Anya paused. They didn’t speak as much as they should and only exchanged e-mails or Christmas cards once in a while. Yet Loretta worked for the FBI. “Yeah. It’s me.” She should’ve probably called the police.
“Oh.” Loretta was quiet for a moment. “Are you all right? You sound funny.”
Anya bit her lip, her mind spinning. “I don’t think so. I mean, no. I think I need help.”
The car slid in the snow, and Anya came back to the present with a gasp. Her head pounded.
It was her fault. Loretta hadn’t even been working the Copper Killer case until Anya had asked for help, and now she was in the hands of a brutal psychopath.
Heath shrugged off unease at leaving Anya with the FBI and picked up speed, quickly dialing the only other number programed into his phone.
“Where are you?” Ryker, his brother, snapped.
“Snowville,” Heath said. “Long story. For now, what do you have?”
“Big news. Loretta wasn’t taken from her temporary quarters in Snowville. She was on her own in a small town called Gold City in the northwest corner of Idaho. Not too far from where you are, though. Probably there to draw out the killer.”
Heath bit back a snarl. “The FBI kept that a secret.”
“Actually, they think she was taken from the decoy position in Snowville,” Ryker said. “But they’ll figure it out shortly, I’m sure.”
Heath slowed down. “Do I need to get back to the airport?”
“No. It’d be faster for you to drive there.” The sound of typing came over the line. “We caught a picture of Agent Jackson in Gold City the day she was taken, so she might still be in Idaho.”
Almost two days ago. Heath punched the gas and headed north. “What was she doing there?”
“If you ask me, she was setting herself up as bait without backup,” Ryker said evenly, still typing.
“Stupid,” Heath muttered.
“Desperate,” Ryker countered. “The video was from the camera at a small post office, so I tracked around town and found one more shot, this one from a small bank.”
“Okay.” So they’d found Jackson before she’d been kidnapped. “How does that help us?”
“The same truck is in the background in both shots. Ran the plates and nothing. We think Jackson disappeared right after visiting that bank. So, ah, Denver hacked into some satellite feeds—don’t ask about the legality.”
“And?” Their brother Denver was a genius at hacking governmental technology. Heath’s breathing sped up with the scent of a trail.
“We’ve tracked the truck to a farm about two hours from your current location.” Ryker sighed. “Well, we think we have. Satellite had the truck for a while, but there’s a colossal storm over the Northwest, and cloud cover is too thick. We then used Google satellite images to find what looks like a farm—the only one with structures in that area.”
“Most farms in the area grow crops?” Heath sped up on the icy road, his shoulders stiffening. They’d found her.
“Yeah. Some wheat. But this place, at least from the images, doesn’t look like a working farm. There aren’t enough structures. Another satellite picture from two years ago shows it to be abandoned. There’s a large crumbling barn and two more outbuildings that might not even exist now.”
It was a long way to drive for an unlikely place, but it was all they had. “Send the coordinates to my phone.”
“Denver is heading over from the Montana-Idaho border where we’ve been working from a block of cabins. If we found this lead, the FBI should have it soon, so be careful.”
“I will. Also, two guys bugged Anya Best’s phone, looking for us.” Heath increased the speed of the wipers against the pelting snow.
“All right. Are you free of them?”
Considering he’d smashed their car to bits, yeah. “I’m free.”
“Good. One thing at a time. Let’s find Special Agent Jackson and go from there,” Ryker said.
Heath flipped on the heater. “We have to find her before he kills her.” The Copper Killer took delight in torturing victims before killing them, and he hadn’t left a clue with the eight previous kills. “She has to be okay.”
