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Lexington’s eyes went wide, and he gave me a soft squeeze around my waist.

“Really? You know what, I’m not going to question it. I can come out to you,” he began, but I cut him off.

“I’d actually like to come out to Cherrytree Hills,” I explained. There were some parts of my past I was finally ready to face. “If that’s okay with you, of course.”

“That would be great, Goldie. Just email or text me when.” We said our goodbyes, and I handed the phone back to Lexington. My arms weren’t long enough to hang it up from where I sat, but his were.

“You want to go back to that town?” he asked tentatively.

I nodded. “You’ll come with me, right?”

“Always.”

Lexington

Goldie was subdued as we drove into the small town. The moment we passed the stretch of road where I’d rescued her months earlier, a heavy, total silence settled over her. Her gaze was out the passenger window, the radio playing softly and filling the cabin around us with a soothing beat. I didn’t know how to comfort her—I don’t think anyone would know. I simply took her hand in mine, holding it steadily as I navigated to the address she had typed into the GPS when we left.

My left hand stayed on the steering wheel in a steel-like grip. I didn’t like that we were here. It didn’t feel safe. While we didn’t know if the man who had abducted her lived here, it was our best bet.

“You know those names you wrote down in your notebook?” I asked, breaking the silence.

She rolled her head along the headrest so she was facing me, but her eyes still held a thousand yard stare. “Yeah, why?”

“Do you think it was one of them? Who took you?” We had talked about it briefly, but our main focus had always been the scribbled note. The names were just the town's suspects—the people she wanted to look into, but didn’t necessarily believe were responsible.

“At first, no,” she explained softly as I turned onto the town's main street as the GPS instructed. “It felt too coincidental that the main suspects had been doing it and had gotten away with it all this time.”

“But?” I asked.

A small smile broke through her impassive expression. “But… this man was smart. He hid Silas for a decade, me for months, and those kids…” She trailed off, her eyes unfocusing. “Whoever did this is smart—smart enough to stay under the radar just enough to not get caught.”

“But not smart enough to stay completely off the radar?” I challenged.

She nodded. “He messed up when he took me. I’ve thought about it, and the only reason Silas and I were able to get out is because I was an adult, and Silas had grown up. The rest of the kids couldn’t have crawled out. They simply weren’t tall enough. He wasn’t smart enough to take that into account when he took me.”

“Do you think it was planned? Your abduction?”

She shrugged. “Yes and no. It’s too much of a coincidence that I get nabbed after almost being taken twenty years ago by the same person. But it wasn’t his usual M.O. Not in the dead of night, and no one else was hurt. I was attacked in my car.” I felt bile rise in my throat, but let her speak. While I hated hearing what had happened, I wanted to be someone she could talk to about it, someone she felt safe confiding in. “He had to act fast to get me out, leaving my car there with the door open. If he had planned it, I have a feeling it would have taken far longer for anyone to notice I was missing.”

“That’s not true,” I interrupted, thinking back to that day—to Oliver’s phone calls, Jackie driving to her house, Fai’s panic. “Even before Detective Ransom called, we were looking for you.”

Her eyes widened at my words. “Really?”

I nodded. “I think the moment you were a minute late, Fai had already started searching, and by the time Oliver started calling everyone, the workday had only started an hour prior.”

She smiled to herself softly before looking back at me, a mischievous look in her eyes. “What about you? Were you looking?”

“Nope,” I teased. “I was pretty sure you were avoiding me.”

She laughed softly. “In your defense, I had been. For weeks.”

I sobered just thinking back to that time. “I’m sorry. If things hadn’t gone weird between us, you wouldn’t have been taken. Everything you went through… it could have been prevented.”

“And Silas would have died down there,” she interrupted forcefully, and I clamped my mouth shut, because, damn was she right. “We can talk about all the what-ifs, but I wouldn’t change a thing, because that poor boy is free. He can finally see the sun, feel it on his skin.”

“You’re right,” I mumbled, squeezing her hand in mine as I pulled to the side of the road, parked my SUV, and glanced out the window. “You sure about this?”

Goldie swallowed and nodded. “No, but I need to do this. To see them.”