Everett lets out a slow breath, controlled like he’s on the edge of losing it. “Someone was in our fuckinghouse,” he says. “Either Geoffrey or someone who works for him. They came in here, and they—” He breaks off, clenching his teeth and his fists like he can’t say anymore. Fury snaps in his eyes, but he glances at Cora and then lets out another breath.
“We know,” Cash says quietly. “Which is why we have to do what we can to find her. That’s the most important thing, right?”
“Right. Of course it is.”
Cash claps him on the shoulder gently, squeezing a little. “She’s tough. And we can see here he didn’t take her without a fight. She hid Cora first, and she fought to keep that fucker away. So she’s probably still fighting now.”
He’s probably right. Harper is tough. She was guarded and tough from the moment we met her, and her confidence has only grown since she’s been here. It’s not like she would give up the moment she was taken.
But every minute she’s gone, in that asshole’s hands instead of ours, her safety is at risk. We don’t know what he’s going to do or even enough about him to predict anything. We just have to find her before it’s too late.
We head downstairs and Cash spreads the maps across the kitchen table. He traces the back road with his finger, marking how it leads into the more densely wooded area of Silver Falls and then out of the town entirely.
There’s a fork at one point, one side leading toward the highway that would take someone out of the state entirely, and the other up toward the mountains.
“Do we think he’d try to leave with her entirely?” Cash asks.
“He wanted what he thinks of as his back,” I reply. “I doubt he’d go too far without it.”
“He’s probably going to try to get Harper to talk,” Everett says grimly.
None of us want to think too much about that.
“So probably staying close then,” Cash’s finger marks a path. “That still leaves us with a lot of ground to cover. We need to see if the cameras caught anything. If we can figure out if he had a car or was on foot, we can maybe put out an alert?—”
He’s interrupted by Everett’s phone buzzing on the table, and we’re all high strung enough that it makes all of us jump.
Everett snatches it up and puts it to his ear. “Kane,” he says. He listens for a while and then nods. “You’re sure? How long ago? Okay, thanks. Yeah, I’ll let you know.”
When he hangs up, his eyes are simmering with anger. “Traffic patrol the next county over saw a car heading up toward the mountains about an hour ago,” he says. “Toward that old logging camp.”
“That hasn’t been used in years,” I say. Meaning it’ll be isolated. It’s already hard to get to, especially in the dark when the mountain roads get narrow and winding.
“Sounds like it’s the perfect place for someone who doesn’t want to be found,” Cash mutters. “It’s the only lead we have right now. Otherwise, we’re wandering around blind just hoping to find her.”
“We’ll check it out,” Everett says. “I’m putting more eyes on the house, so if he comes back here, we’ll know.”
“I’ll call Lainey,” I say, pulling out my own phone and stepping into the living room. “Get her to stay with Cora.”
Lainey picks up on the first ring, sounding confused that I’m calling so late. “Are you okay?” she asks. “You were working tonight, right?”
“I’m fine,” I tell her quickly.
“You don’t sound fine. What happened?”
“It’s Harper, she—” Something about having to tell my sister what happened to her friend and the woman I…
It’s just hard. The words don’t come easily.
Luckily, Lainey knows me well enough to know that something bad has happened. I give her the short version, not sure how much Harper has shared about her past.
“But,” she says, sounding horrified. “All the deputies and cameras and stuff. I thought she was supposed to be safe.”
“Yeah, we did too. Turns out this fucker isn’t afraid to drug some cops if it means getting what he wants.”
“At least they’re not dead,” she murmurs.
“Yeah, there’s that. Anyway, we’ve got a lead on where he might be keeping Harper, but we need?—”