31. Ryder
RYDER
Remy takes the driver’s seat before I get the chance.
I almost argue with him. Every part of me wants my hands on the wheel, wants something I can push harder when the distance between me and Alex becomes unbearable, but that is probably exactly why he doesn’t give me the option.
By the time I climb into the passenger seat, Logan and Carter are pulling out behind us, with Josh and Casey taking the third vehicle.
We spread out once we leave my road, with enough distance between us that Preston won’t see three vehicles arriving together if he’s watching the approaches to Mason Ridge.
The rain has faded to a fine mist that hangs against the windshield beneath the gray morning sky.
Remy keeps our speed steady, never giving the truck enough throttle to draw attention, while I watch the road ahead and calculate how much faster we could be moving if he stopped caring about speed limits.
My knee starts bouncing beside the center console.
I press my palm against it.
That works for maybe ten seconds.
Remy glances down when it starts again, then returns his attention to the road.
“If it’s bothering you, say something.”
He adjusts his grip on the wheel as we take another curve. “I’d rather you do that than decide we’d get there faster if you opened the door and started running.”
I look through the windshield at the wet road disappearing between the trees. The thought has crossed my mind enough times that denying it would be pointless.
“I’m still considering it.”
“I know.”
He doesn’t try to talk after that, which is one of the reasons I can stand being trapped in the passenger seat beside him.
The miles pass beneath us while the morning gets lighter, and I keep seeing the same image every time I blink: Alex getting into my truck alone, already injured, knowing exactly who was waiting for her at the other end of the drive.
By now, she’s with him.
I don’t know what he’s already done to her.
So I keep my hand clamped over my knee and let Remy drive.
The closer we get to Mason Ridge, the more pieces of Alex’s investigation begin lining up in my head.
The old apartments. The maintenance complaints.
The men with toolboxes who did not belong there.
The wiring problems she kept finding. Preston had been moving through the edges of her work long before we understood he was using those places in his plan to get to her.
Before I was ever really a part of the picture.
She saw patterns for a living and made it her mission to shine a light on those patterns.
I wonder how many she figured out before we did.
Remy turns off the main road early, taking us along a narrow side street that runs behind the old development.
Logan follows. Casey’s truck disappears from the mirror a few seconds later because that is the plan; he and Josh are circling toward the utility side rather than joining us on the service road.
My phone vibrates with a message from Josh.
Josh: South side in position. No visible movement.
Remy reads it when I show him, then nods toward the road ahead.
“We walk from here.”
He pulls into the shadow of an abandoned commercial building nearly half a mile from Mason Ridge. Logan and Carter join us thirty seconds later, and nobody shuts a door harder than necessary.
From there, we move on foot.
The wet ground softens our steps but makes it feel like they’re impossibly louder.
Logan leads through the tree line, using the map on his phone only when we reach forks in the drainage trail.
Carter keeps behind us, stopping twice to check the road through breaks in the trees before waving us forward.
I hate every second of moving slowly.
The maintenance building appears through the trees as a dark block of brick and corrugated metal, older than it looked on the plans. One exterior light burns over the front entrance, throwing a weak yellow circle across cracked pavement. Most of the windows are black.
My truck sits on the service road exactly where Preston’s photograph showed it.
Seeing it in person does something the picture didn’t.
Less than an hour ago, she climbed into it with a concussion and drove herself toward a man she believes intends to kill her.
I start toward it.
Remy catches my sleeve, not enough to stop me physically, just enough to remind me I promised to listen.
Carter moves first, circling wide before approaching the passenger side. Logan watches the building while Remy and I come up behind him. The truck is unlocked.
The cab is empty.
The spare key is sitting in the cup holder.
I stare at it through the open door.
“She left the key,” Carter says quietly.
Of course she did.
She didn’t want us wasting time searching for it if we found the truck.
There’s nothing else dramatic inside. No bloody message. No note telling me goodbye. Alex doesn’t need one because she already left everything that matters at the house.
A continuous line leading straight from the bed we shared to the building in front of me.
She planned for us to reconstruct this.
Remy closes the truck door carefully and looks toward the tree line. “We know she got here. We don’t know whether she walked straight in or he met her outside.”
I look at the wet ground beside the driver’s door.
The rain has blurred almost everything, but there are marks in the mud where someone stepped away from the truck toward the building. Small tread, then a larger disturbance crossing over it.
Logan crouches without touching anything.
“One set could be hers.”
“And the other?” I ask.
“Could be Preston. Or it could be older. We can't guess, and there’s no room for making assumptions right now.”
My phone vibrates again.
Casey: Utility door’s open.
A second message comes before I can answer.
Casey: Fresh scrape on latch. Josh found shoe print inside threshold.
Remy reads over my shoulder.
The five of us have been careful for twenty minutes because Alex needs us careful.
Now we know she’s inside.
Logan rises and turns toward the building. Carter draws his weapon but keeps it down at his side. Remy checks the distance between us and the south wall, then looks at me.
“This is where you listen.”
I nod because I’m not a fucking idiot. I can do a lot of things, and I’m handy with a weapon, but I’m not a trained expert like these men.
My hands are steady now.
That scares me in a completely different way, because I know this feeling. I know what happens when fear gets so large my body stops wasting energy showing it. Fire does this to me. Collapsing buildings do it. People trapped behind doors do it.
Alex does it better than anything ever has.
We move into the trees toward Casey and Josh, keeping the maintenance building between us and the road. I can see the south wall now, the dark utility entrance cracked open beneath a rusted metal awning. Casey is crouched near the corner with Josh beside him, both of them watching the doorway.
Josh looks at me when we reach them with a carefully blank expression.
Only the same promise he gave me at the house.
We’re bringing her home.
Casey points toward the open door and speaks low enough that the rain nearly takes the words. “No smell of smoke yet. Power’s on somewhere inside. I can hear a fan or old blower running, but I can’t tell whether it’s building equipment or something he brought in.”
Logan shifts closer to the wall and listens.
Carter checks the rear line.
Remy reaches for the radio clipped beneath his jacket but doesn’t transmit yet.
For one strange second, all six of us are standing in the rain outside an abandoned maintenance building, cops and firefighters and men who have spent too much of their lives running toward other people’s worst days, and not one of them has asked me whether I’m sure I want to do this.
They already know.
Casey eases the utility door wider.
Darkness waits on the other side.
Somewhere inside that building is an eighty-year-old woman who tried to protect Alex with a cane.
Somewhere inside is the man who has spent years teaching Alex that everyone who loves her will eventually pay for it.
And somewhere inside is the woman who left me a trail because she believed the best I would be able to do tonight was find her body and make sure her killer answered for it.
Remy’s hand closes briefly around the back of my shoulder before he lets go and moves into position.
I look into the darkness where Alex disappeared and follow them inside.