Chapter 38
Sutton
Lee and I enter the door to the holding room, and I stop dead.
Memories flood forward of sitting in this room with Alice on the first day we met.
Now, it’s been transformed into a temporary command center.
The conference-style table has been pushed against the far wall.
Multiple maps at the state, county, and town levels are pinned to the wall beside a giant whiteboard with a timeline written in red and black marker on the left with a blown-up photo of Alice and her stats in the center.
On the right is a photo of Lanighan and his last known location.
She’s been missing for hours. At least three. Maybe more. Nobody knows exactly how much time passed from when she went missing to when Nellie was found.
“What’ve we got?” I ask the room at large. The familiar smell of paper and coffee does nothing to settle my stomach.
Silas’s head snaps up from where he talks with Marlowe, a sheet of paper in his hands.
“Sutton.”
“I asked what we’ve got.”
My brother approaches slowly, his face guarded. “Security cameras in the area didn’t pick up anything. K-9 lost her at the edge of the sidewalk. She likely entered a vehicle on the west side of the park.”
The west side. No houses face the west side.
“What else?”
“Traffic cams in the area didn’t pick up the Genesis G70. If it’s Lanighan, he’s using a different vehicle. We’re following up on seventeen vehicles that left town during the hour window we believe she was taken. So far, we’ve located four of them.”
“Nellie said there were two men. Any idea who the accomplice is?”
Silas chews his lip for a moment. “No.”
I settle my hands on my hips and drop my chin to my chest, fighting for control. After two breaths, I dig out my phone.
“This came through twenty minutes ago.” I pass Silas my cell. Captain leans over his shoulder and scans the screen.
“What’s this?” he asks.
“She’s a Type 1 diabetic. This is the app that monitors her glucose. If it’s transmitting data, she must have hit Wi-Fi or a cell tower.”
“Calloway,” Captain barks.
“On it, Captain.” Calloway turns back to his computer.
Silas’s eyes on me feel like a scalding ray from the sun.
“What?”
His gaze dips to my phone, then back to my face. “How long can she hold at this number?”
I sink my teeth into my bottom lip before letting it go. “I don’t know.” As I glance at my phone again, a new number loads.
312
“Calloway!” I bark. “It’s live now. Get a fucking answer on that!”
“I’ve got it.” Deputy Kramer joins our circle. “The carrier got back to our earlier request. One tower hit off County Road 84 at 3:23 p.m.”
Everyone checks their watch.
“That was twenty minutes ago,” Silas says.
“About the time my app updated. How close is that?”
Captain moves across the room to the map. “Over here.” He points to an area at least fifty miles from here.
“Jesus. What’s the radius on that hit?” I ask Kramer.
“About eight miles,” he answers.
A pit opens up in my stomach. “Eight miles? What is that, a couple of hundred square miles? With terrain, that’s at least a few days of searching on foot. She doesn’t have days. Hell, I don’t know if she even has hours.”
“What else does it say about the phone?” Silas asks Kramer.
“That’s it. Just the one ping. The coverage must be too intermittent to connect.”
“I want a new update with the transmission that just came through. I want to know if it’s the same tower or a different one,” I demand, and Kramer nods. I pocket my phone. “Text me those coordinates.”
Silas grabs my shoulder, halting my advance toward the door. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to find her. She’s at least an hour away. I need to move in that direction in case we get another hit off a cell tower.”
Silas exchanges a look with our captain. “I’m going with you. We’ll take my SUV.”
I nod. Standing around discussing isn’t going to find her any faster. I pick up the bag I packed at my house and throw it over my shoulder.
“I’m driving,” Silas says, passing me on the way out the door.
“Holy fucking shit, Sutton!” Calloway calls out. My neck whips around so fast it kinks. “Lanighan’s livestream just lit up.”
“What?”
“He’s live now,” Calloway says.
Before my next breath, I cross the room and lean over the back of his chair. The video is at an angle. Whatever is recording is on the floor. A thick layer of dust covers what appears to be concrete under a table. A white sneaker swings into view.
“There! That’s Alice’s shoe.”
As I say it, a disembodied voice comes over the speakers.
“You ruined my life.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did. You handed over information, and you were about to do it again.” A pause. “And I can’t let you do that.”
“I wouldn’t.”
Something hard hits the table, followed by the sound of choking sobs.
My brows knit as I stare at the screen. “That’s not Lanighan.”
“It’s you or her, sweetheart. One way or another, I’ll keep you quiet.”
“Me,” Alice says instantly. “Do whatever you want to me. Just let her go.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. I don’t much like children, but you? I wouldn’t mind giving that a go.”
“Fuck you.” Her voice is a terrified rasp.
She grunts as if in pain. I lean over Calloway, hand flat on his desk as if it’ll bring me closer to her.
A scuffle ensues, the metal chair scraping across the floor. Alice’s feet come fully into view, the tips of them just barely brushing the floor. My body fills with a fury so hot it feels like someone shoved a scalding fire poker down my throat.
He laughs a sick, satisfied cackle.
The livestream suddenly ends.
I turn so quickly that Calloway has to dive out of his chair. “Get an emergency geofence warrant on that cell tower NOW!”
“Go!” Calloway demands, righting himself. “I’ll send the address. Head north until County Road 84 if you don’t hear from me before then.”
“I’d better hear from you before then,” I snarl.
Captain starts issuing instructions to my colleagues, and as a team, they move out behind us, but Silas and I are already ten steps ahead.
“Lock it down, Sutton.”
I try as hard as I can, but I can’t seem to regain control. The scuffle and the words replay in my head on a loop.
“Did you hear those screams?” I ask as we jump into Silas’s SUV and tear out of the lot with lights and sirens blaring.
“Those weren’t from Alice.” He says my thoughts out loud.
It’s you or her.
I don’t much like children.
I jam my index finger and thumb into my eyes. “She thinks they have Nellie. They’re using my daughter to manipulate her, and Alice doesn’t know that she’s safe at home.”
Do whatever you want to me.
Jesus Christ. That burn in my gut grows hotter. She just sacrificed herself.
My phone buzzes from my pocket. I yank it out, half of me expecting Alice to call, the other half dreading who might be on the other side.
Another alert. “Her app is transmitting again.”
I click to open the app. Every second it takes to load feels like a heavy weight growing on my chest.
A gray bar sits at the top of the screen, something I’ve seen a few times before. Two words that nearly send me into total collapse.
Signal Loss.
“What is it?” Silas takes his eyes off the highway, the weight of his stare holding me together.
I show him the screen.
His brows knit. “She’s out of range again. Why does your face look like that?”
“This is different.” My voice is a jagged rasp. “If she doesn’t have service, the app doesn’t do anything. It just waits. This is what it does when she takes the sensor off to change it.” I lock eyes with my brother, refusing to say the other thing. The worst thing. The unimaginable thing.
That if she lost her sensor, her pod might be gone too and she might not be able to receive insulin.
Or maybe the signal is lost because she’s dead.
“This isn’t Jolene,” Silas says, his voice hard with conviction.
But he can’t possibly know that I’m not about to walk into the same fucking situation. “Sure as fuck feels like it. The difference is, I didn’t love Jolene. I love Alice.”
Which means that losing her will destroy me.
“You aren’t going to lose her,” Silas responds as if he can read my thoughts.
“Drive faster,” I quietly demand.
The RPMs on the SUV’s dash creep higher.