Wait. What? Her insides coiled tighter, constricting around the bullet wound, and another gush of blood escaped. Maeve blinked as her vision wavered. The edges around her eyes were darker somehow. Was the bulb overhead giving out? Or was her brain playing tricks on her? Because she couldn’t have heard him right. “You took… You?”
The notebook. Lauren’s notebook. The one piece of evidence that may have helped her find Callen’s sister sooner. He’d taken it from her hotel room? He’d ended her career? He’d ended her relationship with Callen? For what? To have her bleed out on this torture table? “How?”
“Well, I couldn’t very well leave it behind, considering she’d written so many good things in there about me.” He dropped his elbows onto the table, getting that much closer to her. “You know, conversations where I told her how much I was in love with you and that I was going to kill Callen, and how she tried to talk me out of it. Turns out, she was building a little case tohave me committed in that annoying secret language you two made up as teens. Only I didn’t realize what was in that notebook of hers until you talked yourself into the investigation. I knew it was only a matter of time before you realized what my sister had written, and I couldn’t have that.”
Her mouth dried. “Sister.”
She couldn’t think.
Couldn’t breathe.
As Cieron Russell removed the ski mask. “Surprise.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The blood trail cut short at the parking lot behind the funeral home.
Callen gripped the flashlight he’d collected from the glove compartment of the SUV until the plastic protested. He didn’t have any proof that the blood that’d seeped onto the sidewalk at the front door belonged to Maeve, but his instincts edged him into near desperation. That stain hadn’t been there when he’d left. Maeve had had her phone tucked in her back pocket in the morgue.
He could almost convince himself that she’d collapsed from reopening her wound and a Good Samaritan or Dr. Yarrow had called emergency services to intervene. But the dark spotted trail curved toward the back of the building. To an empty parking lot. Not the curving driveway that would’ve gotten an ambulance closer to her.
Which meant Maeve had been taken.
Only one person would have reason to ambush her.
The killer had finally gotten what he’d wanted.
Callen had left her unprotected, vulnerable, bleeding. Hell, she wouldn’t have had the energy to fight back after coming up from the basement. Or maybe he’d surprised her from behind. It didn’t matter. What mattered was getting her back. Fixing this.
Jogging back to his SUV, he hauled himself behind the steering wheel and punched the accelerator, tearing down the driveway. He fishtailed back onto the freeway in front of another car, nearly colliding into the back of a smaller sedan as his phoneconnected to the only person experienced enough to find Maeve before she disappeared like the others. Like Lauren.
Acid burned in his throat as the other line picked up. “Simpson.”
“Maeve is missing.” Three words. The dam holding him together cracked just a little more, but he couldn’t let it break. Not now. Not while Maeve needed him to be strong for her. To bring her home.
Silence beat through the line. One second. Two. “Give me the details.”
Callen recalled everything he’d found at the scene of the funeral home and the time between when he’d left Maeve in that cold, empty basement and discovering her phone. “She’s injured. Last I checked, she may have torn through one or two of her sutures. There was a lot of blood. I traced it to the back of the building. He must’ve gotten her into a car. The trail ended at the sidewalk.”
“Hurricane PD is on the way. I’ll reach out to Dr. Yarrow to meet them and pull Springdale PD in for the search.” Simpson didn’t miss a beat. “Where would he have taken her?”
“I don’t… I don’t know.” And that was what scared him the most. Not that Maeve couldn’t protect herself. She was better trained than some of the men in his security team, but her injuries would slow her down. And finding her in time? He blinked against the oncoming headlights. A patrol cruiser with its lights on—possibly highway patrol—screamed past, heading straight into Hurricane. Callen couldn’t think clearly. The possibilities were endless. The killer’s previous victims had been nothing but tools to draw Maeve in, to gain her attention. So their vehicles had been left in a public place. Lauren’s remains had been left on the trail, easy to find, as Callen’s death was meant to be. Public. But he had the feeling that wasn’t what the bastard wanted now. The man in the mask had set his plans inmotion over a year ago, striking from the shadows, potentially even putting himself in Maeve’s life to get closer. He would want to take her somewhere he could take his time, enjoy bending her to his will. “Both Lauren’s and Iliana Meyer’s vehicles were abandoned at the riverbank, but Maeve doesn’t have her car. He had to have taken her in his own vehicle. I searched the area around the funeral home. There are no burnout marks left behind in the parking lot, which means he wasn’t in a hurry.”
“All right. Well, knowing what I do of Agent Perry and the gaps you’ve filled in, it’s easy to imagine she was probably unconscious when he abducted her. He probably didn’t want to have to hurt her.” Simpson was on the move, his breath coming in shorter gasps. Running. “That gives me hope she’ll be able to fight her way out if necessary. I have three rangers available to aid the search, but I need someplace for them to start.”
“Kolob Arch.” The words left his mouth without hesitation. “That’s where this started. That’s where he left Lauren for us to find. He did it to get her attention, but I think there’s a reason he chose that location. There’s something there he considers important.”
Hours and hours of Maeve’s rambling when it came to serial offenders had sunk in over the years. From the time she’d come across her first serial case in college to the last couple of investigations she’d worked before their breakup, there’d been a genuine excitement in her voice with each clue revealed. She’d been fascinated with the serial mind and had wanted him to be as excited. It was those moments, of her studying at their small two-person kitchen table with notebooks and textbooks and her tablet spread across the surface, he remembered most. Not so much the words, but her awe, though some of her words too. Like the fact serial offenders rarely chose their stage at random. They weren’t impulsive. They could control themselves, andCallen didn’t believe for one second Kolob Arch didn’t hold some kind of significance for the shooter who’d taken Maeve.
“And if you’re wrong?” Simpson’s voice had evened out, the whip of a breeze coming through the line. Of the three rangers the law enforcement division head had said were available to start the search, Callen was betting the man had included himself. And then Callen was reminded of that reason, of how there was a second set of remains stored in one of those refrigerators in the basement morgue that had the potential to be Simpson’s missing brother. While Simpson had possibly found the answers he’d been searching for—for who knew how long—Callen felt the ranger’s need to help with miles between them.
The darkness on either side of the freeway seemed to close in, matching the hollowness spreading through his chest. The space where he’d once felt whole pulsed hard enough to still his next breath. He couldn’t be wrong. Not when it came to Maeve. But hadn’t the past few days shown him exactly how wrong he’d been about her in every regard? From her commitment to the family that’d taken her in to the cost she was willing to pay to make up for the past. She’d held on long after he’d given up on them, and he couldn’t swallow the shame and guilt driving him to go faster, get to her quicker. Maeve Perry had given up everything to do what she felt was right—to repay his family and provide them closure—and he’d only punished her for it.
She’d lied to him, led him to believe there would be justice at the end of this investigation, but justice had failed Lauren long before Maeve ever did. Because she was right. Police had given up after mere weeks, just as they’d already given up on Iliana Meyer, but Maeve hadn’t. Their half-assed investigation—whether due to low manpower, even lower resources or low priority—hadn’t been enough for her. She’d seen his need to have answers, and she’d gone after them with no considerationof herself, her career or the storm she’d be putting herself in by facing him after all this time.
And for that, Callen recognized how much he didn’t deserve her. Those tentative smiles when he’d tried verbally cutting her down, the handful of seconds she’d let him hold her after her nightmare, that kiss he’d claimed without thought, her risking her life by dragging him out of that river and taking that bullet so he wouldn’t have to.
He hadn’t deserved any of it. Hell, he’d even taken it all for granted, but there wouldn’t be a single moment he didn’t pay her back when he found her. Because he loved her. He’d loved her since the moment they’d finally broken that sibling’s-best-friend barrier and she’d hugged him after her father’s funeral just to thank him for showing up. A spark had flared that day and hadn’t left since, even after she’d moved out. Only now it burned hotter, drove him harder. Maeve was all there was for him. No other woman had come close to easing the grief and emptiness like she did, and he couldn’t let her go. Not again. Not ever again.
