Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
Ryan sank onto the thick branch he’d just dragged off the road, his body heavy with exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical labor. He dragged a hand through his damp hair, then stared down at his phone, its mud-splattered screen balanced on his knee.
Then he lifted his head, straightening as his gaze followed the road ahead, the same road Jessica had disappeared down, leaving behind nothing but a set of muddy tire tracks.
Everything—everything—had turned to shit.
And now, looking back, he saw the truth with brutal clarity: his plan had never stood a chance. He might’ve told himself otherwise, clung to hope like a drowning man to driftwood, but deep down, he must have known. It was always going to end this way.
His name was a news alert now. A flashing, blaring warning to the world. He was a wanted man.
They were hunting him. His own people.
Except they weren’t his people. Not anymore.
He was the one running now. He was the fugitive.
A sharp, aching pressure built behind his eyes, and he squeezed his fingers against his sockets as if he could physically push back the flood of memories.
The last three days had unraveled his entire life, ripped it apart at the seams. It all traced back to one moment—the phone call that had started this.
Three days ago.
A lifetime ago.
* * *
The sound of his phone buzzing on his nightstand had woken him up.
Unknown number.
Kylie.
He’d sighed and sat up in bed. The glowing red digits of his clock floated in midair through the darkness. 2.07 AM.
Dragging a hand down his face, he’d wondered what fresh hell she was going to rain down upon him this time.
Then he’d cleared his throat and taken the call. “Deputy U.S. Marshal Ryan Inglis speaking.”
Nothing from the other end of the line. It was an ominous silence, muffled and thick with foreboding.
Ryan had frowned, then added, “Kylie, is that you?”
“Well, shit.” The voice was male, and it sounded coarse and laced with menace. “The bitch was telling the truth. You are some fancy federal cop.”
Ryan had swung his legs out of bed. The man on the other end seemed to be waiting for him to respond. So, he’d said nothing.
“Don’t you wanna know how your wife’s doing? I got her right here with me.” Still, he’d said nothing. Just gripped the phone with damp fingers.
The man had laughed. Like he’d been deriving some sick glee from Ryan’s attempt to stonewall him.
There’d been a muffled sound, then a woman’s gasp. Kylie’s voice, in a desperate tone, had come on the line. “Ryan, please, he’s—”
He’d heard another indistinct sound, then the man’s chuckle again. “She’s fine, she’s fine. I found her shooting up on my front step. I invited her in, like you do, and we got to talking.”
The nasty way he’d said it had made Ryan think there was no way Kylie had gone into this guy’s house of her own volition.
“She said her name’s Addison, so I guess that was a lie.”
Ryan’s jaw clenched. Kylie used aliases when she wasn’t sober, when she didn’t want to be found by the people in her life that cared about her.
“She told me you was a U.S. marshal. And I thought, shit, I know about you guys. You’re stone-cold sons of bitches. Man hunters.”
Ryan had stared at the wall straight ahead of him. Light from the street outside was filtering through the blinds and casting strange shadows. “What do you want?”
The man had inhaled deeply, like he’d needed to think about it. Like he’d just been offered three wishes and didn’t want to waste a single one of them. Then he’d said, “Eleven years ago, your people made a girl disappear. A girl that fucked my life up, big time. I want you to find her for me.”
Ryan swallowed hard but said nothing. The silence drew out long and taut. Finally, Ryan cleared his throat and said, “I can’t do that.”
“Oh, really?” the voice said. “Because I can make people disappear too, Mr. Marshal. I’m a motherfucking magician at it. I can make it so the only thing they find of your wife are her pretty green eyes. I’ll dig ‘em both out and leave ‘em for you as a little memento.”
Ryan’s pulse sounded like a drumbeat in his ears. “I just said, I can’t do it. It doesn’t work like that. WITSEC is a closed loop. I can’t access that kind of information, even if I wanted to.”
Another pause, filled only with the man’s raspy breathing and the dull thud of Ryan’s heartbeat in his ears.
Then the man had spoken again, and he’d lost some of his joviality.
“Don’t bullshit me, man. I used to be in the army.
Special Ops. I know how the fucking system works, alright.
I know that you can find out anything if you really want to.
If there’s a will, there’s a way, right?
And I’d have thought keeping your wife’s head attached to her body would have been a pretty fucking compelling reason to find a way.
” There was a pause, then Ryan had heard the unmistakable sound of a power tool. A buzz saw. “But maybe I’m wrong.”
Ryan’s blood seemed to have stalled in his veins. He wasn’t sure he could feel his heart beating anymore. All he’d been able to feel was the phone pressing against his ear and the pain in his jaw from gritting his teeth. “Alright. I’ll do it. Whoever you’re trying to find, I’ll find her.”
The buzz saw had gone quiet. Then the voice came back on the line and told him the name of the woman he wanted located. “Text this number everything you find out,” he’d said. “Involve anyone else, and she’s dead. You have until midday tomorrow.”
It had taken a great deal of effort, but Ryan had kept his voice low and calm. “If you hurt Kylie, I can promise you there’s one person I will find. You.”
He’d waited for a response. But all he got was that soft chuckle. Then the line had gone dead.
* * *
Ryan had sat there in the dark for a full half hour, his mind cycling through every possible option. Weighing the risks. Calculating the fallout.
The most logical course of action—the one he’d been trained to take—was to call the FBI immediately. Then his boss, Marshal Leacham.
But logic didn’t mean shit when someone had a buzz saw to your wife’s head.
The man’s voice echoed in his skull, low and calm, like he was discussing the weather. Involve anyone else and she’s dead.
His gut reaction had been to trace the call, pinpoint a location, and go there himself. Hunt the bastard down and put him in the ground.
But he only had until midday tomorrow.
And Kylie could be anywhere.
He pressed his fists against his eyes, forcing his mind to focus. The voice on the phone had given him almost nothing—just scraps of information that weren’t nearly enough. Ex-military. Special Ops. A Northeastern accent. White. Older, maybe fifties or sixties.
That narrowed it down to about a hundred thousand people.
Useless.
He exhaled hard through his nose, and for a moment, he saw Kylie at sixteen again.
Long red hair. Sweet smile. Sitting in the bleachers, pretending not to watch him play football.
She was too cool for cheerleading; she ran with the kids who smoked under the bleachers and skipped school to hang out at Cashmore’s Clearing.
He never understood why she turned those beautiful green eyes his way, but when she did, he’d felt like the goddamn king of the world.
They started skipping school together after that. Then whole weekends at his dad’s hunting cabin in the mountains. She’d gotten his name tattooed high on her thigh, where her parents couldn’t see it.
That tattoo was still there.
It would probably be what they used to ID her body.
Ryan shot to his feet, yanked on his jeans, and was out the door before he’d fully decided where he was going.
By the time he made it downtown, his pulse was pounding in his throat.
In his office, he ran the name through every database he had access to. Julia Mikkelsen. Eleven years and one month ago, she’d vanished into thin air. The last trace of her was buried in a sprawling federal indictment against over a dozen Chicago members of La Mano Negra.
One of those members? Her fiancé, Daniel Castano.
Then, just like that, her name disappeared. Became a number. Became nothing.
He hadn’t been bullshitting the man on the phone. Only four government officials and God knew what had happened to Mikkelsen after that.
And if there was one thing the USMS was better at than tracking people, it was hiding them.
But he’d found something. A thread to pull.
One of those four officials. A WITSEC inspector by the name of Inez Sharrow.
His only lead. Which meant she was his only option.
He spent nearly an hour picking apart every angle of the story he’d use, searching for weak spots. But there were too many. He could never plug them all.
In the end, he realized what he should have known from the start—he was going to have to white-knuckle this thing.
He braced his elbow on his desk, exhaled, and tapped out Sharrow’s number.
No more stalling.
As the phone rang, adrenaline burned through his veins like an electric current. This call would either cost Kylie her life. Or cost him everything in his.
Maybe both.
When Sharrow had picked up, he’d introduced himself, polite but brusque, one marshal to another.
It had been six in the morning, and she’d sounded a little dazed, although she’d quickly composed herself when she’d heard who he was.
He’d made something of a name for himself in the Southeast after a couple of high-profile arrests that had made the national news.
It wasn’t a reputation he’d had any desire or cause to lean upon. Until now.
He’d gone straight to the point: “We’ve developed some information that concerns one of your witnesses.”
There’d been a pause on the other end, and Ryan had sensed Sharrow sitting up a little straighter.