She headed toward the sound, skin tingling at the prospect of seeing him.
She was approaching the back of the building when the crash of glass breaking splintered the air. She gasped and hurried around the corner, only to stop at the sight of someone disappearing into the line of trees.
Then she saw the smoke coming from the broken window.
Oh, God.
She swung around—and screamed at the gun pointed at her chest.
Ethan scrubbeda hand over his face, the screen in front of him blurring.
He’d read over the information so many times, he could recount it word for word. It was stuff he’d had to dig for. Bios on the two missing women in the mountains.
Both female. Both tourists. But other than that, there was nothing linking them.
Nikki Bishop was a blonde in her mid-twenties from New York. She worked in fashion and was here for two weeks with her boyfriend on vacation. She went for a solo run on a hiking trail and never returned.
Then there was Zoe Ewin. She was older than Bishop, at forty-one. A single, brunette teacher from Rochester. She’d been camping before hikers found her empty tent. She was never spotted again.
The easy story, the one Ward had gone with, was that the women hadn’t known their way around the forest. They’d gotten lost and never found their way out. But if that were true, bodies would have been found by now. And if not bodies,something. An empty water bottle. A backpack.
So, if neither woman had gotten lost, it meant something more ominous had happened.
Had someone taken them? And if they had, were they crimes of opportunity, where the women had been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or were the kidnappings planned?
The ringing of his phone dragged him from the screen, a smile immediately curving his mouth when he saw who it was. “It’s almost five o’clock, Jay. I thought this was your sacred workout time?”
“Hey, I make an effort not to be predictable. That’s how stalkers show up.”
Ethan scoffed. “A stalker would have nothing on you. You’d have their name, address, and social security number before they breached your front door.”
“Don’t forget their phone number so I could personally chew their ass out.”
Ethan chuckled. “You looking after the guys?”
“You think those three need looking after?”
No. They didn’t. Tate, Lincoln, and Kolby were some of the toughest people he knew. “Okay, let me rephrase that—are they doing okay? We haven’t heard from them in a few days.”
“They were sent on a pretty long mission. I’d say they’ll be sleeping for the next week.”
“I do not miss that.”
“Sleep—such a civilian luxury.”
“Hey, you get to sleep…when you take leave.”
“Funny you say that. Apparently, I’ve accumulated too much leave, and the commander is forcing me to take some.”
“Why don’t you come here so we can put you to work? God knows we could use your help figuring out what the hell’s happened to these missing women.”
“You missing me that much?”
“I miss your brain.”
She laughed. “How’s it going over there in the sticks?”
“The sticks?”
