Chapter 32
Hunter
“Tell me you’ve got something else,” I said to Jace, already moving toward the SUV. “Johnson’s and Kelly’s places were both a bust.”
“I do,” he said without preamble. “Tracked them leaving the station this morning. They got into a gray Tahoe registered to a department fleet. No GPS, but I pulled traffic cam footage and started piecing their route.”
Lucas opened the driver’s door while I climbed into the passenger seat and switched the call to speaker. I’d come back to get my rental car later.
“They were headed north,” Jace continued. “Bank camera caught them turning off the main highway at a gas station near Red Rock, then nothing. Last hit I got was at a mile marker on Highway 43. That stretch doesn’t have much surveillance, but it’s all backcountry and wooded as hell.”
Lachlan slid into the back seat and leaned forward. “How far out?”
“That camera was probably twenty-five or thirty miles from the edge of the city. Road splits at some point, so if they were trying to vanish, that’s the way to do it.”
Lachlan pulled up GPS on the vehicle’s center screen. Lucas and I met each other’s eyes as we saw exactly where we were looking at on the map as Jace kept talking. We didn’t have to say it. We both knew where that road led.
The cabin. The one Jada had taken Kenzie to. The same damn one where Alan had injected her with the memory drug.
It made sense in the worst kind of way. It was isolated, familiar to Alan’s circle, and far enough out that even if she screamed herself hoarse, no one would hear her.
Jace paused. “I can keep digging, but that’s as far as I’ve got unless they hit another camera.”
“This is good,” I said, gripping the dash. “There’s a cabin off this road that definitely has ties to Jada and Alan Ard.”
Lucas nodded, threw the SUV into gear, and started driving.
“Speaking of Alan Ard, I was able to dig deeper there too,” Jace said. “Found something buried in a deleted server log from the prison.”
“What?”
“It was a recorded interview,” he continued. “Johnson and Kelly. They were at the prison the day before Alan Ard was killed.”
Lucas let out a sharp breath beside me, his grip tightening on the wheel. Lachlan leaned forward from the back seat, silent but listening.
“They weren’t there in any official capacity,” Jace went on. “At least, nothing logged in the visitor schedule with a badge. This video was tucked away in a subfolder. My guess is someone tried to wipe it after the fact.”
“Did they talk to him or threaten him?” I asked.
“Bit of both,” Jace replied. “Ard was cocky. Kept saying something about how he’d make things right. Kept repeating that Jada had the money. He told them he’d given it to her before he got picked back up.”
“What money?”
I could hear Jace continue to type even as he talked. “Some sort of payoff for them helping him get out. Half a million, Hunter. People have killed for a hell of a lot less.”
Lucas let out a low curse. “So that’s what this is about.”
“Looks that way,” Jace confirmed. “Johnson and Kelly helped him get out early the first time. Some sketchy paperwork, probably greased a few palms. They were planning to get him out again—until he got shanked in the yard.”
“And now they think Jada’s sitting on the money,” I said, rubbing a hand down my face.
“That’s the theory. They’re not just covering their asses—they’re trying to cash in.”
It clicked into place with a sickening snap. Everything made sense now. The pressure to find Jada even though there was no warrant out for her. The fact that they didn’t kill her right away. They were looking for something they thought she had.
Only, she didn’t.
She didn’t remember a damn thing. Even if Alan had given her that money—which everything I knew about him told me was false—there was no way she could help them find it if she didn’t remember anything about it.
Which meant this was all going to end one way.
Bad.
“I wish I could help more, but by the time Ethan could get a Citadel Security team there, it would be too late.”
“You’ve done a shit-ton, Jace. We’ll check the cabin. Even if it’s a dead end, it’s better than sitting here doing nothing.”
“I’ll stay on standby in case you need more,” he said, then hung up.
Lucas didn’t speak for a while. The trees thinned ahead, the road getting rougher.
Finally, he glanced at me. “If they realize she can’t give them what they want?—”
None of us finished the sentence. We didn’t have to. We all knew what they would do to Jada if they found out she couldn’t give them what they wanted.
Lachlan’s voice was calm behind us but firm. “Then we make sure they don’t get the chance.”
None of us said anything else.
We just drove faster.
Stopping the SUV a distance away, Lucas and I knew the drill. We’d follow the same path as before and make different points of entry. I quickly filled Lachlan in on our first visit here, then the three of us silently trekked across the woods to the cabin.
Stopping at the edge of the trees, before our cover disappeared, we scanned the immediate area before moving forward. No sounds. No lights. No movement.
I signaled both Lucas and Lachlan, and we continued to the cabin. Lucas and I went in the front, while Lachlan went around the back.
The second we stepped inside the cabin, I knew something had happened there. The place hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d been inside.
Lucas moved past me into the main room, while Lachlan swept the perimeter. I crouched near the couch, scanning for anything—any sign of her.
Then I saw a smear of blood on the floor by the table. Not much. A small drag mark streaked across the wood like someone had been pulled.
My heart dropped into my gut.
I stepped over it and scanned the area again—and that’s when I spotted the vial, tucked into the corner near the baseboard heater. I reached for it slowly, recognizing it even before I turned it over in my hand. Clear glass. Faint residue. Same shape, same label as the one Beckett had handed to Jada in Spokane. It was another vial of the antidote.
And it was empty.
My curse was low and ugly. Lucas turned to face me. “What?”
I closed my eyes and swallowed hard, then held it up. “They gave it to her.”
Lucas stepped over, his jaw clenched. “Is that?—?”
“Same vial Beckett gave us. The antidote.” I glanced between him and Lachlan, who had just come in from the back. “It’s empty, which means they’ve already injected her.”
Lachlan looked grim. “What does that mean for her?”
I stood slowly. “It could mean a lot of things. The drug wasn’t stable, and the antidote is even more unstable. She might be unconscious. She might’ve slipped into a coma. She could’ve lost motor function or memory or…everything. Or maybe she got all her memories back.”
Lucas scrubbed his hand down his face. “We’ll hope for the best.”
“Even if she did get her memory back,” I said, “she’s still with two armed men who think she’s hiding half a million dollars that Ard may have never given her. They’re not going to keep her alive long.”
Lachlan let out a breath, already reaching for his phone. “I’ll get the local PD out here to treat this as a crime scene. Full sweep.”
I nodded, but we all knew that while this might help us put away Johnson and Kelly, a forensics team wasn’t going to help us find Jada in time.
The drive back toward Denver was silent. Not quiet— silent . The kind that presses against your chest and doesn’t let up. None of us had anything to say, not after what we’d just seen in that cabin.
I sat stiff in the passenger seat, staring through the windshield like I could will the answer to appear on the horizon. I ran through everything in my head again, every second we’d lost chasing dead ends, every wrong turn, every minute she’d been alone with those bastards.
And now, we had no idea where she was. We were headed back toward Denver, but there was no guarantee that was even in the right direction.
Lucas kept his eyes on the road. Lachlan sat behind me, probably cycling through the same mental list of possibilities, none of them good.
Then my burner buzzed again.
I snatched it off the dash, saw Jace’s name, and answered on speaker. “Tell me you found something. Please.”
“Are you back in the city yet?” he asked, and his voice wasn’t calm anymore. It had that tight edge that told me whatever he’d found, it mattered.
“Almost,” I said. “Why?”
“Hunter, someone just accessed the safe house you used with Jada a few weeks ago. Using your code.”
The words hit like a jolt to the chest. I straightened, adrenaline firing through my veins. “When?”
“About thirty seconds ago. It pinged the internal system as soon as the keypad was triggered. No cops. No breach alarm. Just a clean entry attempt. It didn’t pass.”
“Override every lock,” I said without hesitation. “Give full access.”
“You think it’s her?” Lucas asked, speeding up.
“It has to be,” I said. “She would’ve remembered the keypad. She knows there are weapons there.”
“She’s buying time,” Lachlan muttered. “Smart.”
Jace’s voice came back over the line. “All locks are disengaged. She’s in.”
“Don’t call the cops,” I said firmly. “If sirens show up, they’ll panic and kill her on the spot.”
“Roger that,” Jace replied. “But you’d better get there now . If this situation is going down the way we think it is, she’s running out of time.”
“We’re close,” I said, already bracing against the dashboard as Lucas took a sharp turn onto the frontage road. “Stay on standby in case we need remote access.”
“Already on it,” Jace replied, then hung up.
The tires screeched as Lucas pushed the SUV harder, the city lights growing closer. I glanced down at my weapon, made sure the mag was seated right, the safety off.
If Jada was in that house, I was getting her out.
One way or another.