I was operating purely on instinct now—reading terrain, timing, opportunity as it came.
Improvisation wasn’t ideal.
But it wasn’t weakness.
I’d done this before.
Thankfully, I had someone to help me grab him. Otherwise, lining everything up would have been nearly impossible.
The road stretched ahead of us, empty and dark, and I forced myself to breathe evenly. Control wasn’t about perfection—it was about adaptation. About knowing that even when the rules changed, the outcome didn’t have to.
The man in the back made another noise. I turned up the radio until it drowned him out.
They thought they’d turned the tables.
They thought this was where I would crack.
I wouldn’t lose this game.
I couldn’t.
And I wouldn’t.
Not now.
Not ever.
CHAPTER
SIXTY-TWO
Andi stood in her room,arms folded, thoughts racing in tight, relentless loops.
The killer had known their schedule.
When they’d switched things up, he’d been able to pivot.
He’d always seemed . . . close.
Too close.
Her mind kept circling back to the woman from six months ago—the one who’d vanished, whose story had barely registered beyond a few inches of newsprint.
Fake Pam aka Crystal Smith.
Her face. The timing.
Andi needed to dig deeper.
But there wasn’t time.
Rupert was missing.
And worse: What if the person responsible wasn’t an outsider? What if someone close to them had been feeding information, watching from inside the perimeter?
Her gaze lifted as someone knocked on the door.
Duke opened it, and Ben stood there.
