Luanne stared at him another second, glassy-eyed and slow, then reached into her back pocket for her phone.She fumbled with it for a moment, missing the screen twice before Nash, growing more irritated by the second, snatched it from her hand, found Cassie’s contact, and hit call himself.
He lifted the phone to his ear and listened as it didn’t even ring and went right to voicemail.
He ended the call and tried again immediately.
Voicemail again.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
He typed out a quick text—Emergency.Call me.—and hit send, then stood there staring at the screen like he could force the damn thing to light up.
Nothing.
A few more seconds crawled by.
Still nothing.
“Fuck me,” he ground out, shoving the phone hard against Crusher’s chest.“Stay with Luanne.Keep your hands off her and your eyes on that phone.If Cassie calls or texts, the first fucking thing you do is call me.Understand?”
Crusher caught the phone with a scowl, still pissed but sober enough to understand Nash meant business.“Yeah,” he said, clipped.“I got it.”
Without another word, Nash turned and stalked off, circling behind the bar to flip on the overhead lights and kill the music.
As the room flared bright and the bass cut out mid-beat, a chorus of complaints went up, plunging the clubhouse into a sudden silence full of drunken confusion and half-finished laughter.
“Who’s fuckin’ sober?”he barked, looking out over the room.“Or sober enough.”
“You know I am,” Sarge called out.
“I’m sober enough,” Rook said, stepping out of the bathroom.
Nash nodded once.“Get your shit and meet me in the garage.”
Inside the clubhouse garage, Nash turned the police scanner up loud and let the static fill the room.Nothing but the low hiss of dead air.Now and then the speaker gave a faint crackle, but no voice came through—no call about a wreck on the highway, no deputies running plates, nothing about an accident or disturbance that might explain why the hell Cassie had disappeared.
By the time Sarge and Rook joined him, he’d mentally made a list of anywhere she might’ve gone in search of Maya.
“Connor used to go to those meetings over at that church—you know the one,” he said.“Start there.Anybody still hangin’ around that crowd might’ve seen Maya.Check the whole damn area too, anywhere with lights on.”
Nash turned to Rook.“You head to County.Hospital first.Talk to whoever will talk, see if anyone remembers Cassie comin’ through earlier, see if they spoke to her, saw which fuckin’ way she went.Nurses, desk clerks, fuckin’ doctors, whoever’s still on shift.Then check the drag—the Rooster, the gas station—anywhere between there and here.”
“Got it,” Rook said.“Where you headed?”
Nash glanced toward the dark stretch of highway cutting through the valley.
“I’m gonna take the ridge, then I’m goin’ to the railyard.”
Both Sarge and Rook frowned.
“By yourself?”Sarge asked.
Nash patted his vest where his pistol was.“I’ll fuckin’ manage.”
They went their separate ways.
Nash checked every road in Clifton on his way to the railyard, even the dirt ones, even the ones that were only roads because somebody’s trailer sat back in the trees.He stopped at a couple gas stations along the way, asking cashiers if they’d seen anyone matching Cassie’s description.
Nobody had.
