pores as she tried to think of what to do. She was bound and blindfolded, being taken to an unknown place for an unknown purpose. The pain pulsing through her brain made it impossible to think, much less come up with a plan.
Another jolt. Another stifled yelp.
The voices stopped. She heard a squeak of leather as someone turned to look at her.
“She awake?”
A fresh spurt of panic went through her. Brooke bit down on her tongue and tried not to scream.
• • •
Sean felt like he was going to jump out of his skin.
“Where’s the chopper?” he yelled above the noise around him.
“We’re working on it,” Reynolds said over the phone. His department didn’t have a police helicopter, so they had to coordinate with the county, and multiple agencies meant multiple delays. The first 911 call had come in thirty-two minutes ago, and still no one had spotted the Audi. “Should be soon. And the Amber Alert should be up any minute.”
Sean got off with his lieutenant and crossed the parking lot to the white pickup truck where a sheriff’s deputy was interviewing a man who had witnessed the “carjacking” that had actually been a kidnapping.
Sean had already talked to the guy. The man had watched as a young woman was struck in the head and then shoved into the back of a car. While the witness was calling 911, the car sped away and turned west onto the frontage road that picked up the interstate.
“And you’re sure it was west?” the deputy was asking him.
“I’m sure.”
Sean couldn’t listen to him anymore. The guy was easily six-two, 210 pounds. If he’d rushed to intervene, he might have saved Brooke, but instead he’d stood there with his thumb up his ass.
Sean stalked back to the patrol car, where Jasper was on the radio.
“Still no sign of them,” Jasper told Sean.
State troopers and sheriff’s units had been combing the interstate in both directions for twenty minutes, but no one had seen the Audi, and Sean was beginning to think they were looking in the wrong place.
“Gimme your keys,” he told Jasper.
“Why?”
“I have to get out of here. I have to look.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Fine, but I’m driving.”
Jasper tossed him the keys, and they jumped into the car. Sean peeled out of the lot, hooking a right onto Highway 46.
“I thought the witnesses said they got on the interstate?”
“I think they got off.”
“Why?”
“We’ve got half a dozen units looking, and no sign of them. I’m headed south.”
Sean hit the gas as he checked his phone. Still no Amber Alert. He looked up at the sky. And still no sign of the police chopper.
He glanced at Jasper. “What?”
“Isn’t that a gamble? Going south when all the witnesses said they went west?”
Sean didn’t answer. Instead he stomped the gas.
• • •
The sharp pain had morphed into a sickening lump in Brooke’s stomach, and she fought the urge to throw up. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself on the floor of the car as they bumped along the road.
The noisy highway had given way to uneven asphalt many minutes ago. Then that, too, had disappeared, and now they were bumping along on a severely rutted road that was making Brooke dizzier by the minute.
She thought of Cameron in the trunk with his nervous stomach. She prayed he was alive and hadn’t succumbed to suffocation or anything else. Had he been injured when they put him in there? Had they come up behind him with a blow to the head? Or maybe they’d threatened him with a gun.
Then again, he was little for his eleven years, and maybe they’d simply grabbed him and tossed him in the trunk.
You’re not alone, Cam. I’m here.