Chapter 22
Ava came to in a panic. She was cold and her head hurt. Blinking quickly, she tried to take in as much as she could, but her vision was blurry. Opening her eyes she noticed that her feet were bound and her hands were tied in front of her body. She wiggled her fingers, which were numb.
Turning her head, she winced as needles of pain shot down her neck.
It looked like they were in a long-abandoned shack or cabin of some kind.
There was a small gas heater in one corner but not much else.
The door opened, and she quickly closed her eyes as cold air wrapped around her and made her shiver.
No matter that she’d studied this type of behavior to get her degree, she couldn’t be rational when it came to dealing with Daniel. Yet she had to be. Think of him as a patient.
Which was hard when she was in pain, scared and cold.
“I know you’re awake, so stop pretending to sleep.”
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. He’d brought in a camp chair and was now sitting across from her. He had a gun held loosely in one hand and a thermos in the other.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked.
Rage tightened his features. “You’re the reason I was in jail. I want you to pay for what happened to me.”
“I didn’t put you in jail. The girl you assaulted did that.”
“I didn’t assault her. We were dating. You’re allowed to have sex with your girlfriend,” Daniel pointed out.
“Unless she says no,” Ava said.
“Women like to play games, even you. Don’t deny it.”
Games? She’d never thought of any relationship that way. “Most people are careful when they are falling in love, Daniel. Maybe she just needed some space to figure out her feelings.”
“I don’t give a fuck what she needed. I wouldn’t have been dating her if you hadn’t broke up with me and then filed that restraining order.” His voice rose on each word until he was shouting and standing over her. He kicked her, and when she cried out he smiled.
“You need to learn when to shut up.”
“Why? We’re not going to be together,” she said, which just made him kick her again. She needed to get him away from her. Her side ached, and she wasn’t sure he hadn’t broken her rib with that last kick.
“We are,” he promised her.
“What is it you want from me?” she asked. He looked like he might kick her again, so she brought her bound hands up to ward him off. “Make me understand it. I haven’t seen you in years. I thought you’d moved on.”
“I could never move on from you, Ava. You were my first love. Remember when we met on the quad? You spilled your raspberry tea on me and then laughed and promised to buy me a new shirt.”
It had been a warm, almost summery day when they’d been moving into their dorms. “I did. And I bought you one.”
“No woman had ever bought me a gift before.”
“That can’t be true. What about your mother?”
“Left before I could know her,” he said. “My dad said it was my fault. That if I hadn’t been such a pussy she would have stuck around.”
“That’s probably not true. Your dad sounds like—”
Leaning down, he hit her to shut her up. Her jaw ached as she pulled herself back as far as she could from him.
“Of course you’d take her side. Bitches never own their shit. My dad wasn’t all touchy-feely, but he was a real man. He raised me to be one, too.”
Her mind was hazy with pain and cold. She really had no idea what to say to calm him down but was determined to keep him talking as long as she could.
“You are definitely a man.”
“I know. I saw that wuss you dated after me.”
“Greg?”
“Yeah. What was he? Like a science major?”
“Astrophysicist. He was studying for his PhD.”
“Didn’t get it, did he?”
“No, he was killed in a car accident,” Ava said. Sweet, gentle Greg, who was the partner she hadn’t known she’d needed. He’d helped her heal from the toxic relationship she’d had with Daniel.
“Was it an accident?”
“Yes. The cops said it was.”
“Hit and run, right?”
Daniel knew too many details. She swallowed, hard watching him. “Did you do it?”
“I did. And I’m going to take care of the new guy in your life and that brat of yours. If they’d been home when I got you, I would have shot them both.”
Her heart raced with fear and anger at this man.
He was so smug. He’d killed Greg without a thought for the other man’s life.
He’d killed Greg because of her. Ava knew there were no two ways about that.
If he’d never dated her, Greg would be alive and studying far-off universes and black holes.
Making discoveries. All gone because of her.
No way she was going to allow Daniel to ruin anyone else’s life. Especially not Chay and Gracie. Ava would die in this ramshackle cabin with Daniel before she let him hurt either of them.
Pushing aside her pain and cloudy mind, she concentrated. The knots on her hands were tighter than the ones on her feet. Daniel had paced away from her, still going on about how he’d killed Greg. The planning he’d taken to make sure he knew Greg’s routine.
Crying while she curled herself into a ball, bringing her feet closer so she could try to work the knot on the rope free. It was hard to see through her tears and she didn’t realize how loud her sobs were until Daniel told her to shut up.
“He wasn’t worthy of you.”
“You aren’t worthy of me,” she said, unable to get free, but determined to get out of this cabin and put Daniel Wayne back in jail.
Wes and some of the other officers had arrived at his house. It was midafternoon, and there was another storm threatening on the horizon. In his mind everything became clear. He wouldn’t return home without Ava. She was his entire world, but he’d been too afraid to admit it to her.
He’d acted like he had all the time in the world. One thing he should have realized was never the reality.
They all followed the trail of the car to a crossroads, where there were four paths he could have taken.
There had been so much vehicular traffic that the track was obscured.
Chay set up a command post at the intersection that would be in communication with the one he’d left his grandmother in charge of back at the house.
She had Ava’s phone and they were all hoping that once cell signal was restored, Aponi would be able to get a signal for Ava’s smartwatch on the phone.
Chay wasn’t waiting for that to happen.
They had the maps out and everyone was looking for any place where Wayne might take shelter. He had to see the snowstorm coming in the same as they did.
“I’m not going to ask everyone to stay out in the storm,” Chay started. But this was his woman, and there was no way he was going home without her.
They had assembled six men who would help in the search. The rest of the force was handling emergencies in the town and helping people recover from the blizzard.
Chay was the second in command at the station, and his boss had put him in charge of finding Ava. Wes had come out to help, even though he’d been on duty for the last thirty-six hours straight.
“You don’t have to ask. We’re all here to find her. I think we need to work quickly. Lou remembers there were several hunting shacks dotted around the area,” Wes said, clapping his hand on Chay’s shoulder.
“Where were they, Lou?” he asked.
The other man leaned over the map they had spread out on the hood of his truck. He pointed to an old trail that was marked with a thin line. If he remembered correctly, he’d seen it before. On the map he’d looked at of where Fern Hensley had been kept.
“Near as I can remember, about every six miles or so along here.” Lou leaned over the map and drew his finger along it.
Chay continued tracking it, noticing that it lined up with the cabin where Fern was found. If they were similar, then he had an idea of what they were looking for. Something similar to the hiking cabins they had in Scotland.
The cabins had been built in the 1950s and weren’t owned by any one person but were there in case a hunter or hiker got into trouble. No one monitored them, and as far as Chay knew no officer from the tribal police had been out to them in decades.
“The quickest way to handle this would be for everyone to try to target one cabin,” Chay said.
“Agreed,” Wes said.
“We’ll all stay in radio communication and clear the cabins. Keep your eye out for signs of any recent inhabitants,” Chay said, thinking that this investigation might show signs of other women trafficked into the area or rule that theory out. But his focus was on rescuing Ava. It had to be.
“We will.”
They all headed out in different directions. Chay took the cabin the farthest from his property. He saw the other tribal police vehicles peel off every six miles until it was just him. The snow out here was thicker and the clouds overhead kept darkening.
He lowered the snowplow on the front of his truck, driving in the direction that Lou had indicated the cabins were. The path was bumpy and the snow thick, making his progress slow. Frustrated, he turned his head, looking out the driver’s window, and noticed tracks.
Was he seeing things?
He stopped his truck and got out to check it out. As he got closer, he realized that they were indeed tire tracks. Someone had driven over this path since the blizzard.
Getting back in his truck, he turned toward the tracks, plowing his way over until he was following the tire tracks. He kept his pace slow so he didn’t miss anything.
The tracks veered to the left, as did Chay, slowing the truck to a crawl, scanning the horizon in the gathering darkness until he saw a vehicle parked in the distance.
Not wanting to take a chance on alerting whoever was inside to his presence, he got as close as he felt safe and then radioed back to the checkpoint.
“Benally here. I found something. I’m leaving the truck and going on foot to check it out,” he said, giving them his coordinates so they knew where to find him.