Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sitting on the couch with Noah cradled in her arms, JJ found herself smiling. It was almost midnight, but she didn’t care. Time blended at this point since the babies had yet to get on a regular schedule. But they were working on that.
“Today has been a good day, little man,” she told her son. “Kylie’s home.”
He wouldn’t know what that meant, nor would he remember this day the way that she would. It was the day that a family had been reunited after so much pain, so much loss.
A beep sounded to her right, so she glanced over at her laptop, which was perched on the arm of the couch. A red, flashing dot appeared, signaling a location.
“Hmm.” Shifting, JJ reached over, tapped a few buttons to get more information. “You’re on the move again, aren’t you, Allison?”
“Are you talkin’ to yourself in here?” Baz asked as he strolled into the room.
JJ peered up at him, smiled. “Is Naomi asleep?”
He nodded. “For now, anyway.”
If they were lucky, she would sleep for a couple of hours.
“Why don’t I take him?” Baz offered. “I’ll get him settled, and you take care of that.”
She didn’t want to let Noah go, but he was already dozing.
After passing the sleeping baby to his dad, JJ began typing, gathering as much information as she could about Allison Bogart’s location.
“Shit,” she muttered. “This can’t be good.”
Grabbing her phone, JJ was about to dial Brantley’s number, but paused, remembering that he’d put Atticus and Archer in charge of this particular mission.
While she wasn’t currently in the office as an active member of the team, she was still a member of the team.
It was only right to do things according to protocol.
She dialed Atticus’s number.
“Hey, JJ. What’s up?”
“I just got a ping on Allison’s cell phone. Where are you at?”
“Sittin’ in my truck, waitin’ to see if these fuckers will come out of their hidey hole.”
JJ laughed, wondering whether Atticus knew how much he sounded like Brantley just then.
“Is there somethin’ else we should be doin’?” Atticus asked.
“Hold on. Let me pull up your GPS, so I can see how close you are.”
A few keystrokes later, two more red beacons popped up on the screen, one belonging to Atticus, the other to Archer.
“Is Archer with you?”
“I’m here,” Archer said, his voice coming in clear.
“Hey,” she greeted, still smiling.
“Hey, girl. What’s up?”
That got another laugh bubbling in her chest, and she realized how much she missed the team already. She wasn’t ready to go back to work yet because that would mean leaving her babies, but she did miss them.
“Y’all are about two miles from Allison’s phone,” she told them. “I can send you the coordinates, but it won’t matter until it stops movin’.”
“She’s on the move?” Atticus asked.
“Yeah. I don’t think she’s in a vehicle because she’s not gettin’ far.”
“Shoot those coordinates to Archer’s phone,” Atticus instructed. “We’ll head that way. Maybe we can get to her before she disappears again.”
“Again?” JJ asked, even as she sent the information to Archer’s phone.
“Becs and Evan ran into her at the diner. Tried to talk to her, but she pretended she didn’t know them.”
“I remember seein’ that in the notes.”
“Then she called Reese to meet, but never showed.”
And now her partner was looking for her. What in the hell was this woman up to?
“Should we call Brantley and Reese?”
Atticus kept his attention on the road, relying on Archer to give him directions. “No. You saw them back at that house. Let them process. If we can’t get to her, we’ll call them.”
“Roger that. You’re gonna make a right up here. Half a mile or so.”
He continued to drive. The farther they went, the less populated the area became, and that was saying something considering these small towns had far more trees than people. There were no more streetlights, only his headlights stretching out in front of them to break up the darkness.
“Take a right at the next street,” Archer instructed.
Slowing so he didn’t miss the turn, Atticus watched for the reflective sign.
“JJ says she’s moving again,” Archer noted. “But she still doesn’t think she’s in a car.”
“So what? She’s at a house? Maybe walkin’ around?”
“Could be.”
“How far away are we?”
“A mile or less.”
Atticus slowed, not wanting to come up on her too quickly.
Considering how dark it was out this way, there was a good chance he might run over her if she was out for an evening stroll.
Then again, he could hear coyotes off in the distance.
Probably not the safest place to get your exercise if you were a night owl.
“Pull over here,” Archer said. “And shut off the lights.”
The truck bumped along as he left the road, coming to a stop in the grass. Atticus shut off the lights, pitching them into darkness; the only lights were those in the cab of the truck. He turned off the engine to cut those, too. Then they were left with Archer’s cell phone screen.
Archer spoke softly in the darkness. “I show we’re almost on top of her.”
Since his eyes hadn’t quite adjusted, he couldn’t see much past the hood of his truck. The thought of getting out and wandering through the woods, risking a run-in with a snake or some other creature that lurked out there at night, did not fill him with joy.
But it had to be done.
Unbuckling his seatbelt, Atticus reached into the back seat, retrieving two flashlights. He passed one to Archer.
“You come prepared, huh?”
“I try. Come on. Let’s see what she’s up to out here.”
Rather than be reckless and invite a rattlesnake bite, they kept to the road. Atticus led the way, with Archer right behind him, guiding him with his voice.
“If she’s out here,” Archer whispered, “she’s gonna be here.”
He couldn’t see shit, so Atticus stopped. “Here, where?”
The next thing he knew, Archer’s big hand curled around his wrist, lifting his arm out in front of him.
“About twenty yards that way.”
Atticus kept his breathing under control, ignoring how good Archer’s touch felt.
“Do we head that way?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
“I’d say we have to.”
Just as he was about to turn on the flashlight, headlight beams lit up the darkness to their right.
“Hold that thought,” Archer said, grabbing Atticus and moving them into a cluster of trees.
They crouched there, hiding behind a couple of skinny trees until the car moved past. There was no way whoever was driving wouldn’t see his truck, but there was nothing Atticus could do about that now.
“Is that her?” Atticus asked when they were shrouded in darkness again.
Archer’s phone screen lit up. A second later, he said, “No.”
“Really? So what? They left her out here to—Fuck.”
Realization dawned, causing him to stand up and move back to the road. He turned on the flashlight and scanned the area with the beam.
“Which direction?” he asked as they walked slowly.
“Keep going straight.”
Atticus moved slowly.
He had a bad feeling about this. A really bad feeling.
Archer directed Atticus a few more feet, then grabbed his shoulder to stop him. He saw her before Atticus did, the body discarded in a heap, her clothes ripped and torn from her body, legs bruised and mangled, arms askew.
But that wasn’t the worst of what they’d done to Allison Bogart.
A moment later, his partner muttered, “Son of a bitch.”
Yeah.
“They fuckin’ killed her.”
Yep. And based on the gaping wound on her throat and the blood oozing from it, there was no need to check for a pulse.
Atticus’s voice was weak when he rasped, “What the hell?”
Because he had no intention of being caught by the police, Archer grabbed Atticus’s wrist and dragged him back toward the road. He didn’t need the light because his working memory was actively guiding him.
“Call Brantley,” Archer told Atticus when they reached the truck.
When Atticus didn’t respond, he turned to see him standing there, eyes wide.
Archer didn’t need to be a doctor to know that Atticus was going into shock.
“Was that your first dead body?” he asked, stepping closer.
Atticus nodded.
Yep. Definitely in shock.
Archer took Atticus’s hand and steered him around to the passenger side, urged him into the truck, then made his way back around. He got behind the wheel and started the engine. He shifted into Reverse and used his taillights to guide him the short distance to the road they’d turned off of.
Once they were headed toward town, he grabbed his phone, doing his best to keep from driving into a ditch while he pulled up Brantley’s number.
“Yeah?” Brantley answered, his voice echoing in the truck.
“We’ve got a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“We found Allison Bogart.”
“Good. Where?”
“Not good,” he corrected. “She’s dead.”
“Son of a bitch. Where are you?”
“On the backroads where we lost the tails the other day. We followed JJ’s coordinates to a field, found Allison’s body. Now, we’re heading to Johnson City.”
“You touch her?”
“No.” No one had needed to. Whoever had killed her had done so by slashing her throat. It had been a gruesome scene. Enough that Archer knew there was no surviving it.
“Okay. Get to town. We’ll head that way. I’ll call Kieran so he can bring in the authorities. They might want to talk to you.”
“I’m pretty sure we crossed paths with whoever did the evil deed. Silver Honda Accord,” he told his boss, then rattled off the license plate number he’d noted when it passed. “It’s the same one that was tailin’ us.”
“Good work. Sit tight.”
“Will do.”
Archer set his phone in the cupholder when the call disconnected. He glanced over at Atticus, noticed the man was staring straight ahead, hands clasped tightly in his lap.
Shock could be a bitch.
Fifteen minutes later, Archer was walking out of the small convenience store with two Dr. Peppers. He made his way to the side of the building where he’d parked to keep them off the security cameras. Turned out, it wasn’t necessary because he’d noted the store didn’t have any.