Chapter 47
The curve broke open ahead of him.
Wes didn’t wait.
He pulled left and pressed the accelerator hard, closing the distance between the truck and the farm equipment in seconds. The gap was tighter than he’d like—the trailer’s edge skimming closer than was comfortable as he came alongside it.
For one lurching moment the trees on his left seemed to rush toward him before the road opened up and he was through.
Wes exhaled once and pushed harder.
Eleven minutes out. Maybe ten if the road stayed clear.
His phone rang through the speakers.
Caleb again.
“Talk to me,” Wes answered.
“Still nothing from Rowan.” Caleb’s voice sounded taut. “Her phone’s not even ringing now. It goes straight to voicemail the second you dial.”
Straight to voicemail. Not unanswered. Off.
Someone had turned it off.
The cold certainty that had been building in Wes’s chest since Charlottesville settled into something harder.
“How far out are you?” he asked.
“Fifteen minutes. Maybe less.” The sound of an engine pushing fast came through beneath Caleb’s voice. “Wes—what aren’t you telling me?”
“I don’t have anything confirmed yet.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Wes watched the road ahead and made a decision. “I think someone was already at the house when she got there. I think this was planned.” He paused. “I think she went there to meet someone connected to Thayer’s sister, and whoever’s been running cleanup for Vince figured that out before she did.”
Silence on the other end.
Wes checked the mirror once. “If you somehow get there first, don’t go in without me. Wait until I’ve assessed the situation.”
“Wes—”
“Caleb.” His voice came out harder than he intended. “Give me five minutes before you do anything. That’s all I’m asking.”
A beat. “Five minutes.”
The call ended.
Remington shifted in the seat beside him, turning his head toward Wes.
Wes reached over and touched the dog’s neck. “I know, boy.”
The phone rang again.
It was Calloway this time. He’d called him a few minutes ago.
“Tell me you’ve got something,” Wes said.
“Traffic camera on Route 250 outside Charlottesville. Picked up a vehicle about ninety minutes ago—registered to a shell company out of Delaware.” Calloway’s voice had the clipped quality of someone reading while they talked.
“Took me a while to trace it, but the shell company has a paper trail that leads back to Blackthorne Risk Management.”
Wes’s jaw tightened. “How many vehicles?”
“Just the one on camera. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only one. Could be others that didn’t pass a camera.”
“Direction?”
“Heading west out of Charlottesville. Toward the mountain roads.” Calloway paused. “Wes, if Blackthorne has people out there—”
“I know what it means.”
“These aren’t amateurs. They’re not going to rattle a doorknob and walk away.”
“I know that too.” Wes watched the road narrow ahead of him. “Keep pulling. Anything else that moves near that address, I want to know.”
“Already on it.” Calloway’s voice dropped. “Go get her.”
The call ended.
Remington was fully upright now, his ears forward, his body oriented toward the windshield as if he could already see something through it that Wes couldn’t.
The trees thinned briefly on the right, and through the gap Wes caught a glimpse of the valley below—farmhouses, a church steeple, the pale glint of a creek catching the afternoon light. Everything looked so ordinary and peaceful.
Everything around him was completely indifferent to what might be happening inside one small house at the end of a gravel driveway.
He pushed the truck as fast as the road would allow.
Only five minutes and he should be there.
Rowan stared at the bottle.
The pills shifted inside as the man nudged it closer across the table.
She couldn’t let that man get those pills anywhere close to her face.
Before she could second-guess herself, she swept her arm across the table.
The bottle hit the floor hard, the cap flying free on impact. Pills scattered across the kitchen tiles in every direction. Small white tablets skittered under the cabinets, beneath the refrigerator, and across the grout lines in a dozen different directions.
The man went still.
For one suspended second, no one moved.
Then his hand closed around her upper arm and hauled her to her feet so fast the chair scraped back and nearly toppled. “That was a mistake!”
Rowan twisted hard against his grip, driving her elbow back the way she’d done in every action sequence she’d ever filmed—except this wasn’t choreographed and there was no mark on the floor and no one to call cut.
She connected with something. His ribs maybe.
He grunted, and his grip loosened just enough.
She pulled free and moved.
She didn’t have a plan. There was no plan.
There was only the back door and the understanding that if she didn’t reach it nothing else was going to matter.
She made it two steps.
The man caught her by the back of her shirt and yanked. The floor seemed to rise up as she lost her balance. She went down hard on one knee.
Pain cracked through the joint, and she gasped, catching herself against the cabinet with both palms.
“Please.” Lauren’s voice came from somewhere behind her, thin and desperate. “Please just stop. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to hurt her.”
Neither man responded.
Rowan tried to push herself up. The first man got there first, hauling her upright by the arm. She clawed at his forearm with her free hand and felt her nails catch skin.
But it didn’t matter. It didn’t slow him down at all. Within seconds he had both her wrists locked in one hand and her back against the counter with his forearm across her collarbone.
She couldn’t move.
She could barely breathe.
“Stop fighting,” he growled, his face close to hers. “You’re only making this harder on yourself.”
“Please.” Lauren was crying now, her voice breaking on the word. “She hasn’t done anything. Just let her go. Please.”
The second man said something to Lauren in a low voice that Rowan couldn’t make out.
Lauren went quiet. Tears still streamed down her face.
The man subduing Rowan loosened his grip on her wrists just long enough to crouch and retrieve one of the scattered pills from the floor near her feet. Then another. He straightened and held them in his palm between them, unhurried, like they had all the time in the world.
Rowan’s chest heaved.
She watched his hand and tried to think past the pain in her knee and the pressure across her collarbone and the fear that kept threatening to swallow everything else.
Keep thinking. Keep moving. Don’t stop.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
She clenched her jaw and turned her face away.
His hand came up and gripped her jaw, firm and practiced.
She couldn’t stand here and let him do this.
She drove her heel down on his foot, twisted her shoulders, tried to drop her weight.
But instead of loosening his grip, the man seemed to absorb every bit of it without loosening his hold.
Lauren made a broken sound from across the room.
Run! Rowan thought, trying to silently communicate with the woman.
But Lauren appeared frozen with fear.
Rowan’s vision blurred at the edges. Not from tears. From the effort of fighting a man twice her size who felt nothing about what he was doing.
His thumb pressed into the hinge of her jaw.
Her mouth opened despite everything.
“There,” he murmured.
He brought his hand toward her lips.