Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The road snaked and turned and then…ended. Ended at an old, yellowed sign that just said PAVEMENT ENDS.
Right. Yes. The pavement had ended. Preston could see that. They could all see that because the Range Rover’s lights reflected off the yellow sign in the growing darkness. The wipers were still flying, seeming to work double-time.
“Nothing is here.” Frankie leaned over the steering wheel and squinted out front as the windshield wipers kept flying. “Maybe it was supposed to be a hiking path but looks like it hasn’t been used for a long time. Probably because the whole area is unstable. Freaking flood zone.”
Another vehicle braked beside them. A black Jeep Wrangler. His other bodyguard, Noble Garrison. He’d known the former SEAL would follow them as soon as Frankie had redirected the Range Rover, but Preston had still texted the guy with the destination.
“The thunderstorm is hitting full force,” Frankie added with a low whistle. “You sure you want to get out here?”
“Yes.” One hundred percent sure. Preston was getting out. But he turned toward Sloane. “You’re not.”
“What?” She gaped at him. “It’s my bracelet!”
“And my car. My bodyguards.” Your life on the line, angel.
Because for all the hell he knew, this was some trap.
A trick to lure her out so that she’d be vulnerable.
Maybe Bridget was the bait that the attacker planned to use against them.
“That means we’re following my rules.” Something not up for debate.
“I don’t remember agreeing to follow your rules. There was zero discussion about rule-following. Zero.”
“No? Too bad.” Then, unable to help himself, he brushed his lips across hers. A too brief, light kiss. Maybe because he needed her taste one more time. Maybe because he didn’t know what he’d face in the dark. For all he knew, he could start walking into the woods and bullets would begin flying.
It will be a real fucking shame to die without fucking her.
He pulled back. “She stays in the vehicle, Frankie. She doesn’t get out.”
“That sounds like kidnapping,” Sloane pointed out, voice husky.
Preston grunted. “Really? Odd. Sounds like protection to me.” An incline of his head toward her.
There wasn’t enough light in the rear of the vehicle for him to see her face clearly.
“I’ll do a search. I have the coordinates that your friend sent us.
” Hell, according to those coordinates, they should be practically on top of the bracelet.
“You stay here. No sense in you getting soaked, too.”
“This isn’t about me getting soaked, is it?”
“Nah. It’s more about you staying alive. Turns out, I’m highly interested in you living.” He turned away and reached for the handle of the door.
Her fingers curled over his shoulder. “I’m highly interested in you living, too. I don’t think you should just be running off alone.”
The door opened before he could reach it. Noble bent and peered inside, water sliding off him. “Just curious. Are we gonna hang out in the middle of nowhere for the rest of the night?”
Because night was falling, fast.
“Or is there another game plan?” Noble asked.
Preston had known Noble since they were both teens.
They’d met in Cashiers. Not been friends.
More like enemies. Then, after high school graduation, Noble had signed up to join the Navy.
Had become a SEAL. When he’d returned home, unable to walk, body littered with injuries, there had been no one to meet his flight.
No family. No loved ones. The guy had been wasting away.
So Preston had stepped in.
Because once upon a time, my old enemy stopped me from crossing a very dark line.
“There’s a game plan,” Preston returned.
Noble grunted. His gaze darted to Sloane. A Sloane who was clearly visible because the door was open and the interior light shone brightly now in the back of the vehicle. “Noble.”
“Uh, excuse me?”
“He’s not saying he’s a noble bastard,” Preston groused. He didn’t like the way Noble’s gaze lingered on her. “Focus,” he barked at the guy.
Noble shifted his stare back to Preston.
“His name’s Noble,” Preston muttered.
“I’m Sloane,” she introduced herself. “And I’m coming with you both.”
“She’s Sloane,” Preston said, something Noble would already know. “And she’s keeping her sweet ass in the car.”
She hummed behind him. An angry hum.
But he focused on the problem at hand. Eyes on Noble, Preston asked, “Do you have a shovel in your Jeep?
“What?”
“Because we may need it.”
“No, I don’t have a freaking shovel! Who just carries around extra shovels in their ride?”
The rain slid down his cheeks as Preston exited the vehicle. “I do.” He headed for the back of the Range Rover.
“That shit is creepy,” Noble informed him.
His bodyguard was not wrong. The tailgate lifted, and Preston closed his hand around the shovel.
“People don’t routinely keep shovels in the back of their vehicles.” Sloane strained to watch the two male figures as they headed into the darkness. They’d been using the flashlights on their phones just moments before, sweeping over the ground.
Checking for footprints? Tire tracks?
The rain would destroy any tracks that might be around.
After Noble had denied having a shovel, Preston had pulled one out of the back of his Range Rover. Something that had definitely sent a shiver down her spine.
“When Preston called me in for protection duty, he had some specific…requests,” Frankie said from the front.
Frankie Belmont. She didn’t know his story, not yet.
But she would. As for Noble, she actually had already known who he was.
Just as she knew some of his secrets. But for the moment, she was focused on the matter at hand.
Not Noble’s and Preston’s pasts. “What requests?” Her eyes were practically slits because she’d narrowed them so much as she fought to see through the rain.
Her heart kept racing, and sweat coated her palms. She really wanted to be out there with Preston.
Staying close to him had become a major priority for her.
Staying close. Keeping him alive.
Frankie grunted. “Request one…keep a shovel in the trunk.”
That was unsettling.
“Figured that since the guy had been buried alive twice, he wanted to be ready in case unlucky time number three came calling.”
“Ready?”
“Yeah, as in, if I rushed to the rescue, a shovel would be close by for me to use.”
Or if he found the perp he’s after, Preston will have the shovel at the ready so he can dig a grave for his attacker. A suspicion that she refused to voice. At least in front of Frankie.
Frankie’s fingers tapped along the steering wheel. “Though, for the record, Noble and I are supposed to make sure time number three doesn’t ever happen.”
She certainly wanted to make sure that situation didn’t occur again, too. “Don’t you think that you could succeed in that task more if you were, oh, I don’t know, out there with him?”
“He wants me here. I’m staying here. I follow the boss’s orders.”
Great. Wonderful.
“You’re not getting out of the car, lady. Forget it.”
She forgot nothing. “What if Preston needs help?”
“That’s what Noble is for. Watching his six.”
Her fingers curled around the door handle. A big part of her really wanted to just thrust open the door and run after Preston. A very, very big part of her.
“Don’t,” Frankie warned her.
She’d never been good at doing what she was told.
“We aren’t going to find shit out here!” Noble grabbed his arm. “Let’s get back to the vehicles.”
Rain had already soaked Preston and Noble. Preston’s shirt clung to his skin, and he blinked against the pummeling rain. One hand held his phone as he swept the light over the scene. The other gripped the shovel.
“If you’re so worried, let’s call Sheriff Tooni. She can get a team out here after the rain stops. She can search properly. With more lights. Maybe even with dogs.”
“It will be too late by then.” He shook off Noble and marched to the right. His light had just hit a few low-lying bushes that looked crushed on one side. As if the lower leaves had been smashed by something. Someone?
“Too late? For what? You still have not told me why we’re trekking through the woods.”
Because someone took Sloane’s bracelet, the one with the tracker. It was turned back on, out here. “We might be walking into a trap.”
“Fantastic,” came Noble’s sarcastic reply. “Then how about you pull out a gun instead of a shovel?”
“You have a gun.” He did. Preston knew Noble had drawn it the minute they’d walked away from the vehicles.
“Someone has to protect your crazy self.” Noble did trample the bushes. “Look, you just escaped death again. You and the pretty new girlfriend.”
“She’s not—” Preston stopped.
“Pretty? Oh, hell, yes, she is. Undeniably so. I’d say you’re batting out of your league.”
Preston hadn’t been about to deny that Sloane was beautiful.
She was. In a sharp and rather striking manner that made people look at her when she walked into a room.
Any room. He’d seen the reaction that the deputies had to her.
Eugene had looked as if he’d swallowed his own tongue.
At the hospital, the orderlies and doctors and nurses had been doing double-takes when they saw her.
Gorgeous. Yes. Undeniable.
But…
Not my girlfriend. He’d been about to make that denial. Then he remembered how she’d come against his mouth.
She is mine.
Lightning flashed.
“We are not going to find anything,” Noble huffed. “I get that you’re paying me the big bucks, and I should shut my dumbass mouth, but we are—”
Another flash of lightning. One that revealed a mound of dirt. Not too high. Really only an inch or two above the ground near it. The rainwater hit the mound and sent dark pools of water and mud sliding off it. The mound appeared to be about three feet wide. Maybe six or seven feet long.
“What in the hell?” Noble had frozen.
Preston lunged forward with his shovel. He drove the edge of the shovel into the ground and began to dig as fast as he could even as thunder boomed over him.
Thunder or a blast from a gun? The vehicle’s windows seemed to shake with the booming sound. “I can’t see Preston any longer!”
“Noble has him.” But Frankie didn’t seem quite as confident as he had been before. Maybe because he wondered, too…
Thunder or a blast from a gun? Her heart would not stop racing. No matter how she strained, she couldn’t see Preston any longer, and fear knifed through her. “We need to call the sheriff. Get her out here.”
But Frankie wasn’t making a move to call anyone.
“You have a phone!” Sloane snapped at him. “I don’t!” A situation she would be correcting immediately. “Get the sheriff on the line. Tell her what might be happening.”
“Nothing is happening,” Frankie denied. “Preston…the boss just went for a walk in the woods because he was following some hunch that you had—what the fuck!”
A hard fist pounded into the driver’s side window.
Sloane screamed.
Frankie shoved open his door and jumped out of the vehicle.
Out of the vehicle? Who did that? Who jumped out when someone dangerous pounded on the glass of your window? Had Frankie seen zero scary movies? You stayed locked in. You called for help. You—
“We need more shovels!”
She shoved open her own door. Because the vehicle’s interior light had spilled out from the open driver’s door and she could see Noble.
Noble, not Preston. “Where is Preston? Did you leave him?” She locked her fingers around Noble’s arm.
He’s holding a gun. “What kind of bodyguard are you? You don’t leave your charge!
You don’t leave him in the woods, in a rainstorm, in a—”
“I think he found a grave. We need help. We need more shovels.” A frantic shake of his head. “We need help! Get the sheriff out here, now!”
A grave?
“There…aren’t any more shovels.” Frankie stumbled back against the side of the car. “Just one. I-I just got one. We have a jack in the back. A spare tire—”
Was he kidding her? “Call the sheriff, Frankie!” Sloane blasted at him. An order she’d given him before. Her grip tightened on Noble. As for him, “Take me to Preston, now!” It could be a trap. The perp could be waiting. Could have wanted Preston to be out there alone.
Not on her watch.
Noble took off running through the rain, and Sloane was right with him.
Her sneakers sloshed through the growing water that puddled on the ground. The rain hit her face, feeling almost like pinpricks. Bushes tore at the legs of her jeans. She and Noble twisted around trees, burst through more bushes, and then they spilled into a narrow clearing.
Dirt.
Piles of dirt near Preston as he frantically dug into the ground.
Noble shone a light on Preston, and she saw the space…measured the ground that didn’t look like everything else around it. Earth that had been disturbed. Loose. Her gaze jerked away from it as she searched the darkness on either side of them.
The perp could be hiding anywhere. He could start shooting at any time.
But…
The Last Breath Killer didn’t murder his victims with bullets.
He killed them in coffins.
“Watch his back,” she told Noble. Then she dropped to her knees beside what she feared was a grave.
Even as Preston continued digging out the dirt with his shovel, she was scooping up dirt with her hands.
Shoving her fingers into the dirt as she worked desperately.
And all the while, she just kept thinking…
Be alive.
Be breathing.
Don’t be dead. Please, not yet.
Rain poured down on her. The dirt turned to mud in her grasp. Sloane kept digging because she knew Bridget Russell was buried in the ground.