I can’t say them I can’t say them I can’t say them
“Matt, I’m squeezing your arm. You can feel it. C’mon, man, we need you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. It’s not real, I know it’s not real. I manage to pull myself out of the memory, with a sensation like I’m dragging myself up out of a deep pool of water. Kenta’s dark eyes burn into mine. “It’s good news,” he says. “They do have lojack. Apparently, they were approached today and offered a large amount of money to switch it off.”
I blink hard. “We’ll give them twice as much to turn it back on.”
“Already done,” Anfisa says. She’s looking at me with a soft expression I don’t think I’ve ever seen on her face before. “They’re linking us up to the GPS signal now.” She nods to an agent typing furiously at one of the laptops. As I watch, a map appears on the screen, with a red blinking light to show the car’s position.
I frown. That can’t be right. It’s off any roads, there aren’t any houses nearby.
Glen swears. “Is that—”
“It looks like the middle of the forest.” I can’t breathe. He’s taken her to the middle of a forest. Not his house. A forest. What would he do to her in a forest? Images flash in my mind. Of him cutting her. Stripping her. Killing her.
Kenta clasps my shoulder. “Breathe,” he mutters in my ear. And then, louder, “Are there any properties there?”
Anfisa leans over my shoulder. “The house.”
My head swings around. “What?”
“We went through his mother’s will. It was filed with the probate court, it’s public access. He inherited a small property that looks to be around that area.” She barks some commands into her radio, then rattles off a zip code. Kenta checks it against the GPS coordinates. The two red blips on the map are almost perfectly aligned.
I straighten, relief flooding through me. “Got it. We’ll take our car. Dispatch an ambulance to meet us there.”
Anfisa shakes her head. “You come with us in one of our cars. Yours might have been tampered with, and we don’t want you entering the scene if you get there first.”
I nod impatiently, watching as Kenta sets up his phone GPS.
“It’s a good sign, right?” A nearby policeman asks, his voice nervous. “He’s using his own property, as opposed to some old abandoned barn. Maybe he really does want to just… take her in.”
We all stare at him like he’s an idiot.
He shrugs defensively. “You saw the messages. They say he loves her. He wants her to be his wife, or whatever.”
“He doesn’t love her.” Kenta snaps. “He drugged and kidnapped her. He’s obsessed with her. When she doesn’t play out his fantasies, his entire fake reality will come crashing down around him. And then…” He trails off.
We can all fill in the blank. This is a man who is happy to bomb an event full of strangers. He’s clearly violent.
“She’s an actress, right?” Anfisa asks.
I nod.
She purses her lips. “Well, let’s hope she manages to keep up the act until we get there.”
Forty-Six
Briar
?
When I open my eyes, the first thing I register is the smell of cooking meat. I lie still, staring up at the ceiling. My head is pounding and my mouth is dry. I feel like I’ve got the worst hangover of my life. Despite the fogginess in my brain, I know immediately where I am.
X’s house.
I have no clue how I got here. The last thing I remember was the premiere filling up with smoke, and this asshole choking me with a chloroform-soaked gag. Fear rolls over me as I remember the explosions. The screaming. Matt disappearing in the crowd. I have to press my lips together to force back a sob. Oh my God. Is he okay? Did he get hurt? Did peopledieat the premiere, because ofme?
I force myself to take a deep breath. I can’t break down right now. It could kill me. I have to stay calm. Squeezing my eyes shut again, I try to steady my breathing. I need to come up with a plan.
