Maybe Melissa had indeed gotten away and this call was legit. Maybe. But after everything they’d dug up about her spite campaign against Dexter, Alena couldn’t quiet the questions.
Questions she hated.
Because no matter what Melissa had done, Alena could still see the woman in her mind, a gun pressed to her temple, Dexter’s face twisted in rage.
“Melissa, where are you?” Cal asked, the urgency—and yes, some doubt—in his tone.
“I’m at the back of an abandoned strip mall in Blanco,” Melissa blurted. Her voice cracked, raw with fear. “Two men were holding me there. They wore ski masks. I thought one of them was Dexter, but when they started fighting, I heard their voices. I didn’t recognize either of them. They dropped the phone in the struggle, and I grabbed it before I slipped out the back.”
Alena’s chest tightened. Two masked men. Not Dexter? The story felt thin, full of gaps, yet Melissa’s panic didn’t sound rehearsed. Alena couldn’t decide what to believe, only that every second mattered.
“Please, you have to come,” Melissa begged. “I don’t trust the cops. I only trust you.”
A sharp sound slipped through the line, a gasp edged with fear. “They’re looking for me,” she whispered. “I can hear them. Please, come now.”
The call cut off before Cal could answer.
He swore under his breath and met Alena’s gaze. “Damn it.”
“We have to go,” she said quickly. “We don’t have a choice.”
Her hands flew over the laptop, pulling up a map until she found the spot. “Abandoned strip mall, Blanco.” She plugged the address into the GPS. “We’re fifteen minutes out.”
Cal swung the SUV into a hard turn, tires humming against the road as he aimed them toward Blanco. Alena braced herself against the seat, her heart pounding with the same thought beating in Cal’s eyes. This could be a trap.
No doubts about that.
But they also had no doubts about responding. If there was even a slim chance that Melissa was in trouble, they had to try to help her.
While Cal put Raines on speaker and gave him the rundown, Alena opened her laptop again and pulled up anything she could find on the strip mall. It didn’t take long to find what she was certain was the right place.
The strip mall had been boarded up for years, but the last crew to work there had been Arneson’s. Her mouth tightened as she scrolled further. Dexter had done side jobs for his brother back then. That’s how he could’ve known about the place.
By the time Cal ended the call with Raines, Alena already had the screen turned toward him. “This was one of Arneson’s projects. Dexter probably knew every inch of it.”
Cal cursed under his breath. “And if Melissa’s right, he hired the two men holding her.”
“Maybe,” Alena said. She shook her head, the words tasting like ash. “I don’t know. It could fit, but…”
“But it could also be a ploy,” Cal finished. His voice was low, tight, and filled with as much doubt and concern as she was feeling.
Alena stared at the passing road, the GPS counting down the minutes. “Why, though? What would Melissa gain by this?” she asked.
Cal glanced at her. “Could be she thinks making it look like Dexter has her puts more pressure on the cops to bring him down. But he’s already the subject of a manhunt.”
“Exactly,” Alena whispered. Her doubts pressed in hard, but so did the memory of Melissa’s panicked voice. “So maybe this is the real deal.”
The farther they drove into the outskirts of Cypress Falls, the more this part of town showed its scars. Everything felt as if it was decaying around them.
They passed an old diner with plywood nailed over the windows, the faded sign still promising theBest Pancakes in Texas.A nail salon with sun-bleached posters of manicures had gone dark, the glass door streaked with dust. Even a small daycare sat abandoned, the playground rusting, paint flaking off the swings. Businesses that hadn’t survived the hit after Covid, and nobody had come back to revive them.
The strip mall came into view just past a row of boarded-up storefronts. The cracked marquee still readBlanco Crossingin chipped letters. Half the panels were missing, and graffiti sprawled across the walls in thick black lines. Broken windows glinted in the late sun, jagged like teeth. Weeds and trash filled the parking lot, and an old shopping cart lay on its side near the curb.
Cal slowed, then stopped a little up the street, far enough to keep them out of view. They both scanned the area. The placelooked dead, silent, but Melissa’s panicked words still echoed in Alena’s head.
“No sign of her,” she whispered, eyes narrowing on the shadows near the rear of the mall. “Or anyone else.”
Cal’s hand rested on the gearshift, tense and ready. They both knew how quickly that could change.
