Chloe never moved. A thin, silent block of ice against my body. I sighed against the back of her dress and buried my face in her shoulder, wondering if this was the last time we’d ever be together.
“I love you, Mum.” Tears flooded my cheeks to soak the thin material beneath. “We’re strong, you and I. We’ve survived a lot, and we’ll survive this too. Mads is looking for us and he won’t give up. I hope you get the chance to know him better. He’s... he’s everything to me. My whole world. And I’m not letting him go without a fight.”
I put my lips close to her ear and whispered, “If you can hear me, be ready. I don’t know what’s going to happen, or how this will go down, but if I see the slightest chance to turn this around, I’m taking it. If you start to wake up, don’t let them know. Keep your eyes closed and your ears open. Our story isn’t done yet. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
I waited for a grunt, a twitch, any sign that she’d heard me, but all she did was breathe. In and out. In and out.
Things could’ve been worse, I supposed. At least she was still alive.
I curled my body back around hers and prayed for all I was worth. “Come on, Mads. Use that big beautiful, nerdy brain of yours to come find us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MADIGAN
With it beingNick’s name on the contract and not mine, the man at the car rental refused to tell me a damn thing. There were privacy concerns to consider. Legal responsibilities. I wasn’t married to Nick or even his next of kin. He might’ve just gone for a drive. Yada yada yada, until I was screaming into the phone, threatening to take his shitty contract and shove it up his arse.
Everything changed when Wright calmly plucked the phone from my clenched hand and threw the weight of the law into the mix. Two people had gone missing in freezing conditions, and did the rental car firm really want to see their name plastered all over the news for failing to help the police avoid an elderly woman’s death?
Five minutes later we had the current GPS location of our Ford Focus in our hot little hands. Tracking the Honda was a different story. A licence plate search revealed that model wasn’t fitted with GPS, so we were flying in the dark.
“What the hell is Nick’s car doing there?” I puzzled over the map on my phone, zooming in on the Nolan Reserve and quarry. “They can’t think we’d believe Chloe got that far.”
“You’d be surprised.” Wright scrutinised his own screen. “It’s unlikely, but not inconceivable. The river trail ends at the reserve, but there are multiple smaller tracks traversing the reserve itself. Glen was already considering expanding the search to include Nolan’s Reserve when I left him.”
I caught the detective’s eye. “Glen told us this morning that he thought Chloe would be found upriver.”
Wright grunted. “Search and rescue teams have a woo-woo sixth sense about this kind of thing. Although, under the circumstances, and if you’re right, I’m not sure he’d have foreseen any of this.”
I eyeballed the detective. “So, what are we waiting for?”
A police canine unit pulled into the driveway and Wright stabbed a finger toward it. “Them.” He turned to the wide-eyed constable he was leaving in charge and the man handed him a plastic bag with clothing inside. “This is one of Chloe’s dresses. Do you have anything of Nick’s?”
Shit. I thought quickly but came up with nothing. “Only his phone. But I’ve been handling it all afternoon.”
Wright eyed it dubiously. “Then let’s hope he and Chloe are together. Come on.”
He approached the handsome thirty-something driver of the ute and introduced us. The man had almost black eyes, short-clipped fair hair, and a serious demeanour. The handler took the bag but shook his head at the phone.
“Never had much success with those,” he said. “Better not to confuse things. The car’s up by the quarry lake you said?”
Wright nodded. “Follow our lead and be careful. We could be walking into literally anything. Could be nothing, or it could be a shitshow.”
The officer frowned. “No lights and sights then?”
Wright shook his head. “Let’s not force their hand. This is a long shot, courtesy of Madigan here.” Wright glanced my wayand the canine officer gave me a calculating look. “The driver of the car currently parked up at the lake is Madigan’s partner. But we think Austin might be there with him, and possibly Chloe as well. I personally think Madigan’s theory is a good one, but for now, it’s just you, me, and Madigan. I’ve got paramedics on standby but everyone else will stay with the current search in case we’re wrong. We can’t afford to waste time.”
The officer’s gaze ran over me a second time. “Well, all righty then.” The man threw his ute into reverse. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
While Wright drove, I searched up images of the old quarry and the many walking tracks that cut through Nolan Reserve. The place was a spiderweb of trails with about a dozen access points.If Nick and Chloe weren’t somewhere close to the car, we had a lot of walking ahead of us. Not to mention that Austin could disappear down any one of those trails and be gone before we even caught sight of him.
If he’s even there.
I banished the thought. I couldn’t be wrong about this. I just couldn’t. If Nick’s car was there, Chloe was there. Which meant Austin had to be too. Right?
Right.
Unless Nick was already . . .
