Chapter 35
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Andi stood on the sidewalk outside the hotel, watching the team load bags beneath the tour bus, the early morning air cool enough to sting her lungs.
She’d slept poorly—again—but this time it wasn’t just images of Gina or the grainy footage looping through her mind.
It was the weight of leaving when they still didn’t have answers.
They’d called the real Pam last night. Fake Pam still hadn’t returned her call, and Andi knew she wouldn’t. The silence felt deliberate now—another door quietly closed.
Andi could still hear Real Pam’s voice, tight and strained as she tried to sound steady. “So the police are taking this seriously now?”
“Yes,” Andi told her. “They’ve officially opened the investigation. They questioned Colin and ruled him out. Things are finally moving.”
There’d been a long pause on the line. Then Pam said, “I hate that you’re leaving.”
The words had lodged somewhere behind Andi’s ribs.
“So do I,” Andi said, forcing the promise to sound stronger than she felt. “But we’re not done. We’ll keep working this—from wherever we are.”
The doors of the bus hissed open, pulling her back to the present.
She climbed aboard, the familiar scent of diesel and coffee settling around her.
Jack, the driver, glanced up from his clipboard and smiled. “Morning.”
The man looked to be in his forties, easygoing, with laugh lines that suggested he didn’t let schedules—or life—get to him too much. They had two different drivers who operated the bus. Andi had casually chatted with both of them.
“San Francisco treat you okay?”
“Mostly,” Andi said. “Though I think it liked us more than we liked leaving.”
He chuckled. “That’s the trick. Gets you attached just before you go.” He nodded toward the windshield. “Looking forward to heading south today?”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for Los Angeles.”
“You’ll have some warmer days down there. Traffic will be a mess either way.” He grinned. “I’ll get you there in one piece.”
“I appreciate that,” Andi said. “We’re pretty fond of our pieces.”
Jack laughed. “Seat belts help. Coffee too.”
She moved down the aisle and slid into a seat by the window. Duke settled in across from her, already scrolling through messages on his phone, jaw set in that familiar, focused way.
Others filed on, murmuring good mornings, clutching backpacks and travel mugs.
Rupert climbed aboard last and immediately launched into instructions. Andi tuned him out, resting her forehead briefly against the cool glass.
The bus eased away from the curb, the city beginning to slide past.
Andi watched it go, her thoughts drifting back to Pam—to the promise she’d made and the uneasy certainty that distance didn’t mean disengagement.
It just meant they’d have to work harder.
San Francisco blurred by as the bus rolled onto the highway. Mariella had insisted on travelling along the Pacific Coast Highway, despite the extra hours it would add and the warning Jack had given about tight curves and slow stretches.
Andi opened her laptop.
If Gina’s case connected to the case in Portland—and everything in her gut said it did—then the perpetrator wouldn’t stop there. Patterns rarely did.
She pulled up their tour schedule and reviewed it.
Seattle.
Portland.
San Francisco.
LA.
They still needed to hit Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Boise.
That would conclude their West Coast tour.
They were talking about doing an East Coast tour in the spring if this one was successful—and by almost everyone’s standards, this had been successful.
As they continued their ten-hour drive, she cross-referenced dates with local news databases, missing person bulletins, and buried articles that never made national headlines.
Most searches turned up nothing.
Some returned too much.
She bookmarked anything that even brushed close—late-night disappearances, witness reports, women who’d gone missing but hadn’t been taken.
She leaned back, staring out the window at the open road and pale morning sky.
Another thought surfaced.
She’d promised to meet an old friend from Texas while she was in town.
She hadn’t seen her former classmate in years—someone from a different life. A life before law school. Before podcasts and tour buses. Before crowds who wanted answers she couldn’t always give.
The idea of seeing a familiar face she trusted—someone untouched by this case or this fear—felt like a small mercy.
Andi glanced up from her laptop as the bus curved along the coast.
The view stole her breath. Cliffs dropped sharply into the Pacific, the water far below a sheet of blue-gray glass broken by white spray. The road hugged the edge, narrow and winding, guardrail thin as a suggestion. Sunlight caught the waves just right, making them glitter like something harmless.
For a moment, the world looked deceptively calm.
She looked back down at her screen, at the growing list of notes and unanswered questions. She knew one thing with certainty: They might be leaving San Francisco . . . but these crimes weren’t staying behind.
They were following the team.
They’d utilized Ben’s services again. He seemed more than happy to help. Right now, he was looking into April Altman for them. Maybe he would discover something.
Just then, the bus seemed to accelerate as they approached a treacherous looking curve.
Andi frowned and glanced toward the front.
Jack’s voice carried faintly down the aisle, low and tight. Not meant for anyone else. “That’s . . . not right.”
Her pulse skipped.
She watched his shoulders tense, saw him press down on the brake pedal.
Nothing happened.
Jack muttered something under his breath—one sharp word she couldn’t quite make out—and the bus lurched forward as the road curved again, the ocean suddenly much closer than it should have been.
Andi’s laptop slid against her thigh, and her stomach dropped.
Something was definitely wrong.
Duke felt it immediately—the subtle wrongness in motion, the way the engine’s hum stayed steady while the road demanded otherwise.
He was on his feet before the second jolt, moving fast down the aisle as murmurs rippled behind him.
“Duke?” Andi’s voice sounded tight as she called to him.
He didn’t answer.
Jack’s hands were locked on the wheel, knuckles white, eyes flicking between the road and the dashboard. The coastline loomed through the windshield—cliffs, sky, ocean.
All too close.
“Brake failure,” Jack said, his jaw clenched. “I’m trying to downshift.”
The bus hit the curve harder than it should have.
Someone gasped.
Duke braced himself against the rail near the front, boots sliding slightly as the bus swayed. The guardrail flashed by outside—metal, narrow, unforgiving.
“How bad?” Duke asked.
Jack exhaled sharply. “I’ve got partial response. Not enough. If I can scrub speed before the next bend, we might—”
The bus lurched again.
This time, the tilt was unmistakable.
A scream cut through the air, followed by a chorus of panicked breaths as bodies were thrown the opposite way.
Duke planted himself, one hand gripping the seatback, the other gripping the rail. His mind narrowed to angles and distance and momentum.
Too fast. Too close.
“Hold on!” Jack shouted.
The road curved sharply left.
The bus veered right.
For one suspended, breathless second, Duke saw nothing through the windshield but open sky and the violent drop beyond the guardrail.
And he didn’t know if they were going to make it back.