Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MADIGAN
With it being Nick’s name on the contract and not mine, the man at the car rental refused to tell me a damn thing.
There were privacy concerns to consider.
Legal responsibilities. I wasn’t married to Nick or even his next of kin.
He might’ve just gone for a drive. Yada yada yada, until I was screaming into the phone, threatening to take his shitty contract and shove it up his arse.
Everything changed when Wright calmly plucked the phone from my clenched hand and threw the weight of the law into the mix.
Two people had gone missing in freezing conditions, and did the rental car firm really want to see their name plastered all over the news for failing to help the police avoid an elderly woman’s death?
Five minutes later we had the current GPS location of our Ford Focus in our hot little hands. Tracking the Honda was a different story. A licence plate search revealed that model wasn’t fitted with GPS, so we were flying in the dark.
“What the hell is Nick’s car doing there?” I puzzled over the map on my phone, zooming in on the Nolan Reserve and quarry. “They can’t think we’d believe Chloe got that far.”
“You’d be surprised.” Wright scrutinised his own screen. “It’s unlikely, but not inconceivable. The river trail ends at the reserve, but there are multiple smaller tracks traversing the reserve itself. Glen was already considering expanding the search to include Nolan’s Reserve when I left him.”
I caught the detective’s eye. “Glen told us this morning that he thought Chloe would be found upriver.”
Wright grunted. “Search and rescue teams have a woo-woo sixth sense about this kind of thing. Although, under the circumstances, and if you’re right, I’m not sure he’d have foreseen any of this.”
I eyeballed the detective. “So, what are we waiting for?”
A police canine unit pulled into the driveway and Wright stabbed a finger toward it. “Them.” He turned to the wide-eyed constable he was leaving in charge and the man handed him a plastic bag with clothing inside. “This is one of Chloe’s dresses. Do you have anything of Nick’s?”
Shit. I thought quickly but came up with nothing. “Only his phone. But I’ve been handling it all afternoon.”
Wright eyed it dubiously. “Then let’s hope he and Chloe are together. Come on.”
He approached the handsome thirty-something driver of the ute and introduced us. The man had almost black eyes, short-clipped fair hair, and a serious demeanour. The handler took the bag but shook his head at the phone.
“Never had much success with those,” he said. “Better not to confuse things. The car’s up by the quarry lake you said?”
Wright nodded. “Follow our lead and be careful. We could be walking into literally anything. Could be nothing, or it could be a shitshow.”
The officer frowned. “No lights and sights then?”
Wright shook his head. “Let’s not force their hand.
This is a long shot, courtesy of Madigan here.
” Wright glanced my way and the canine officer gave me a calculating look.
“The driver of the car currently parked up at the lake is Madigan’s partner.
But we think Austin might be there with him, and possibly Chloe as well.
I personally think Madigan’s theory is a good one, but for now, it’s just you, me, and Madigan.
I’ve got paramedics on standby but everyone else will stay with the current search in case we’re wrong. We can’t afford to waste time.”
The officer’s gaze ran over me a second time. “Well, all righty then.” The man threw his ute into reverse. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
While Wright drove, I searched up images of the old quarry and the many walking tracks that cut through Nolan Reserve.
The place was a spiderweb of trails with about a dozen access points.
If Nick and Chloe weren’t somewhere close to the car, we had a lot of walking ahead of us.
Not to mention that Austin could disappear down any one of those trails and be gone before we even caught sight of him.
If he’s even there.
I banished the thought. I couldn’t be wrong about this. I just couldn’t. If Nick’s car was there, Chloe was there. Which meant Austin had to be too. Right?
Right.
Unless Nick was already . . .
No.
Nick was okay.
He had to be.
And we were going to get through this exactly like we got through every other bloody thing that had happened over the last year.
When I had Nick back in my arms, I was going to roll that miserable bastard up in a fuckton of bubble wrap and stick him in the corner of my lounge where he was safe and I could look at him whenever I wanted to.
I might feed him occasionally. Maybe let him out for sex and a beer if he was a good boy.
But other than that, Nick Fisher’s fancy-free walk-the-edge-and-be-damned attitude to life was over. It was toast. T-O-A-S-T.
Tears pricked my eyes. When I palmed them away, Wright shot me a sideways glance.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. “I’m not. I can’t lose him.”
Surprising me, Wright reached over the console and gently squeezed my shoulder. “We’ll find him, Mads. We’ll find them both.”
I couldn’t look at him. I was too close to the edge. “I know we will.” And I did. “But it’s what we’ll find that scares me.”
I felt his eyes on me again and turned in my seat.
“If you knew what we’ve been through these last six months, you’d know that if Nick were a cat, he’d be all out of spare lives.
He’s got the biggest heart of anyone I’ve met.
When he loves, he loves with every fibre of his being, big and bold and beautiful to be a part of.
But he’s also, hands down, the most stupid, reckless, brave, self-sacrificing motherfucker with a martyr complex to have ever walked the earth.
It’s a wonder he’s survived as long as he has.
I love the man more than life itself, but when I get my hands on him, he’s gonna wish he’d never been born.
” I hesitated. “Just thought you should know . . . just in case.”
Wright shot me an amused look. “Noted. I’ll keep the handcuffs close . . . just in case.”
I swallowed a smile. “That’s probably prudent of you.” I turned my attention back to the road. “I think I like you, Detective Jonothon Wright. Maybe you could visit me in prison.”
He barked out a laugh, and this time, I grinned. But when the car slowed at a sign that said Nolan Reserve, the mood in the car plummeted.
Wright drove through the open gate. “I’ll pull over well short of the car park and we’ll walk from there.”
“Fine,” I said distractedly, scanning the bush either side of the road.
Mist licked through the trees, eerie and almost wraithlike.
Fear balled in my belly. Nick was here, somewhere.
I had a sense of him now. A sense of whatever that bond was that held us together.
The part of my soul that belonged to him.
I wiped my damp palms down my thighs and peered through the gloom that blanketed the reserve and the road ahead.
I’m coming, baby. I’m coming.