“A doctor? What kind of doctor!” He smashed the butt of the rifle against Joshua’s shoulder. “Tell me!”
“I’m a psychologist!” Joshua cried out. He felt himself cowering, wincing away as tears blinded him.Colin would want me to fight!he thought, but his mind shot back an instant rebuttal:NO, HE WOULDN’T! Colin would want you to come home! Whatever that takes. Whatever that means. Just come home!
“You fucking bastard!” Page raged. “You’ve beenplayingme!” His teeth locked tight, and Joshua saw him lift the rifle. “Trying to trick me! ”
He grabbed a fistful of Joshua’s dark hair and forced his head up, twisting the dark locks in his fist and shaking the rifle in Joshua’s face. “You’ve been using your head doctor tricks on me just like they did in rehab! Trying to fool me!”
His grip on Joshua’s hair tightened and he leaned close enough that his dank breath flowed over Joshua’s battered face. “You’re not just going to get raped!” Page snarled. “Afterthat, you’re going to getthisright down your fucking throat! Think about it! Think about getting raped, then getting killed! I’m gonna take care of HER, and then you’re next!”
“Lukas!” Joshua yelled. “Stop this! You don’t want to do this! You know that part of you doesn’t want to be this person!”
“You don’t know shit!” Page shrieked. “You’re gonna pay for this! So is your faggot husband! So is my bitch sister! You’ll ALL pay!” He bent close to Joshua’s face and his voice was an eerie, unnatural croak that sent shivers down Joshua’s spine. “I’m gonna fuckyouthe same way I didthem, then I’m going to put a hole in you big enough to drive that fancy car through! You’re adead man!”
Joshua tried to move away, but his injuries left him unable to do more than scramble a few inches. He glanced up and sucked in a terrified breath as Page lifted the rifle. He heard Page laughing in a high, maniacal screech that froze Joshua’s blood.He’s going to kill me. Oh god, Colin, I’m so sorry.He tried to raise his right arm to protect his face, but he couldn’t move it. Then the barrel of Page’s rifle smashed down against his skull and he knew no more.
* * *
Colin– 11:49 p.m.
Donald Thompson sat staring at a computer screen. He had given Page’s service provider a court order and had been working with them for hours, trying to locate both Page’s device and Joshua’s. They had a rough idea of the location, but it was a mountainous, rural area and that, combined with poor weather, was making reception sketchy. Still, he kept at it, pinging both phones over and over without ever getting a response.
He never took his eyes from the screen. Ping Page’s phone. Ping Joshua’s phone. Ping Page’s phone. Ping Joshua’s phone. Over and over, again and again. His eyes burned from the strain of staring at the flashing green numbers that flowed past his eyes. Line after line, again and again, with never a response.
“Goddammit!” he hissed out, then he shot a glance over to where Colin sat at his old desk staring down at the floor. His two friends sat close to him, but it was clear from Colin’s body language that his entire focus was turned within.He doesn’t even hear them,Donald thought.
He’d known Colin and worked with him for years. He’d attended Colin and Joshua’s wedding and danced at their reception. He’d never seen a man change as radically as Colin had changed after Joshua entered his life. He had been a grim, hard-nosed police officer who focused on his work with single-minded determination. But Joshua changed all that, and almost overnight, Colin turned into a laughing, happy individual who couldn’t stop rejoicing over the love that had captured his heart, filling it to overflowing.
Donald knew what Joshua meant to the big Irishman.I won’t fucking let this happen!he thought. He stared at the screen, eyes narrowed, upper lip pulled back over his teeth, as if he could extract the information he craved through sheer force of will.
DING!The computer sounded, and a set of longitudes and latitudes flashed before his eyes. Joshua’s phone had responded!
“Jesus!” Donald cried. “Colin! Colin! I found him!”
He quickly pinged Joshua’s phone again and got nothing. “Goddammit!” Donald blurted out. “It was there. There’s the coordinates!”
Colin leaned over him, breathing heavily as he stared at the computer screen. “Where!” he demanded, his voice a rasp of gravel in his throat.
Donald brought up a map, and all of them hovered over it while Donald traced the longitude and latitude until they saw a brightly flashing single point. “There!”
“Jesus, Donnie, there’s nothing there,” Lenny said, bending closer to peer at the map. “It’s an empty field on an old dirt road.”
“Let’s GO!” Colin barked. “Goddammit, let’s go!”
“Colin, wait!” Lenny told him, then beckoned to another officer. “Jack, take a squad car and one guy and ride out there. Call in with whatever you see.” He turned to Colin and grabbed his shoulder. “Look. I know how you feel. But we’re NOT going to go blasting in there with two guys and NO fucking intel! We’re going to scope it out and get our men ready to go!”
Colin stared at him, wide-eyed. “Lenny,please...”
“Look, buddy. If we don’t do this right, we could do Josh more harm than good. We couldpushPage into hurting him. Plus the fact that there may be othervictimsthere we don’t know about. We need to move careful and slow or people could end up dead! C’mon, Colin! You were a cop for a decade! Be a coptonight! You know how this works. Help us!”
He turned to a city policeman who was liaison to the campus police search. “Matt, can you guys get a SWAT team ready and have them meet us? I’ll text you the coordinates as soon as I have them.”
The man instantly grabbed his phone and began to punch in numbers.
Lenny gathered a half dozen men around him. “Get into riot gear,” he told them. “We have no idea what kind of armaments this jackass has on him. I want to be ready for anything he could throw at us. Make sure you bring flashbangs and tear gas!”
He turned to a woman standing nearby. “Betty, would you call EMS and tell them we need a truck standing by to follow us to a raid. Possible injuries. We don’t know how bad. And tell them to get here fast!”
He turned back to Colin who was seething with impatience.
