Except that he wasn’t. Not completely. Kenzie had no idea the lengths he would go to in order to protect the people he cared about, a group that now included Kenzie and her family.
“He hurt you,” Reese said. “He won’t do it again.”
Kenzie fell silent. They crossed to the pickup and Reese helped her inside, then slid behind the wheel and fired the engine, setting the air conditioner in motion.
“I need Eddie’s cell phone,” he said as they idled in the parking lot.
Kenzie handed over the phone and Reese pulled up Recents and scanned the list. A call had come in at eight o’clock that morning, caller IDNolan.
As the truck continued to run, cooling the interior, Reese phoned Tabby. “I got one of the kidnapper’s cell phones, Tab. There’s a number on it I need you to ping. Belongs to a guy named Nolan Webb.” He explained that they’d found Griff’s location, but by the time they’d arrived, the boy had already been moved.
“Webb was with him when the men picked him up. I’m hoping they’re still together at the new location.” Reese was counting on DeMarco keeping Griff alive at least as long as the Poseidon deal was still in motion.
“You have Webb’s number?” Tabby asked.
Reese checked the screen and rattled off the digits, which started with Shreveport area code 318. “I tried calling him earlier, but the call went straight to voice mail. Hoping you can do something that will help.”
“I’ll get back to you as soon as can. It might take a while.”
“Thanks, Tab.” Reese tossed Eddie’s phone back to Kenzie.
“You think there’s a chance this will work?” she asked, tucking the phone back into her purse.
Reese put the truck in gear and drove out of the parking lot. “Let’s hope so.” Because they didn’t have much of anything else. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
But if something didn’t break soon, their luck was going to run out.
THIRTY-TWO
Griff shivered. There was no air conditioning and though it was burning hot in the tiny, airless bedroom, he couldn’t seem to get warm.
His eyes stung with tears. He wasn’t in the fancy hotel room anymore, that was for sure. Just a dirty old wooden shack out in the swamp.
At least he was still alive. He thought he’d be dead by now.
Just before the sun came up, Nolan had come into the room with two other men, big burly dudes who liked kids even less than Eddie. They had jerked his arms in front of him and bound his wrists together with plastic ties, tied his ankles, and stuffed a gag in his mouth. They’d put a bag over his head, lifted him off the bed, and dumped him into a laundry cart.
A rattling elevator took him down to the bottom floor. The next thing he knew they were loading him into the trunk of a car and slamming the lid.
He’d started crying then. Last night, he had pulled off Eddie’s ski mask and seen his butt-ugly face. When Nolan and his creepy friends showed up, they didn’t bother with disguises. He knew what they looked like. That was how Griff knew they were going to kill him.
He’d thought it would be over by now.
Instead, after what seemed forever but was probably less than an hour, the car pulled off the highway onto a bumpy road. He was sweating inside the trunk, so scared he was afraid he would wet his pants and embarrass himself. He could feel the car turning this way and that, following some kind of curvy lane. Out in the boonies, he figured, where they could dump his body and no one would ever find him.
Not even his mom and Reese.
His throat clogged up and his eyes watered.
During the uncomfortable ride, he’d managed to spit out the gag and scrape the hood off his head, but it was too dark in the trunk to see. When the car braked and finally stopped, he took a deep breath and gathered his courage. He wasn’t going to die crying and begging.No way.
Then the trunk lid popped open and he was surprised to see a dilapidated old cabin among the trees, mostly hidden by tall grass and thick green leafy foliage. The ground was wet and swampy, so the cabin sat on stilts a couple of feet off the ground. Through the undergrowth, he caught a glimpse of water slugging its way along an overgrown creek.
The two men lifted him out of the trunk. They were wearing guns but they didn’t shoot him, just carted him into the cabin, into a tiny bedroom that smelled like a dead rat or something worse, and tossed him up onto a saggy bed with a rusted iron headboard and creaky springs.
They didn’t say a word. He flinched when Nolan pulled his pocketknife, but the guy just leaned down and cut the plastic tie around his ankles and the one biting into his wrists.
“There’s no way out, so you can forget trying to escape. Even if you managed to do it, there’s nowhere to go.”
