WES
“Why the fuck is she there?” Alarm bells are ringing as I stare at the blue blinking dot showing Callie on the map in my spyware app.
“Maybe you don’t know everything about this woman. Maybe she’s hanging out with a friend.” Noah’s tone is light, but I recognize an edge of concern. Like he’s trying too hard to dismiss my question.
“No way.” I’ve been tracking this woman enough over the past month to know where her usual haunts are. Besides her brother’s apartment, she goes to the library, her friend’s bookstore, the grocery store, that one Irish pub, and a few coffee shops within a mile or two radius of there.
So why is she at a remote location outside of Portland?
And why isn’t her phone tracking? The spyware is picking up the signal of the slim tracker inside her phone case, not her phone.
“Her phone is offline,” I say without looking up.
“What are you still sitting there for? Let’s go.”
I look up from the hay bale. My brother’s standing there,waiting. He shifts from one foot to the other, and I recognize the worry on his face.
“Where?” I ask and shoot to my feet. Suddenly the flames are too hot on my cheeks, the laughing of families too grating, the night too dark.
“To find Callie. Obviously.”
“Together?”
“Lordy fuck. Yes. Just in case.” Noah gestures for me to follow. “I’ll drive. We can grab your car later.”
“Fine.” I follow Noah around the building and slip into the cab of his pickup truck. I send him a dropped pin and he connects his phone to the truck.
“Got it,” he says, and Red Daisy announces the first set of directions. Once he’s out of the parking lot, he floors it.
I send Callie a text, which goes unread. Unsurprising if her phone is off or dead. I click onto Gone and send her a message on that platform as well, just in case.
Maybe she’s blocked me, and that’s somehow interfered with the spyware? I wouldn’t blame her for doing so. She knows I don’t do well with boundaries.
Still, that’s not what this feels like. She’s in trouble. I can feel it in my bones.
I zoom into her location. The map’s satellite view shows a broken-down barn next to an abandoned-looking farmhouse, surrounded by thick woods and a long, skinny lane leading to a county road.
Something is definitely wrong. She should not be there.
“Thirty minutes away. Fuck!” I smash my hand onto the dashboard. “Can’t you drive faster?”
“First of all, respect Red Daisy. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Sorry, Red Daisy.” I sit back in the seat, but I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin.
“Second of all, I’m doing seventy-five in a fifty-five, and getting pulled over will not help us.” Noah glances at the side of my face, then at my bouncing knee. “I’ll get us there in twenty. This might be nothing, Wes.”
“It’s not nothing.” I turn to look at my brother, and he nods once.
We trust our guts. It’s something we’ve had to learn to do over the years, and that gut instinct often saves us from trouble. Noah sometimes pushes through and ignores the warnings, but I never do.
Noah’s phone dings with an alert. His forehead immediately creases, and he glances at the cupholder.
“What’s the look for?” I grab Noah’s device and look at the notification. It’s from the same tracking software I use. Without asking permission, I enter his password and click through.
It takes me a minute to understand what I’m seeing. There’s only one blinking dot on Noah’s screen.
It’s labeled JK.
