Ava heaved a sigh, her head hanging down. “Figures. All right, we’ll go home and see if you can dig up any information.”
“I don’t know from where, Avs,” Alex said as the sound of his car door slamming shut punctuated his statement.
“Me either. Maybe…maybe he’ll reach out to you, text you. Keep an eye on your phone.”
“I will,” he answered. “I want you to text every hour onthe hour. I’m not even kidding. I want to know you’re safe and alive. Your supposed death is still way too close.”
She smiled softly at her phone. “I promise I will.”
“You miss one, and I’m going to be on my way up there to check on you, okay?”
“Got it,” she answered. “Now, you’d better go before someone finds out.”
“Yep. Avs…I love you.”
Her grin broadened. “I love you too, Ace.”
“Ava, I’m really glad you’re alive,” Kyle said.
“Me too, Doc. Me too. Take care of Alex. I’m counting on you.”
“You got it,” he answered before they said their goodbyes.
Silence penetrated the air as she ended the conversation, settling back into the armchair with a sigh. “Where are you, Sebastian?”
Her fingers traced the outline of the laptop still on her lap. It was a useless piece of junk if she couldn’t use it to trace Sebastian, and she had no idea in which direction to search. He could be anywhere.
She heaved a sigh as she rubbed her forehead. “Think, Ava. Think. Alex went missing and you found him.”
Her head thudded against the wing of the chair as she realized she’d done that with Sebastian’s help.
The clock on the mantel ticked the time away, a painful reminder that precious minutes were slipping away from her, minutes that could make the difference between saving Sebastian and finding him dead.
She rose from her seat, pacing the floor. As she twisted on her heel, a ringing phone split the silence, its sound startling and jarring.
Her eyes fell to her burner phone, but it remained dark.
“Landline,” she murmured as she rushed to follow the sound of the ringing phone.
She spotted it across the room, tucked behind a large vase and raced to answer it. “Hello?”
Only dead air answered her. She pulled it away from her ear, trying to determine if the call had dropped. It remained active, and she pressed it to her ear again. “Hello?”
Her brow furrowed as a raspy noise sounded on the other end of the line.
She ended the call, her heart pounding hard against her ribs as she wondered if the call had been from The Board.
What if they were probing to find her location, and she’d just given it away.
She shook her head, her trembling hands still holding the landline. She glanced at it again, toggling on the display to pull up the caller ID.
Her heart skipped a beat as she spotted the number on the screen. She raced to the laptop, ripping it open and toggling into Alex’s system to find his cell phone location tracer.
She tapped the phone number into the search bar and set it tracing. “Come on, come on.”
A colorful wheel spun around before a map appeared, filling in with details. Ava’s heart skipped a beat as she saw it at the Beach Comber.
She grabbed her burner phone and sent Alex a text.Hey, Ace, can you call me?
