Rio pulls out his phone. “I’m calling Callum.”
“Fuck…”
“What?” He stops swiping.
“We can’t.” This could land Freya in trouble. “Callum will know we went over his head.”
“I’ll deal with it. This is on me, not Freya, if Callum has a problem. But if Ingram left town because he informed Mace? We can’t afford not to call backup.”
I nod, too focused on the road to answer. My jaw is locked so tight, it aches. My hands feel fused to the steering wheel.
Callum answers on speaker. “Rio…?”
“Listen carefully,” Rio explains. “We need a unit dispatched to Freya’s speed-trap location.”
Callum’s voice comes through the cell. “Why? What the hell is going on?”
Rio chooses his words carefully. “I made progress on the Zoe Marshall case last night. She was murdered, Cal, andwe have reason to believe the killer could be in town. Freya’s alone out there, and seeing as she’s the lead officer…better safe than sorry.”
Callum types on a keyboard in the background. “I’m pulling up her log… She’s assigned to Mile Marker 214. That stretch drops into a dead zone—she won’t have cell signal, but I’ll get her on the radio to inform her to leave her station.”
For a moment, relief washes through me.
I hear the echo of Callum’s voice on the cell, speaking into his radio. “Officer Johnson. Come in.”
A beat passes.
Again. “Officer Johnson, this is Chief Murphy. Come in.”
More emptiness, no response.Fuck.
Callum talks back into the phone. “No response. Sending dispatch.” He hangs up abruptly.
She didn’t answer. She didn’t fucking answer.
I push the truck harder, the speedometer climbing past what’s even remotely legal, but I don’t give a shit. The tires hum, the engine growls, and the road blurs into a smear of gray and white that barely feels real.
My pulse is a detonator. Every breath is a countdown.
“Dead zone,” Rio reminds, calm but too still. “Her radio might not be picking up the signal.”
But the lie is thick on his throat. He doesn’t believe that any more than I do.
The plateau rises ahead of us—that wide, cold stretch of open land where everything is exposed and empty. The sky is a bruised white, a washed-out light that makes the world look dead.
She’s out there.
Alone.
My woman.
My family.
The thought guts me so sharply, I almost veer onto the shoulder.
“Easy,” Rio murmurs, steadying himself with a hand on the dash. “We get there fast, but we get there alive.”
Alive.
