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Ryan shakes his head again, genuinely baffled.
“Who would take you out? What are you talking about?”
“Listen, you little shit. I could’ve easily taken you out that night. And it’s not too late. I’ve given up more than you can imagine. I can never go home. I can’t—” He stops, collects himself. “I have a new life, a wife. I don’t want to run anymore.”
Ryan can’t believe this guy’s begging for sympathy, of all things. “Tell me what you’re talking about or I’m leaving.”
The Monster hisses a breath and waves his arm at the exit, frustrated. “Fine. Go. It’s not just me they’ll take out. It’s her.”
“Her?”
A nod. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Then tell me. Are you saying Alison’s alive?”
The man closes his eyes, gives no response.
“You were there, man. Who was in the car in the lake? And how the hell’d you find me? If you want my help, then stop lying and asking me to fucking trust you!”
The Monster sighs. “If you don’t believe me, talk to the sheriff.”
This pushes Ryan back on his heels. “The sheriff? What sheriff?”
“The one from that shit town of yours.”
The Monster’s phone pings, but he ignores it.
“I’ll help you,” Ryan says, “if you tell me everything.”
The Monster seems to be silently debating how much to say. His expression turns resigned, like he has no choice but to come clean. “I never meant all this to happen,” he says. He pauses as his phone pings, then pings again. When he looks at the screen, his face freezes in what seems to be concern. Then comes the ringtone of a call.
“Sorry, I need to get this.”
Are you fucking kidding me?
The man holds the phone up like it’s a video call, then his face drains of all color.
“Please don’t,” he says into the phone, staring intently at the screen like he’s watching something unsettling, something horrifying. The call ends, and he turns to Ryan with a devastated look. “It’s too late,” he says. “They found me.”
And with that, the man who abducted Alison sprints to the exit like his life depends on it.
26
Ryan races after The Monster, but the two bodyguards block the wooden doors, the only way out.
Ryan tries to push past them, but they’re too strong. In accented English, one of them says, “Calm down. You go once he’s gone.”
“What’s his name? Why is he—?”
The other giant shakes his head. Ryan stops fighting and they step back. After a few minutes, the brutes move aside, opening a pathway to the stairs. Ryan thinks about questioning them, offering them money, but they’re hired hands and probably don’t know anything. And if he’s fast, maybe he can catch up with The Monster. Or maybe, just maybe, Nora followed him.
He races down the stairs, so fast he nearly tumbles. Bursting out the front doors into the sun from the piazza, he sees Nora. She has a concerned look on her face.
“Did you see him? Did you see where he went?”
“Better,” she says. “I spotted that Fiat and slipped one of my AirTags through the cracked window of his car.”
Back in the van, Ryan races around a curve. The vehicle feels like it might tip over but returns to four wheels. The sky has turned black, a storm blowing into the region.