Chapter Twelve
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Cassidy mentally repeated what Ginny Lang had just said. Marlene. In danger. She certainly hadn’t expected the woman to say that.
Kincade turned from the body on the floor, tension hardening his features. He didn’t speak, but his eyes said everything. They needed to move. Now.
Ginny’s voice trembled, rasping through her dry throat.
“I heard him.” She tipped her head toward the dead guy.
“About a half hour ago. He was on the phone with someone. I couldn’t hear the other person, but when he hung up, he said Marlene was as good as dead.
That a team was already on the way to finish it. ”
Cassidy’s breath hitched. “You’re sure that’s exactly what he said?”
“I think so,” Ginny murmured, tears spilling down her bruised cheeks.
“I tried to escape earlier. He caught me. Maybe he said it just to scare me, to keep me in line. I don’t know.
But what if it wasn’t just talk?” She looked at Cassidy with desperate, bloodshot eyes. “Please. Please protect my daughter.”
Kincade already had his phone out, thumbs flying to compose the text. “Jericho’s on it,” he relayed. “Told him to get to Marlene. He won’t go in alone. He’ll bring backup.”
Cassidy nodded, adrenaline still humming in her veins. “Let’s get Ginny to the hospital. We can get there faster than any ambulance would make it out here.”
Kincade moved to Ginny’s side and gently lifted her from the chair. She leaned into him, unsteady but conscious, her legs clearly weak from however long she’d been bound.
“We’ll make sure your daughter is safe,” he said, steadying her. “And we’ll figure out who’s behind this.”
Cassidy opened the door, eyes sweeping the area again as they stepped outside. She didn’t see anyone, but she kept her gun drawn. Kept watch around them. The last thing they needed was to be ambushed.
Kincade carried Ginny carefully, cradling her against him while he, too, fired glances around them. Cassidy opened the SUV’s rear door, and he laid the woman across the back seat. Ginny winced but didn’t cry out. She looked pale, exhausted, but conscious—and determined to stay that way.
Cassidy got into the passenger seat as Kincade climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. Gravel crunched under the tires as they pulled away from the trailer and headed toward the highway.
“This will get back to the cops,” Kincade said after a beat, keeping his eyes on the road. “I don’t see a way around it. She’ll need a full medical workup, and someone’s going to ask questions.”
Cassidy sighed. “Yeah. I know.”
She didn’t like the idea of Becker or Moran getting their hands on Ginny, not after everything they’d learned. But Ginny needed care, and they needed answers. They were out of time for secrets.
Cassidy turned in her seat to face the woman stretched out behind her. “Ginny… do you know who took you?”
Ginny shook her head slowly. “No. I never saw a face. I was leaving the diner… back parking lot. Late. Someone came up behind me and hit me with a stun gun. Next thing I knew, I was in a vehicle, hands and feet tied, hood over my head.” Her voice cracked.
“I didn’t know where I was until I woke up in that trailer. ”
Cassidy reached back, gently touching Ginny’s arm. “You’re safe now.”
Ginny’s voice broke again, soft and ragged. “But is Marlene okay?”
“I’m sure she is,” Cassidy murmured, but it was lip service, something meant to keep Ginny calm. She had no idea if Marlene was all right, and she needed to find out.
Cassidy pulled out her phone and tapped Marlene’s contact, holding it to her ear as the line rang once… twice… three times.
No answer.
She tried again. Nothing.
“Come on, Marlene,” she whispered under her breath. “Pick up.” But Marlene didn’t.
She ended the call with her jaw clenching even more than it already had been. Cassidy didn’t want to think the worst had happened, didn’t want to believe the warning Ginny had given them had come too late. But her gut twisted with dread.
Kincade’s voice cut into her thoughts. “Ginny… was anything familiar about the man guarding you? A voice, a tattoo, the way he walked?”
Ginny lay still, her eyes fluttering open again. “No,” she replied after several moments. “I didn’t get a good look at him until you took the tape off. Before that, I only saw shadows. Heard his voice a few times, but it was rough. Angry.”
Cassidy didn’t respond, but the frustration rolled through her. They needed a lead. A name. Something.
But Ginny didn’t have it.
And the trailer? That might have been their best shot at finding some kind of link to the person or persons behind this.
Now that the police would be crawling all over it though, she had a bad feeling about how much possible evidence would actually make it to the right people.
Or if it would even survive the chain of custody.
She stared out the windshield, her mind racing, when she caught Kincade out of the corner of her eye. He was already whispering a voice text into his phone.
A moment later, he glanced at her. “I just sent word to Ruby. Told her to get a team out to the trailer before the cops do.”
Cassidy felt a rush of relief. “Good.”
If anyone could preserve what mattered and uncover what others might try to hide, it was Ruby Maverick’s people.
The hospital came into view just as the sky dipped into the first shades of dusk, the sun stretching golden-orange across the Hill Country horizon.
Kincade pulled into the emergency drive and stopped near the sliding entrance doors.
The automatic lights buzzed on overhead, casting the SUV in a sterile white glow.
Cassidy’s phone buzzed in her lap. And she saw the name on the screen. Marlene.
“Marlene, are you okay?” she blurted the moment she answered.
There was a brief pause, then, “Yeah. Why?”
Cassidy blinked. “Because I thought you might be in trouble.”
“I’m fine,” Marlene replied, voice even. “Why?”
She glanced at Ginny in the back seat, who had her eyes closed but was still breathing steadily. “We found your mother,” Cassidy informed her. “She’s alive but bruised. We’re bringing her to the county hospital now.”
There was another beat of silence. “I’ll be there soon,” Marlene said, and the line went dead.
Cassidy slowly lowered the phone from her ear and stared at the screen. “She didn’t even ask how her mom was.”
Kincade’s jaw flexed as he reached for his phone again. “We’ll need to keep Ginny under guard. No telling who else might want her quiet.”
He used the hands-free to compose another text, and Cassidy knew he was looping in Ruby or one of the Maverick Ops teams. She was beyond thankful for Maverick Ops’ vast resources, but there could soon be a fly in this particular ointment.
“If Sheriff Becker’s part of this,” she whispered to Kincade, “he could pull jurisdiction. Force your people to walk away from the scene.”
Kincade locked eyes with her. “Then we don’t let him. We stay ahead of him. And we keep Ginny safe so she can tell us everything she knows.”
Cassidy nodded slowly and turned in her seat. She leaned over, brushing a hand across Ginny’s shoulder. “Marlene’s okay,” she murmured. “She’s on her way here now.”
Ginny’s breath caught, and her face crumpled with emotion. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks as she let out a shaky sob.
“Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank you. I—I was so afraid something had happened to her.”
Cassidy’s attention shifted back to Kincade when he stepped out of the SUV and jogged toward the emergency entrance. He disappeared through the sliding glass doors. Moments later, a pair of nurses and a doctor pushed through with a gurney, moving quickly toward them.
The back door opened, and Cassidy stepped aside as Kincade returned to help ease Ginny onto the stretcher. The nurses took over immediately, one checking her vitals while the other steadied her head and shoulders.
“We’ve got her,” one of them said.
They rolled Ginny into the ER, and Cassidy and Kincade followed close behind as the team directed her into an exam room.
Ginny clutched Cassidy’s hand tightly, her voice raw. “I’m so thankful Marlene’s safe. I know I haven’t always… I haven’t always been the mother she needed. But I never wanted her hurt. Never.”
Cassidy squeezed her hand back, heart aching at the truth in her voice. “You’re here now. That matters.”
Ginny nodded weakly, her bruised face streaked with tears. “Why did this happen? Why would someone take me?”
Cassidy hesitated, unsure how much to say. “We’re not sure yet.”
But inside, her stomach twisted. Because they were sure. It all came back to Alisha’s murder. To Travis digging too deep. To Daniel Harlan winding up dead.
And the deeper they got, the closer they were to cracking a truth someone would do anything to keep buried.
A nurse in pink scrubs entered the room, her demeanor calm but efficient. She glanced at Cassidy and Kincade and then moved to Ginny’s side.
“I’m going to check your vitals and do a quick assessment,” she explained to Ginny.
She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Ginny’s arm and slid a pulse oximeter onto her finger. After jotting down the readings, she leaned in slightly. “Can you tell me where it hurts most?”
Ginny gestured weakly toward her right side.
The nurse carefully lifted the edge of her shirt to examine the bruising, her eyes narrowing as she noted the deep discoloration spreading along Ginny’s ribs.
“I’m not going to press yet,” she said. “But it looks like we’ll need X-rays. Possibly fractured ribs.”
When Ginny nodded faintly, the nurse adjusted the gurney. “We’re taking her to imaging,” the nurse told Cassidy and Kincade. “You can follow, but I’ll need you to wait outside the room.”
Cassidy and Kincade followed silently as they moved through the corridor toward radiology. But once they reached the exam area, a tech stepped in and held up a hand, motioning for them to stay put. They did, and Cassidy watched Ginny disappear behind the double doors.