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Chapter Ten
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“Wallace, where are you?” Brenna asked, already pushing open the door to the parking lot.
“I’m not sure,” he said, his breath ragged. “I’m in a shed. There’s a water tower. Old. Rusted red. And train tracks.”
Brenna looked at Colt and Harlan. “Could be the old freight yard about ten miles from here,” Harlan suggested. “There’s a water tower out there, hasn’t been used in years.”
Harlan was already pulling out his keys. “Let’s go.”
Brenna hesitated for a second, glancing toward the sheriff’s office. She should tell Arden where they were headed, but the sheriff wasn’t there, and time was running out.
She turned and rushed after Colt and Harlan, catching up as they headed to the Crossfire Ops SUV. Harlan slid behind the wheel of his vehicle, Colt took shotgun, and Brenna climbed into the backseat, her phone still pressed to her ear.
“Wallace, are you hurt?” she asked, putting the call on speaker.
“I think my ankle’s sprained,” he said. “Bruised and cut up, and I was drugged, I’m sure of it. But I’m alive. For now.”
“Who took you?” Brenna pressed. “How did you get away? On the last call, you said she was murdering you. Who’sshe?”
Wallace groaned. “I don’t know for sure. The person wore a mask. Not just a ski mask. There was another mask over it. A printed face. Naomi’s face.”
Colt twisted in the seat to look at her, his eyes narrowing. Brenna met his gaze, and her mind began spinning with what that could mean.
“Are you saying it was Naomi?” she pressed.
“I’m saying I don’t know,” Wallace said on another groan, this one drenched in frustration. “It could have been anyone under there. But yeah, the mask looked like her. That’s why I said what I did.”
Brenna sat back, her grip tight on the phone. It didn’t add up. If Naomi really had taken him, why wear a mask of her own face? Why not try to frame someone else?
None of it made sense. Not yet.
As Harlan drove out of town, the tires humming on the pavement, Brenna held the phone tighter.
“Wallace, how did you escape?” she asked. “And whose phone are you using?”
There was a pause, just a hitch in his breathing. “The phone belonged to… I don’t know. My captor, I guess. It was in the cabin where they were keeping me. They must’ve left it behind when they left.”
Brenna didn’t say it aloud, but her pulse jumped. Why leave a phone behind? That was either a mistake or a trap.
“I waited until I was sure no one was coming back,” Wallace said. “Then I managed to break the lock on the back door. I fell coming down the steps and twisted my ankle. It slowed me down.”
He sounded winded. Scared.
“I tried to call you earlier,” he added. “But I was stuck in a dead zone.”
The dead zone didn’t surprise her. There were plenty of those in the area, but there were other parts of his account that put a knot in her gut.
Was this another trap?
And was Wallace pulling the strings?
She thought of what Naomi had said, about Wallace going off the rails after his wife left him. Too bad Brenna didn’t know if that was the truth or a lie that Naomi had constructed to try to deflect the guilt onto someone other than herself.
“What cabin, Wallace?” Brenna asked. “Where were you being held?”
