Chapter 41
RYDER
“Jane!” I shouted, checking both ways before I ran across the road.
Mayor Cameron laughed at me as I caught up to her on the sidewalk. “Jaywalking? You’re lucky Mav didn’t see you. He might have written you a ticket just to make his day a little more interesting.”
“Yeah, well…I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now.”
“Anything I need to be worried about?”
“Not at the moment,” I muttered under my breath. “Listen, I have to cancel our lunch.” I pulled the contracts out of my briefcase and handed them over. “The finalized contracts. Get them signed and I’ll take care of the rest.”
She sighed heavily. “The council isn’t going to like this.”
“Then they should have found a different solution. I’ve gotta run. Let me know how it goes.”
“Sure,” she answered as I turned and headed for the parking lot. I had to talk to Jeff about renting the cabin once again. Hopefully, it wasn’t already let to someone else. The last thing I wanted was to find Bianca an apartment in town where everyone could gossip about why she was here.
I dialed Jeff for the fourth time in the past thirty minutes, pissed when he didn’t answer. Ellie was probably laughing it up right now about how I was freaking out because he wasn’t answering.
“Jeff,” I said as his voicemail picked up. “Give me a call when you get this. I need that rental if it’s still available. And no, I’m not moving back there. And tell Ellie I have to talk to her when she gets back since you guys think it’s so funny not to answer my calls.”
I hung up, shoving my phone in my pocket as I crossed the street once again. Only this time, I didn’t make it before a truck swerved in front of me, blocking my path.
Michael leaned out the window, his face pinched in anger. “Get in. There’s been an accident.”
My pulse spiked at his words, and I rushed around to the passenger side, tossing my briefcase in the back as I climbed in.
“What happened?”
His fist tightened on the wheel as he hit the gas. Ahead of us, Mav backed out of his spot, lights flashing as he peeled down the street.
I immediately pulled out my phone and dialed Ellie’s number, only for it to go straight to voicemail. “Ellie, answer the phone. I need you to answer.”
But of course, she didn’t. My throat tightened as every possibility under the sun ran through my mind.
“Tell me what happened,” I said, my voice as rough as sandpaper.
“Jeff called me. I barely understood a word he said,” he bit out.
“Okay, what did you understand?”
I knew it was bad. Nausea swirled in my gut as Michael slowly turned and looked at me with a mixture of sympathy and anger.
The bottom dropped out. He didn’t need to say a word. I already knew it was fucking bad.
“He said he was shot.”
“Shot?”
“I’m sorry, man,” he sighed, rubbing a hand across his jaw. “He said he got Ellie.”
“He got Ellie? What the fuck does that mean?” I panicked. “Who got Ellie? What else did he say?”
“He didn’t say anything! He fucking passed out. I stayed on the line until it died.”
“That’s not fucking good enough, Mike! Where the hell is Ellie?”
“I don’t know!” he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth with every word that left his lips. “Don’t you think I would fucking tell you if I knew? My brother was fucking shot, and for all I know, he’s already fucking dead!”
He drew a deep breath before continuing. “Look, that’s literally all he said. I don’t know anything more. The closest town is Seeley Lake. Mav already called them and requested an ambulance. With any luck, they’ll get to him in time, and then we can get some fucking answers.”
“What about the crime scene? Who’s handling that?”
“Seeley Lake.”
“They’ve got like four hundred people in that town. There’s no fucking way they can handle something like this.”
“And they’ll call in backup. Mav is handling it, okay? Right now, we need to get to Jeff.”
“No, we need to get to the crime scene,” I argued.
“It’s out in the middle of nowhere. There’s not a damn thing the crime scene can tell us right now.”
“There could be clues—”
“And no one is around for miles,” he snapped. “There’s no footage. We don’t know what kind of vehicle approached them. We don’t know how many there were. What we need is to talk to Jeff.”
I hated everything he was saying, even though I knew he was right. But if Jeff was shot, he could be in surgery for hours before we talked to him. And what if he couldn’t tell us anything useful? There had to be something I could do other than sit around on my hands and wait for answers.
“I know this is hard,” he sighed. “It is for me, too. I already asked Wayne to start checking out footage in either direction on that road, but it’s a long shot. There are so many side roads…this guy could have come from anywhere.”
“It’s a start,” I muttered, staring out the window at the passing landscape.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I did something I hadn’t done since I was a kid.
I prayed.
I prayed fucking hard.
And with every word I spoke to God, my chest hurt a little more, the pain inside me grew to something overwhelming that I couldn’t swallow down. I could lose the woman I loved.
But there was something that threatened to tear me apart inside, and it had nothing to do with me.
Someone took her. They took my Ellie, the sweet woman who had brightened my life when everything was so dark. And I couldn’t help but wonder if we got her back—
No. When we got her back.
Because there was no fucking way the world would keep turning if we didn’t.
When we got her back, would she still be the same Ellie?
God, I hoped we weren’t too late.
“We’ll find her, Ryder,” Mike rumbled.
“Before it’s too late?”
He glanced at me, then back to the road without another word. Because we both knew that shit like this happened every day. People got in accidents and lost their lives. Others were murdered.
And yet, the world kept turning.
Everyone else moved on, while those mourning the loss of their loved ones had to deal with the fallout.
For the first time, I was no longer on the sidelines. I was living it, and it was fucking hell.
I glanced out the window again at the horizon. “Stay strong, Ellie. I’ll find you.”