I couldn’t help the scream that tore out of me, but at the close distance he was to her, I knew she was dead instantly.
Nick then turned to look at me. The fear pummeling my body would have made me vomit again if I had anything left in me.
“If I can’t have you, no one fucking will.”
Patrick and I were already in his cruiser on the way to Valerie’s house when his emergency satellite phone started ringing.
“We’re on our way,” he said after a moment. Once he hung up, he instantly changed course and made headway to Main Street.
“Shots fired at Vintage Vows,” he said.
The blood roared in my ears.
“What if it’s her?” I yelled. “I was just fucking by there!” I was very quickly starting to lose it.
Patrick gripped my thigh with a pain that brought me back to the present. “She’s going to be okay.”
I didn’t know how he could be so sure.
“But I had one of my guys keeping tabs on Nick. He landed in an airport just outside of Love yesterday.”
How was telling me that supposed to calm me down? It had the opposite effect and sent a terror through me that I knew would never go away until I laid eyes on Stella.
“You need to give me a gun,” I growled at Patrick as we pulled up in front of the boutique. The street was deserted. Itdidn’t take much in a small town for people to run into their homes, close their windows and lock their doors.
“You’re not a cop, I can’t just give you a gun.”
“Patrick! Shots have already been fired, what if he’s in there? You can’t go in without back up, and I’m not waiting a minute to get to her.”
He sighed and grabbed a gun from the lockbox in his trunk, loading it with ammunition from his glove box, then handed it to me before I ran to the entrance.
As quickly as we could, we made sure the area was clear as we searched for the woman who had become my whole life.
When I saw the blood pooling on the floor my heart stopped, and I called to alert Patrick. He was closer to the source but looking the opposite way, and when he turned his face paled.
“It’s Valerie.”
Relief in one breath and remorse in the next. Regardless of what Val had gotten mixed up in, I was sure she didn’t deserve to die.
But Stella was still out there.
We searched the whole building and all we found was vomit. She had been here, the farm’s pickup truck was parked in the back stall. But where Stella had been taken now, I had no clue.
Just then my phone started ringing.
“Melody, Val’s been shot.”
She didn’t even hear what I said and was talking too fast for me to understand her.
“Wait, Mel, stop. Slow down. What are you saying?”
“Nick has her! They just ran past a fucking trail cam, Calvin! Valerie didn’t spray-paint all of them, just the ones facing the rail house. I can see them!” She was screaming and frantic. I didn’t need to put her on speaker phone for Patrick to be able to hear, and he shot into action.
“Let’s go.”
“Stay on the phone with me, Mel,” I coached, sounding much calmer than I felt. “I need to know where she is.”
“I don’t know, Calvin, I don’t know. They keep running. He’s not staying in any one frame.”
