Chapter 28
Where is She?
Jacob
My foot is welded to the gas pedal, the engine howling so loud it drowns the pounding in my skull. The night is a blur—trees, streetlights, shadows streaking past like ghosts I can’t outrun.
My chest is heaving, every breath a jagged knife carving me open from the inside. Tears prick my eyes before I can stop them, and then they’re burning hot trails down my face. I can’t wipe them. Can’t see straight. Can’t think of anything but her.
Summer.
Her laugh—soft, disbelieving the first time it ever slipped past her lips when I teased her.
Her hair—the way the light caught it that afternoon in her daddy’s garden, when I knew, knew, she was mine whether she wanted to be or not.
Her mouth—the way it shaped my name last night when she told me she loved me.
The memory guts me, rips me raw. Because that might’ve been the first and last time I’ll hear it.
My grip tightens on the wheel until my knuckles scream, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the sound of that voice on the phone.
That voice.
Jackson.
I know it like I know the sound of my own gun loading. Rough. Mocking. That bastard’s laugh still rattles in my bones from all those years ago when I first heard it echo through the courthouse.
He was in my house.
With her.
My stomach heaves. Rage and terror choke me so hard my vision goes white.
I swerve, nearly clipping a tree, the branches scraping across the roof with a metallic shriek.
I slam the wheel back straight, the tires screaming across gravel, only to fishtail near a dustbin and clip it hard.
It skids, toppling behind me, scattering trash across the street.
I don’t slow down.
I can’t.
I can’t get the picture out of my head—Summer, barefoot, bleeding, with that fucker’s knife at her throat. Her wide eyes locked on me in terror I swore she’d never wear again.
My chest collapses, sobs tearing loose from somewhere deep and savage. I’m fucking crying—me. I never cry. But now? I can’t stop. My vision blurs with salt, hands slippery on the wheel, my body shaking apart.
Because the man who’s got her—the man who’s touching her—is the one ghost I never thought I’d face again.
Jackson fucking Moore.
I’ve burned the radio lines raw, my voice still rattling inside my head as I gun it down the last stretch of road. Carter. Haywood. Every goddamn deputy I can reach.
Get there. Don’t let anything happen to her.
If they’ve done their job, she’ll be safe. She’ll be on the sofa when I walk in—hair tangled from sleep, eyes wet with fear and anger, ready to scream at me for not telling her the truth about Constance and Adelaide. I’ll take it. I’ll take every ounce of her fury if it means she’s still breathing.
We can get through anything. We have to.
I want to tell her that we’ll move away. We’ll start a new life. I’ll give up my badge and we can stop running. Let’s do it all properly. Let’s do it her way. But I need to get back to her first.
I tear down the bend, back tires spitting gravel like shrapnel, and skid into the driveway. Headlights flash against steel.
I kill the engine and fling myself out of the truck, barely aware of the slam of the door behind me. My boots hit gravel, crunching hard, lungs burning as I sprint toward the porch. Relief flickers for half a second. They’re here. She’s safe.
Then my stomach drops. The front door yawns open. Not kicked. Not forced. Just open. Waiting.
“Fuck,” I breathe, already moving faster, already knowing.
The first thing that hits me when I cross the threshold isn’t sight—it’s smell.
Thick. Metallic. The putrid stench of iron that no amount of bleach can hide. Blood.
The world narrows. My vision tunnels.
Haywood is slumped against the wall a few feet away, mouth open, a string of blood still trailing from the corner down his chin. There’s a black hole in his chest the size of my fist. His gun’s still in his hand, but cold.
For a second—one terrible, suspended second—I can’t move. My deputy. My friend. Cut down in my house like he was nothing.
And then I hear it.
A muffled sound, wet with panic. A strangled cry that slices right through the haze.
Female.
Summer.
“SUMMER!” My throat rips as I scream her name, raw, primal. The walls shake with it. I’m already moving, boots pounding against the hardwood, my breath tearing out of me like gunfire.
I take the stairs three at a time, my body running on nothing but terror. My chest is a furnace, every inhale thick and choking. Her name leaves me again, louder, broken: “SUMMER!”
The door to my bedroom is shut. I slam through it so hard the hinges shriek. And what I see….
Constance and Adelaide.
They’re on the floor, bound with rope that’s dug into their wrists until they’re bleeding.
Gags stuffed into their mouths; their faces streaked with tears.
Constance’s nose is bloodied, her left eye swollen shut.
Adelaide’s hair is a tangled mess, chunks missing like someone’s ripped it out by the fistful.
Their eyes dart up to me the second I burst in, wide with desperation, screaming silently behind the cloth.
The air is thick with the smell of sweat and rope and fear.
But she isn’t there. Summer isn’t there.
My heart stops.
The world tilts sideways, the sound sucked right out of it.
My chest caves, but the next breath explodes out of me as a roar so violent it feels like it cracks my ribs. “WHERE IS SHE?!”
I tear across the room, my boots kicking the floor, the blood in my ears so loud it drowns out their muffled sobs.
I drop to my knees beside Constance, rip the gag out of her mouth so hard she cries out, spittle and blood streaking her chin. She gasps, choking, eyes wild.
But I don’t hear her words. I only hear silence.
Because Summer’s gone.
I pull out my pocketknife and slice through the rope that has her bound, and then she does the same for Adelaide.
Constance rips the gag out of Adelaide’s mouth and pulls her close, trying to calm her, but the second her eyes lock on me she snaps. She’s up in my face, shoving at my chest with all the strength she’s got left. Adelaide staggers forward too, both of them pushing me, their voices like knives.
Constance screams. Her voice cracks. “You weren’t here!”
Adelaide’s hands are bloody, trembling as she shoves at me, shrieking.
But their words don’t land.
Nothing lands.
There’s only this high-pitched shriek drilling through my skull—like tinnitus cranked up until it feels like my brain’s splitting. I press my palms to my ears, but it doesn’t stop. The whole world is nothing but static.
My body moves on autopilot, staggering past them. I hit the en-suite doorway.
And freeze.
Blood.
It’s everywhere. Smeared across the tile. Spattered up the wall. A mirror lies shattered across the floor, glittering with red where it caught her skin.
And the window—Christ. The tiny bathroom window is cracked, glass fractured like she tried to fight her way out. Even her small frame would never have fit. She must’ve known that. Must’ve been desperate enough to try anyway. She knew they were here. She fought to get away.
My knees give out.
I collapse onto the cold tile, my hands shaking as I reach out. My fingers land in the still-wet smear of her blood. It coats me instantly—tacky, warm. Proof.
Proof that I wasn’t here. Proof that they touched her. Proof that I fucking failed.
My chest convulses and I fold in on myself, dragging my bloody hand over my face. The sob rips out of me before I can stop it, raw and animal, tearing my throat apart.
I don’t care that Adelaide is screaming. I don’t care that Constance is pounding her fists against my back. I don’t care that Haywood is lying dead downstairs.
All I see is red.
All I hear is her voice, her laugh, her whispers tangled in my sheets, her saying she loved me.
And now silence.
Silence and blood.
I curl into the mess of it, my hand still buried in the stain she left behind, and I fucking sob. Not just in sadness. No. With the fury of a thousand wars carried in one body.
Carter bursts in, three more of my men on his heels. His face is pale, eyes blown wide when he takes in the blood, the smashed mirror, the wreckage of me curled on the tile like a fucking child.
He mutters something inaudible —then he’s on me. A jug from the sink slams against my skin, icy water spilling down my head and soaking through my shirt. The shock rips the static out of me in one savage tear, dragging the world back into focus.
“Snap the fuck out of it!” Carter roars, grabbing my collar, shaking me hard enough to rattle my teeth. “This isn’t going to help her!”
And he’s right. God help me, he’s right.
My lungs claw for air, rage scorching through the grief. My body jerks upright before I even know I’m moving. My bloodied hand shoots out, finds Constance. I fist her collar, slam her back against the wall so hard the plaster cracks.
Her scream pierces the room, high and desperate.
“What the fuck happened?!” I bellow, the sound tearing out of my chest like it might rip me open. My grip on her tightens, too tight, and her small frame buckles under my hold. “TELL ME!”
Adelaide tries to drag me off, slapping at my arm, sobbing, “You’re hurting her! Stop—please!”
But I can’t stop. The need to know, to see, to understand what they did to Summer shreds through me. Constance’s voice breaks as the words spill out in a torrent, every syllable a knife.
“They came—” She’s choking, gasping around my grip. “They came to our house. Forced their way in—three of them—”
“Who?” My spit sprays her face, the snarl unrecognizable even to me.
“One was lanky—strong—he said his name was Vince. One was fat—rugged—Donnie. And then….” She whimpers. “Then there was Jackson.”
The name is gasoline on open flame. My knuckles dig into her shoulder blades as I shove her harder against the wall, fury pounding through me.
Her head jerks in a desperate nod. “He was… big—dark curly hair—”
Images of him slam into me. His efforts to fight me off when I put him in cuffs. His smug face at the courthouse. Then I stop for a moment, and it hits me— his eyes. His features. He looked a lot like— Benny in a peculiar sort of way.
No. Surely not.
Adelaide’s voice cuts in, frantic, breaking. “Donnie and Vince—th-they came for us. We—we tried, Jacob. We tried. But they were stronger.”
Constance’s body shakes in my grip as she blurts the rest, words tumbling over one another, a confession, an execution.
“They brought us here. We sat in the dark—watched you drive away. The second you were gone, they pulled in. We screamed—we fought—God, we fought. But Jackson….” Her voice cracks, dissolves into sobs— “He gave her a choice.”
My blood freezes.
“What. Choice.”
Constance sobs so hard she can barely breathe. “He said—he said if she didn’t go with them—he’d cut our throats and take her anyway.”
Her knees buckle under my grip. Adelaide sobs harder, covering her mouth.
“She handed herself over, Jacob,” Constance cries, words tearing out of her like flesh from bone. “We tried—we tried—we begged her not to—but she handed herself over.”
Silence drops like a guillotine. Her words cut deep. I feel it split me down the middle, leaving nothing but blood and hate in the hollowed-out cage of my chest.
Summer. My Summer. Choosing chains over their death. Offering herself up like a lamb to the slaughter.
And I wasn’t here. I wasn’t fucking here.
My grip slackens. Constance collapses against the wall, clutching her throat, sobbing. Adelaide hauls her into her arms, their bodies folding together on the bloody tile.
I stagger back. The room tilts. I press my palm to the wall, my breath tearing, and I swear I can still hear Summer’s voice—her soft, trembling “I love you”—before she was dragged into the dark.
The sound nearly buckles me. But then the rage fills the cracks. Jackson Moore has her.
And I will tear this earth apart until I get her back.