Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
WEST
“ W here the fuck is he taking her?” I demanded, my eyes skipping from the road ahead to the map on my phone, Avery, a blinking red dot moving deeper and deeper into the mountains.
“To the middle of fucking nowhere,” Hawk answered, his voice distant through the speaker. He trailed behind, speeding to catch up, watching the same map he’d shared with me.
“I’m going to lose you if we keep going in this direction,” I said, watching as the signal bars on my phone vanished one by one until all I had left was a stubby, single bar. Hawk’s voice faded in and out, and Avery’s red dot on the map had stopped blinking.
No signal meant Hawk’s tracker was useless.No signal meant I’d lose Avery, too.
My heart was a block of ice in my chest. Finding a missing person in these mountains was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.
I’d been on search and rescue before. I knew how easy it was to walk right past someone in the woods and not see them.
And that was when you had an idea where to start looking.
The map refreshed, and I realized I’d missed a turn.
“You got me, Hawk?” I asked, not expecting an answer. The timer on the call clicked upwards. Hawk was there, but not there. From here, I’d be lucky to get another update to the map. I wouldn’t hear from Hawk again until he caught up.
I was on my own.
Rolling to a stop, I threw my SUV into reverse, almost hitting the tail end against the side of the mountain as I negotiated a careful five-point turn to reverse direction on the narrow dirt road.
I crept back down a quarter mile to swing to the left, up a trail barely wide enough for a vehicle.
The fresh tire tracks in front of me told me I wasn’t the first to drive this way.
My heart lurched, thudding against my ribs. How far behind them was I? Ten minutes? Fifteen?
My phone beeped as the call with Hawk officially dropped. The map he’d been sharing hung motionless, Avery’s red dot frozen. My SUV crawled past her last tracked location. She’d come this way, but if they’d made any turns or left this trail, I’d lose her again.
Whatever Haywood had been driving wasn’t equipped for the terrain.
He’d scraped rocks, knocked over fallen branches, and rolled fallen logs, leaving clear evidence of his passage.
Slowly, with every turn of my wheels, I was penning him in.
As long as he kept going, I’d find him. Unless this trail led to an actual road.
Then I’d be screwed. It seemed unlikely based on what I could see on the map. There were no roads for miles.
But where was he taking her? Why here?
This land was privately owned and had been on the market for years.
Developers had dreams of exclusive gated communities with luxury homes and panoramic views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
None of those dreams had come to fruition.
The cost of bringing in basic utilities, paving the road for regular use, and grading to build those mega mansions had been too high to make any kind of development profitable, and the land remained wild and mostly untraveled.
As far as I knew, no one had lived up this way in my lifetime.
What was here? Unless Haywood was just looking for somewhere remote to kill her and dump her body. That was the most logical explanation.
I had to get to Avery.
I pushed forward, pressing on the gas. My police issued SUV wasn’t equipped for this kind of terrain either, but it could handle it better than whatever Haywood was driving.
The woods were tight to the trail, the mountain rising on one side, trees dense on the downhill slope.
If Haywood’s vehicle had left this path, I’d see it.
But so far, the trail stretched in front of me, the ruts of his tires showing me exactly where he’d been.
My gut churned. I was moving too slowly.
I needed to get to Avery before he did whatever he was planning to do.
The trail curved to the right, no longer hugging the side of the mountain as it opened onto a patch of tall grass, the clear blue sky visible through the break in the trees .
A single vehicle, a luxury sedan, sat alone in the clearing. How had Haywood managed to get that thing all the way up here? No one was inside the car that I could see. There wasn’t any movement in the grass surrounding the parked car, nor in the trees at the edge of the clearing.
I threw the SUV into park at the head of the trail, pocketing the keys. He wouldn’t be able to get past me to leave. If he went anywhere, it would have to be on foot. And on foot, I was faster. So was Avery, if she were still able to walk.
I debated for a split second. Stay out of sight or check Haywood’s vehicle?
I wanted to see what was in the car, but the position was too exposed.
Not knowing where Haywood was or what kind of weapon he had made waltzing out into the open risky.
If he’d already clocked me, and I knew there was no way he hadn’t heard me coming, I’d be visible the second I stepped out of my SUV. But there wasn’t any way to help that.
A gunshot shattered the silence, echoing off the mountains and answering my question of whether he was watching.
Whoever had pulled the trigger wasn’t in the clearing, but they were close.
Avery. Her name ricocheted around my mind.
If that bullet had been aimed at her, we were already out of time.
I went for the trees, circling the edge of the clearing, searching for any sign of where they’d gone.
I found what I was looking for two-thirds of the way around the clearing.
A deer path marked by fresh tracks belonging to two people.
I wasn’t a woodsman who could look at footprints and guess height, weight, or shoe size, but I knew enough to see two distinct sets of tracks.
The one in front had dragged their feet, overturing mounds of fallen leaves and making their trail impossible to miss.
Avery.She was alive. There was no blood, which there would have been had he shot her.
My heart pounding, I moved forward.
The woods around me were silent, except for bird calls and the occasional crackle of a small animal moving through the underbrush. I moved as silently as I could, weapon in one hand, eyes scanning for any sign of movement.
I heard him before I saw him, his feet moving fast, leaves rustling, branches breaking as he moved down the trail toward me. I ducked into a thicket of rhododendrons, hidden from view until he was even with me, his eyes on the trail ahead, his weapon held loosely in his hand.
I left the cover of the rhododendrons as he passed, stepping out to press the barrel of my gun against the back of his head. “Drop your weapon.”
He froze, his hand tightening instinctively on the gun. Taking advantage of his surprise, I reached around to wrench the weapon from his hand. Flicking on the safety, I tossed it out of reach.
“Cole Haywood, you’re under arrest.”
“For what?” he asked, hanging on to that snooty lawyer tone even with my gun pressed to the base of his skull.
“Kidnapping to start. Put your hands up and behind your head,” I said.
He lurched as if preparing to run. I’d been ready for him to make a move.
My free hand shot up and closed over his throat, squeezing until he let out a pained squeak of sound.
“Just give me a reason to pull the trigger, and I will,” I promised.
“Where is Avery?” I loosened my hand just enough to let him talk.
“Let me go, and I’ll tell you,” he rasped out.
“The hell I will. Hands behind your head,” I ordered. “Do it now, and I won’t shoot you where you stand. Don’t fucking try me.”
“She’s already dead,” he sneered, his eyes fixed on the trail behind me. Avery was back that way. She had to be.
His words sent icy fear spiking through me even though I knew they were bullshit. “If she were dead,” I said, squeezing his throat tighter, “you wouldn’t sound so nervous. She’s out there somewhere, and since you won’t tell me where, I don’t need you.”
I saw that bit of logic had seeped into his brain as he raised his hands and placed them behind his head.
“Smart move,” I said, slapping a cuff onto one wrist. “I’ll shoot you if I have to, but I’d rather bring you in. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney?—”
Maybe unable to believe he’d finally lost, Cole twisted in my grip, kicking out with one foot.
I followed him to the ground, landing flat on top of him.
Before he could roll, I slammed a knee into his back and rattled off the rest of his rights as I wrenched his free arm behind his back and slapped on the other cuff.
“I have a feeling resisting arrest is going to be the least of the shit we charge you with,” I said, “but I’ll be adding it on anyway. Now, we’ll try this again. Where the fuck is she? ”
Brush crackled. Dead leaves rustled behind me.
I shot a glance over my shoulder, heart leaping, hoping it was Avery. Hawk materialized out of the trees, weapon in hand. He spotted Haywood face down, cuffed, and nodded.
“You want me to bring him back to your vehicle, or go find Avery?”
“You take him,” I said, getting up. “I’m going after Avery. And Hawk?”
He raised a dark eyebrow, pulling his gaze up from where it had rested on Cole Haywood, filled with satisfaction and scorn.
Protecting the Sawyer family was like a religion for Hawk.
Griffen was his closest friend, and Quinn Sawyer was the woman he loved.
They were far more than clients. They were his family, one Hawk had never expected and would kill to protect.
The man on the ground had threatened his people, and Hawk didn’t always play by the rules.
“Hey,” I said sharply, catching his dark eyes as they hit mine. “Haywood needs to make it to jail in one piece, yeah? I have a lot of questions I need answered.”