Jackson’s phone buzzed again, the shrill tone slicing through the low hum of the computers.
He frowned at the screen. “Dispatch again,” he muttered, then his brow furrowed. “Unknown number.”
Avery’s pulse kicked up. “Could be Mick.”
“Or worse,” Jackson said, and swiped to answer. “Ward.”
A small, shaky voice came through the speaker. “Jackson? This is Riley.”
Avery’s breath caught.
Jackson straightened, his tone instantly gentle but firm. “Riley, it’s me. Are you okay? Where’s Megan?”
There was a pause, a faint, wet sound, like a muffled sob, and then Riley’s voice came again. Flat. Controlled.
“I have a message,” she said.
Avery’s chest tightened. The way Riley spoke—it soundedrehearsed, the words coming in stilted bursts, like she was reading something she’d been forced to memorize.
“Riley,” Jackson said. “Just tell us where you are.”
“I…can’t,” Riley murmured. “They said to tell you…” She stopped, voice trembling, and when she spoke again, it was higher, faster as if she was trying to get the words out before someone stopped her. “The only way Megan and I can live is if Avery gives herself up.”
The words hit like a blow.
Jackson’s knuckles whitened around the phone. “Who told you that? Riley, are they there with you?”
Static filled the line. Avery could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.
“Riley, tell me where you are. Now,” he said, voice low and steady.
Riley’s voice came thin and rehearsed again. “The back of the Brotherhood’s old training facility.”
Mick had been right. That didn’t exactly feel comforting to Avery.
“There’s a washout and a collapsed culvert,” Riley went on. “You’ll see tire ruts that lead to a hollow with a concrete slab. Behind the slab is the service hatch to the bunker. That’s where we are.”
Avery felt the room tilt. She glanced at the map on Jackson’s computer screen, the narrow trail that forked off and dropped into a gully, the cluster of boulders that hid the hollow from casual view. It was exactly the kind of place you could bury someone and expect no one to find them.
“Who’s with you?” Jackson asked.
“Megan,” Riley said. The name was flat, like someone reading a line. “They’re watching us. They said—” Her voice snagged and smoothed. “They said the only way Megan and I live is if Avery gives herself up. You have to come alone or we die.”
Avery’s throat closed on the word alone. The room narrowed around her. Come alone. The demand tasted like leverage. It smelled like a trap.
Riley continued in that scripted cadence, reading instructions as if the words had been handed to her on a cue card. “You will drive down County Road 19 until you reach the old logging gate. Leave your vehicle there. Walk the spur five hundred paces. Do not bring flashlights. Do not call anyone else. Do not use your radios. Knock three times on the concrete slab, then wait. They will—”
She broke off. There was a breath, a terrible, held breath, and then Riley’s voice changed. Not the practiced monotone now but thin, urgent, a tremor at the edges. “Don’t come,” she blurted. “It’s a trap.”
Something slammed through Riley’s voice then, a sound that was not words at all but terror. Sharp, animal, immediate. She screamed.
And the line went dead.
Chapter Nineteen
“Damn it!” Jackson slammed the phone down, his pulse roaring in his ears. He turned back to the screen, tried the call again. “Dispatch, patch me through to that last incoming number. Now.”
A beat of static. Then: “No response, sir. The line’s dead.”