Reese felt a cold chill snake down his spine.
“When?” Brantley asked, his tone reflecting his concern.
“I don’t know. Half an hour ago, maybe.” Travis frowned. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”
Reese looked at Brantley, a new scenario coming to light.
“Where’s Kylie and the kids?” Reese immediately asked.
Travis’s expression went stone-cold. “Why?”
“Where are they?” Brantley demanded.
“Someone better start fuckin’ talkin’,” Travis demanded even as he was pulling out his cell phone.
“JJ’s not here,” Brantley told him. “Not right now, anyway. She was.” He motioned toward the house. “When all this went down. But she was unconscious from what we can tell.”
“Unconscious? What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” Real fear glittered in Travis’s eyes. “Why’d she text me?” he asked, his phone to his ear.
“She didn’t. Her phone’s right here,” Reese said, pulling it out of his pocket for Travis to see.
Reese looked at Brantley again, and he saw the same concern in his partner’s eyes.
“Gage? Where’s Kylie and the kids?” Travis barked into the phone. “Did they go to my parents’ yet?”
Reese stared, unable to hear the other side of the conversation, but the relief he saw on Travis’s face said the news was good.
“Okay. Stay with them. Don’t let any of ’em outta your sight.” Travis disconnected the call, glanced from Reese to Brantley. “This is that bitch, isn’t it? Juliet Prince?”
If it wasn’t … well, that was one hell of a coincidence. Possibly a deadly one.
*
“We don’t know anything at this point,” Brantley said, his tone cooling, as though he was attempting to defuse the situation. “JJ called Baz, Baz called us.”
Travis listened intently as Brantley relayed the details of what had evidently happened last night after JJ got a phone call from the governor’s son, Dante Greenwood. Came home. Knocked out. Woke up. Lots of blood. Severed finger.
“You said Dante called her?” Travis asked, wanting clarification.
“Yeah. Called and asked her to meet him. She said he was freaked when she got here,” Brantley explained. “But she never got any information out of him.”
“Was it a setup?”
“Could be, but we’re thinkin’ more along the lines of he was runnin’ from someone,” Reese said. “He reached out to JJ for help.”
Travis didn’t know JJ all that well, only from what little they’d worked together over the past few months in the search for Juliet Prince. He couldn’t say whether or not she’d be a go-to for getting out of a jam or not.
Nor did he know Dante Greenwood. He knewofhim, sure. Had even talked to him a few times because of the small town and the relationship the governor had with Travis’s family, but he didn’t know the guy. Of course, he’d heard a few rumors. None of them painted him in a great light, but Travis hadn’t heard anything that would lead him to believe he could do something like this.
“We don’t know how he got involved or who we’re dealin’ with. We were tryin’ to piece it together when you showed up,” Reese said. “We’re waitin’ for the sheriff to arrive.”
“Where’s JJ and Baz?” Travis asked, peering up at the house.
“Baz took JJ … elsewhere.”
Meaning Baz fled a crime scene with the witness. Not that Travis blamed him.
“If you want, you can take a look inside, see for yourself,” Brantley said, gesturing toward the house. “At this point, we don’t know who or—”
