“Yes. The cops said it was.”
“Hit and run, right?”
Daniel knew too many details. She swallowed, hard watching him. “Did you do it?”
“I did. And I’m going to take care of the new guy in your life and that brat of yours. If they’d been home when I got you, I would have shot them both.”
Her heart raced with fear and anger at this man. He was so smug. He’d killed Greg without a thought for the other man’s life. He’d killed Greg because of her. Ava knew there were no two ways about that. If he’d never dated her, Greg would be alive and studying far-off universes and black holes. Making discoveries. All gone because of her.
No way she was going to allow Daniel to ruin anyone else’s life. Especially not Chay and Gracie. Ava would die in thisramshackle cabin with Daniel before she let him hurt either of them.
Pushing aside her pain and cloudy mind, she concentrated. The knots on her hands were tighter than the ones on her feet. Daniel had paced away from her, still going on about how he’d killed Greg. The planning he’d taken to make sure he knew Greg’s routine.
Crying while she curled herself into a ball, bringing her feet closer so she could try to work the knot on the rope free. It was hard to see through her tears and she didn’t realize how loud her sobs were until Daniel told her to shut up.
“He wasn’t worthy of you.”
“You aren’t worthy of me,” she said, unable to get free, but determined to get out of this cabin and put Daniel Wayne back in jail.
Wes and some of the other officers had arrived at his house. It was midafternoon, and there was another storm threatening on the horizon. In his mind everything became clear. He wouldn’t return home without Ava. She was his entire world, but he’d been too afraid to admit it to her.
He’d acted like he had all the time in the world. One thing he should have realized was never the reality.
They all followed the trail of the car to a crossroads, where there were four paths he could have taken. There had been so much vehicular traffic that the track was obscured. Chay set up a command post at the intersection that would be in communication with the one he’d left his grandmother in charge of back at the house. She had Ava’s phone and they were all hoping that once cell signal was restored, Aponi would be able to get a signal for Ava’s smartwatch on the phone.
Chay wasn’t waiting for that to happen.
They had the maps out and everyone was looking for any place where Wayne might take shelter. He had to see the snowstorm coming in the same as they did.
“I’m not going to ask everyone to stay out in the storm,” Chay started. But this was his woman, and there was no way he was going home without her.
They had assembled six men who would help in the search. The rest of the force was handling emergencies in the town and helping people recover from the blizzard.
Chay was the second in command at the station, and his boss had put him in charge of finding Ava. Wes had come out to help, even though he’d been on duty for the last thirty-six hours straight.
“You don’t have to ask. We’re all here to find her. I think we need to work quickly. Lou remembers there were several hunting shacks dotted around the area,” Wes said, clapping his hand on Chay’s shoulder.
“Where were they, Lou?” he asked.
The other man leaned over the map they had spread out on the hood of his truck. He pointed to an old trail that was marked with a thin line. If he remembered correctly, he’d seen it before. On the map he’d looked at of where Fern Hensley had been kept.
“Near as I can remember, about every six miles or so along here.” Lou leaned over the map and drew his finger along it.
Chay continued tracking it, noticing that it lined up with the cabin where Fern was found. If they were similar, then he had an idea of what they were looking for. Something similar to the hiking cabins they had in Scotland.
The cabins had been built in the 1950s and weren’t owned by any one person but were there in case a hunter or hiker got into trouble. No one monitored them, and as far as Chay knew no officer from the tribal police had been out to them in decades.
“The quickest way to handle this would be for everyone to try to target one cabin,” Chay said.
“Agreed,” Wes said.
“We’ll all stay in radio communication and clear the cabins. Keep your eye out for signs of any recent inhabitants,” Chay said, thinking that this investigation might show signs of other women trafficked into the area or rule that theory out. But his focus was on rescuing Ava. It had to be.
“We will.”
They all headed out in different directions. Chay took the cabin the farthest from his property. He saw the other tribal police vehicles peel off every six miles until it was just him. The snow out here was thicker and the clouds overhead kept darkening.
He lowered the snowplow on the front of his truck, driving in the direction that Lou had indicated the cabins were. The path was bumpy and the snow thick, making his progress slow. Frustrated, he turned his head, looking out the driver’s window, and noticed tracks.
