That’s what I’m fighting for.And I’m still in the fight.
A lethal calm sweeps in, panic burning off.
“Mace…” I hiss. “You think it’s Mace?”
“Yes,hermano. I do.”
“Mace wants me at the quarry.” A darkness creeps into my voice as I consider a killer’s request.
Rio is deep in thought. “He’s either telling the truth or redirecting us.”
“You think he’s trying to pull us off her?”
Rio doesn’t answer immediately. His eyes narrow, scanning the land ahead, calculating. “We’re barely five minutes from her cruiser. Less, if you keep driving like this.”
“And the quarry is at least fifteen,” I add.
I grind my teeth.
“We check the trap first,” I say. “Confirm the scene. If she’s not there…”
Rio finishes my thought with simple execution. “We finish him at the quarry.”
My pulse hammers against my ribs as I wrench the wheel and take the next bend too sharply.
“Four minutes out,” Rio mutters, checking the map. “Maybe less.”
Not fast enough.
The truck growls in protest, but I don’t care. I lean into the speed, into the fear, into the fucking truth that the woman I love might be gone unless I get there now.
The terrain flattens. The air thins. The horizon fractures into that barren, lonely stretch where I hope like hell Freya is sitting in her cruiser.
Rio points. “There.”
Her SUV sits crooked in the dip between the sagebrush, exactly where it should be…but everything else is wrong.
I slam on the brakes. The truck fishtails, steadies, and skids to a stop at an angle that leaves the seatbelt biting into my shoulder.
I’m out before the engine finishes rumbling.
“Freya!” I roar into the dead air.
Rio is right behind me, boots pounding frozen dirt.
The driver’s door is half-open.
Glass blankets the ground and spills across the seat—shattered and violent. A firearm has been thrown to the ground, Freya’s, along with her cell, which has been smashed.
I force myself closer, every instinct screaming to run, to search, to tear the sagebrush apart with my bare hands.
But I have to look for anything that will tell me where she is. It’s foolish to run anywhere blindly. And then I see it, and dread seeps into my veins.
Blood spatter. The shine hasn’t dulled yet.
“This blood is still fresh. They haven’t been gone long,” I say urgently, rushing back to the truck.
My stomach pitches. My throat locks. He’s taking Freya to a place where he’s killed two women.
