Cue the nausea. “My name isn’t Joy. It’s Fallyn Williams, and I’m an ATF agent.”
No reaction whatsoever from Denim, as if he already knew. Gustavo, on the other hand, swore.
But I wasn’t hanging around for the million questions. Grace’s life was at stake.
A whirring noise filled the air, and the three of us took off toward the far end of the junkyard.
As we jumped over metal parts and skirted around car seats that had been left on the ground, Amber’s words flashed in my mind.“If Duke was to bring the cops with him, Mateo would crush Grace and the other woman to death.”
I didn’t know much about junkyards and scrap yards, but I did know they used different types of crushers to flatten the shells of cars.
I prayed like a nun that Grace wasn’t about to be crushed, but as we drew closer to that high-pitched whirring sound, the hackles on the back of my neck rose.
Dawn was on the horizon, and I hoped the morning light would cut through the fog, enabling me to see better.
A plane coming in for a landing at Logan Airport drowned out the sound of the machine as we searched the aisles of metal for what I was assuming was a crane operating the car crusher.
“Over here,” I shouted as the plane’s engine faded and the hydraulics of the crane became clearer.
The grabber—or claw, as it was sometimes called—was opening to pick up the car directly ahead of me.
Denim skidded to a stop to assess the situation.
I rushed over to find Grace passed out in the back of the doorless vehicle that had been stripped of seats. Grace’s hands were tied, her mouth was taped, and her ankles were bound.
For fuck’s sake. “Stop the crane!” I shouted to Denim as I dove into the car. “Grace.” I checked for a pulse, which was extremely weak, then tapped her face. “Honey.”
Denim glanced into the car and froze.
“Stop whoever is steering that thing,” I snapped harshly.
The grabber had already latched on to the vehicle’s roof, its claws sharp and ready to mangle us.
Denim darted away.
I moved Grace to the opening. If I had to push her out of the car, she might break bones in the fall, but she would live.
I blew out a breath, managing to move her to the edge of the metal floor.
The car swung violently from one side to the other. I wrapped an arm around Grace’s waist, but that didn’t stop us from swaying from one side to the other in sync with the movement of the car.
I repeated my Sunday prayers as the movement died down, giving me a chance to steal a look in Denim’s direction. It appeared from my vantage point through the fog that he was fighting with the driver.
“Joy! It’s Dillon.”
I glanced down to find Duke’s other brother positioned below the dangling car and realized the car was higher than I thought. “Grace is out cold,” I called to him.
“Throw her to me,” Dillon said.
“We’re too high up.”
Once again, we were swinging, like Jason and I used to do at the park. My brother loved to push me on the swing, and I would always tell him to go higher.
Right now, I wasn’t a kid in a park, and I wanted to live. I wanted to see my dad again. I wanted Duke to forgive me. I wanted answers on Jason’s death.
As we jostled around, I held onto Grace as if she were my lifeline. But fate decided it wanted to give me a big fuck-you finger when we were thrown to one side, close to the opening. I lost my grip on her, and she fell out of the car.
Holy mother of all moments, please let her live.
