Page 138 of No Good Fight

Casey watches the entire thing.

When the truck disappears, he checks the timestamp and rewinds to the few minutes before Alex enters the garage. Then he moves through the other feeds, testing what she snoozed and what she left running.

“She didn’t disable anything,” he says.

“I know.”

“She could have.”

That makes Josh turn around.

Casey taps the screen, showing us the alert history. “She knew this system. She helped you set up extra cameras. If she wanted hours before you noticed, she could’ve shut enough down to make us work for it. A thirty-minute snooze gives her enough time to clear the driveway and make it there. That’s it.”

“She wanted us to follow,” Josh says.

I look at Alex’s phone.

“She wanted us to find her and prove he did it, not save her.”

28

ALEX

By the time I turn onto the service road, dawn has started pushing gray light through the trees.

I’m late enough that the thought keeps circling no matter how many times I tell myself Preston gave me until dawn, not some exact minute written on a clock. The road is little more than wet gravel and mud beneath Ryder’s tires, narrowing as I follow it deeper into the old Mason Ridge property.

Every rut sends another pulse of pain through my head, so I drive with one hand braced against the steering wheel and the other resting uselessly against my stomach while I fight the nausea that has followed me since I left his house.

The maintenance building still isn’t visible when the road curves and opens into a wider patch beside the trees. I slow until the truck stops, then leave it angled where anyone coming down the service road will see it immediately.

Where Ryder will see it.

I put the spare key in the cup holder and leave it there in plain sight. I’ve done everything I can to leave the trail for Ryder to follow.

My phone is already beside him. Preston’s messages are open. The cameras at the house recorded me leaving, and now Ryder’s truck is sitting exactly where the trail picks back up.

If this goes the way I think it’s going to, nobody will have to wonder whether I ran.

Nobody will have to listen while Preston invents a version of me that can’t argue back.

The thought should scare me more than it does, but I used up most of my panic somewhere between Ryder’s bed and this road. What’s left feels colder and more useful than anything I’ve felt before.

I grip the door handle and look across the cab before opening it. There’s an old station receipt tucked near the console and a sweatshirt shoved behind the passenger seat. Normal pieces of him scattered around a truck I stole less than an hour after telling him I loved him for the first time.

My throat tightens.

I don’t let myself sit there long enough to make staying possible.

The cold air hits my lungs as soon as I step down, and I close the door carefully instead of slamming it. My legs feel wrong beneath me after the drive, weak in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the fact that I left a hospital when I probably should have stayed there another night. I keep one hand against the truck until the dizziness eases enough for the trees to stop shifting in my peripheral vision.

The service road continues ahead, disappearing around another bend. According to the location Preston sent, the maintenance building should be somewhere beyond it.

I start walking.

Wet gravel grinds beneath my shoes. The rain stops, but water still drips from the branches overhead and runs along the edge of the road in thin streams. I keep watching the trees, the road ahead, the space behind me when I can manage it without making my head protest.

Nothing moves.