29. Ryder
RYDER
I refuse to believe that I’m going to find Alex’s body. We’re going to find her, and she’s going to be pissed, but she’s going to be breathing.
By the time Remy arrives with others, the dining room has become a command post without any of us deciding to make it one.
Casey has the security tablet beside his phone and a notepad.
Josh has pulled up a county property map on my laptop.
I’m standing over both of them with Alex’s phone on the table where we can see it but nobody has touched it since Remy told me to stop.
Remy comes through the front door already gloved.
Logan follows him carrying a rolled set of papers and a small gear bag, rain darkening the shoulders of his jacket. He takes one look at Josh and me, then goes straight to the table. There’s no question about whether either of us is okay, and I’m grateful for it.
Carter arrives less than a minute later, phone pressed to his ear as he closes the door behind himself. He looks enough like Casey that even now I notice the family resemblance, though whatever Carter is hearing puts a harder edge on his face.
Remy picks up Alex’s phone and reads the messages without commentary. He watches the video of Mrs. Vance once, checks the sender information, then lowers the phone into an evidence sleeve he brought with him.
“She left it unlocked?” Logan asks while unrolling the property plans across the space Josh cleared.
“Not just unlocked,” I tell him. “Conversation open, screen timeout changed so that her phone didn’t lock.”
Remy’s eyes meet mine.
He understands immediately.
“Good,” he says.
The word nearly makes me come across the table.
Josh catches my forearm before I move, but Remy doesn’t flinch.
“I mean good because she gave us evidence,” he says, voice level.
“You want me to be emotional about why she did it, I can do that after we have her. Right now, Alex just handed us Preston’s threat, his deadline, his location, proof Mrs. Vance is alive, and a record showing exactly when Alex left your house.
We use what she gave us and it takes us directly to her. ”
The rage goes nowhere, but it changes shape. It’s not aimed at my friend and the men here trying to help me get through this.
“No offense,” Casey says. “But should this be an official call where they call in SWAT or something?”
Logan plants one hand on the Mason Ridge plans. “We’ve done it before, the official way. It’s almost cost us the women we love. I don’t want Ryder to lose Alex the way I almost lost Poppy.”
The others echo his sentiment, leaving me standing there in awe with men that are here just because they care, and they were asked.
Logan goes on, “The maintenance building is separate from the main residential structure. Old boiler room on the north side, equipment storage here, office in front, utility corridor running south to the exterior service door.”
Casey leans over the map. “That layout is old.”
“You know the building?”
“I’ve been inside the main complex. Not that maintenance wing recently.
” Casey traces the south wall with one finger.
“There were electrical complaints all over the property. Faulty alarms, bad panels, overloaded circuits. Alex had half of it in her article notes before the fire. She asked me to look over them a week or so ago, to make sure they were relevant.”
Josh shifts the laptop around. “And I’ve got a property report from when redevelopment started. The building was supposed to be emptied and secured three months ago.”
“Was it?” Carter asks from near the door.
Josh gives him a look.
Carter nods once. “Right. Stupid question.”
He goes back to the phone call he never ended, lowering his voice as he walks toward the far end of the room. I catch pieces of it. Carson Road. No marked units. Hold position. Nothing close enough to be seen from Mason Ridge.
When he hangs up, Remy looks over. “What’d you do?”
“Nothing worth writing down yet.”
“Carter.”
“I told patrol there’s a possible armed domestic incident in the area and they’re to stage outside visual range until we confirm the building. Nobody rolls sirens. Nobody lights the place up.”
Remy studies him for a second.
Carter raises an eyebrow. “You called me.”
“I’m remembering why.”
It is the closest thing to humor anyone manages. And it’s strictly because out of all of us, Carter is the real golden boy. He’ll ride along, fight by our side to bring Alex home, but he’ll find a way to do it the right way.
Logan ignores them and studies the aerial image beside the building plans. “There’s a tree line here and a drainage ditch along the east side. Service road comes in from the southwest. If Preston expects Alex by vehicle, he’ll be watching that approach.”
“He told her to use service road,” I say.
“He told her where he wanted her,” Logan corrects. “Doesn’t mean that’s where he is or where he’s watching her from.”
The distinction matters enough that I make myself listen.
Remy pulls another chair closer and sits, but only because it puts him at eye level with the maps.
“Official response stays back until we have eyes on Alex and Mrs. Vance. If we bring half of Birch PD down that road and Preston has a camera, hired lookout, or even a decent view from a window, we make his decision for him and it becomes recovery instead of rescue.”
Josh’s hands flatten against the table. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying the people in this room go first.”
For the first time since they arrived, everyone stops what they’re doing.
Remy looks around the table. “Logan and Carter are with me because I trust them to understand the difference between getting them out and making an arrest. Casey knows the fire risk and how to handle himself with a gun. Josh knows enough about scenes and investigations that I’m not going to waste time pretending he’ll stay behind. ”
His gaze reaches me last.
I’m already shaking my head.
“You’re with me,” he says.
“I’m going through the door.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he stares at me like I’ll submit. “No, you’re not.”
“Remy.”
“If Alex is standing on the other side of that door with Preston holding something against her throat, you are the worst person in this room to be first through it.”
My chair hits the floor behind me when I stand.
Logan doesn’t move from the map. “He’s right.”
I look at him.
The expression on Logan’s face is almost empty, but there is enough underneath it that I remember what I know about him and Poppy, about the kind of fear a man carries after watching the woman he loves almost die.
That does nothing to make me feel better.
It does make me listen for another ten seconds.
Logan taps the north side of the building.
“If Preston wants you there, he plans for you. Maybe he wants you to be angry. Maybe he wants you to be visible when he hurts her. Or he’s planning on hurting you to make her obey.
Either way, walking through the entrance he expects is exactly what he’s counting on. ”
“He wants me to find them.”
“Eventually,” Remy says. “He wants Alex first.”
Josh pushes away from the table and starts pacing, but Casey catches the back of his sweatshirt when he passes.
“Stop wearing a trench in Ryder’s floor and look at this.”
Josh swats his hand away, but he comes back.
Casey points at the old utility corridor. “If this is still accessible, fire crews used it for maintenance inspections because the main equipment room was always packed with shit. Exterior door here. No windows on that wall.”
“What condition is it in?” Carter asks.
“Could be fine. Could be rotten through. Could be chained shut.”
“Helpful.”
“You want guarantees, pick another building. This is what I’ve got.”
Carter’s mouth moves slightly, but he keeps studying the plan.
They work like that for the next several minutes, lines of dialogue broken apart by maps turning, phone calls, screenshots, and searches.
Nobody gives me a speech about staying calm.
Nobody tells me Alex is going to be fine because none of them knows that.
They give me distances, access points, vehicle positions, the estimated drive from my house to Mason Ridge, and every possible place Preston could see us coming.
It works better than comfort ever could and it feeds the darkness in my soul demanding that I do something.
Carter gets confirmation that no marked cruiser is within sight of the property. Remy speaks to dispatch and arranges EMS staging several roads away without using Alex’s name over open radio, and asking for radio silence for the response.
Logan gets a newer satellite image of the maintenance building and notices an access lane disappearing into the trees behind it. Casey calls someone at the station, asks three questions about utility shutoffs, and ends the conversation before whoever is on the other end can start asking why.
Josh finds the redevelopment inspection report Alex had mentioned weeks ago.
He turns the laptop toward us. “South utility door was cited for a broken panic bar. Never documented as repaired.”
Casey nods. “That could help us or screw us.”
“It’s a door.”
“It’s a door attached to a building with shit wiring and a man who likes to use fire as punishment.”
The room goes silent for half a second, not because Casey said anything dramatic, but because every one of us remembers pulling Alex out of Mason Street.
I can still feel her weight in my arms.
I can still hear Casey ordering me to move because I had stopped being a firefighter the second I saw her on the floor.
He catches my eye now and doesn’t say a word about it.
He doesn’t need to.
I straighten. “Tell me what you need me to do.”
Remy looks at me for a long moment before sliding the aerial image closer. “Stay beside me until we have eyes inside. Once we know where she is, we adjust. If you stop listening because you see Preston, Carter puts you on the ground.”
Carter doesn’t look up from his phone. “Happy to.”
Casey glances toward his brother. “You always did enjoy tackling people.”
“It’s the little things.”
That is all the banter we get.
Another vibration moves across the table.
Alex’s phone.
Every man in the room looks at it.
Remy is the one who takes it from the evidence sleeve far enough to see the screen without handling the device directly.
A photograph loads.
My truck is parked on the side of a narrow dirt lane, nose angled toward a wall of wet trees. The driver’s door is shut, but I recognize the service road immediately from the property map spread in front of Logan.
The message underneath is short.
Unknown: She made the right choice.
My lungs stop working correctly.
Josh steps beside me, close enough that his shoulder hits mine, while Remy checks the metadata and Carter takes a picture of the screen with his department phone.
“He wants us to know now,” Logan says.
“He wants Ryder to know,” Carter answers. “He wants to get Ryder there, for whatever’s next.”
Remy looks at me. “He may be shifting to the next part of whatever he planned.”
“I don’t care what he planned.”
“I know. That’s why you’re riding with me.”
Nobody bothers arguing anymore.
The house empties fast, but not chaotically.
Casey folds the printed building plan and tucks it inside his jacket.
Josh takes the laptop long enough to send the reports to everyone’s phones, then leaves it on the counter.
Carter makes one last call as he walks outside.
Logan checks the gear in his bag before shutting it and carrying it under one arm.
I stop at the bottom of the stairs.
For one second, the rest of them keep moving without realizing I have.
From where I’m standing, I can see the corner of the hallway leading upstairs.
I can see the dim light I left on in the bedroom.
Somewhere up there are the sheets Alex slept in, the water I gave her, the medication I lined up because I thought the biggest problem I had tonight was making sure she woke up if her headache got worse.
She told me she loved me in that room.
Then she waited until I fell asleep and prepared me to find her body.
Josh comes back through the doorway when he realizes I’m not behind him. He doesn’t ask what I’m doing. His eyes follow mine toward the stairs, and whatever he sees on my face is enough.
“She’s not dying there,” he says. “We’re bringing her home.”
The words aren’t comforting, and he doesn’t try to make them that way.
I nod once and follow him outside because as much as I want him to be telling the truth, I’ve never been more scared in my entire life than I am right now.