“Now you listen here, Morgan. You do anything to jeopardize this case and I’ll make sure you end up behind bars.”
I zipped my fly. “Good luck with that. I’m America’s goddamn sweetheart right now.” I disconnected before she could say another word and dialed Lina. It went to voicemail.
Knox was on his phone, presumably dialing Naomi. “She’s not answering,” he said, his voice tight.
“I’ll call Mandy,” Lou volunteered.
Lucian was looking at his phone. “According to the trackers, Naomi is at home. Waylay and Lina are in the grocery store parking lot.”
I had a missed call from Lina and a new voicemail.
I stabbed the Play button and headed for the door, the rest of the wedding party behind me.
Lina’s voice came out of the speaker. “Nash. It’s me. Burner Phone Guy is Cereal Aisle Guy. Mrs. Tweedy was with me when we met him in the grocery store. He was buying the same kind of candy that Waylay said is Duncan Hugo’s favorite. There were candy wrappers all over the warehouse floor in the crime scene pictures. I saw him again at Honky Tonk the night Tate Dilton caused a scene. I know it’s not much to go on, but I feel it in my gut. Call me back!”
Candy wrappers.
And just like someone had snapped their fingers, I was transported back to the side of the road on that hot August night.
Bang.
Bang.
Two gunshots echoed in my ears as a strange stinging sensation started in my shoulder and torso. I was going down…or the ground was rushing up.
I was sprawled out on asphalt as the driver’s door swung open. Something thin and transparent floated to the ground, glinting in the headlights of my cruiser. And then it was gone. The crinkle of plastic wrapper rang in my head as a black boot crushed it under foot.
“Been waitin’ for this a long time,” said the man in the hoodie. He sneered, his mustache twitching.
A fucking candy wrapper. That was what had been haunting my dreams for weeks. Not Duncan Hugo. A candy wrapper and Tate Dilton’s finger on the trigger.
“Call her the fuck back,” Knox snarled, snapping me out of my head.
“What in the hell do you think I’m doing?” I dialed again.
“I need a status update, now,” Lucian barked into his phone.
“Someone wanna tell me what the hell is going on?” Lou said.
Lina’s phone was ringing.
“Come on. Pick up, Angel,” I murmured. Something was very wrong and I needed to hear her voice.
The ringing stopped, but instead of her outgoing message, someone answered.
“Nash?”
But it wasn’t Lina. It was Liza J.
“He got her, Nash. He took her.”
FORTY-EIGHT
THEY KIDNAPPED THE WRONG GIRL
Lina
My job had put me into some pretty interesting situations, but this was a first. Not only had he zip-tied my hands behind my back, Cereal Aisle Guy also tossed my phone, watch, and coat—with Lucian’s tracking device—in the grocery store parking lot.
Then he’d shoved me into the trunk of a late-model sedan.
So much for Lucian’s team of creepers being able to follow my signal. I closed my eyes tight and thought of Nash. He would move heaven and earth to find me. So would Knox and Nolan. Even Lucian would lend a hand. And if they couldn’t do it, my mother would hunt me down.
I just needed to keep my wits about me and find a way to escape. This asshole had kidnapped the wrong woman.
Pep talk complete, I spent the first few minutes of trunk captivity trying to find the emergency trunk release only to discover that it had been disabled.
“Damn it,” I muttered. The car took a hard right turn. I banged my head and rolled awkwardly on my back, cringing at the binding at my wrists. “Ouch! Learn to drive, jackass!” I gave the trunk lid a half-hearted kick.
Over the noise of the road, I could hear him talking to someone but couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“Plan B,” I decided.
I could kick out a taillight and signal to other motorists that the asshole driving the vehicle had a hostage in the trunk.
The road changed. Instead of the smooth glide of asphalt, I could hear the crunch of gravel under the tires as we bumped along. This wasn’t good. Either Duncan Hugo was closer than we’d thought or Cereal Aisle Guy was taking me out into the woods to give me a tour of the inside of a freshly dug shallow grave.
I was trying to feel my way to the edge of the carpeting without pulling a neck muscle when the car came to an abrupt stop.
I flopped back onto my belly. This was definitely not good.
The trunk lid opened, and before I could roll into a striking position, I was hauled out unceremoniously.
“Jesus. Where’d you learn to drive? The bumper cars?” I complained, shrugging him off.
“Quit whining and start moving,” he said, giving me a shove forward.
We were on what had once been a gravel drive but was now overtaken by nature. In front of us was a huge barn-like building ringed with tall weeds. Beyond it, I could just make out the outline of a split rail fence.
“Are we still in Knockemout?” I asked, fighting off a shiver. No coat plus a healthy dose of fear made the night air feel even colder.
The henchman didn’t bother answering me. Instead he shoved me forward again.
“If you let me go now, you probably won’t have to do any prison time,” I said as I limped along in the shadow of the barn.
“I’m committed now, sweetheart. There were witnesses. There’s no going back for me.”
In the shadowy night, my abductor no longer looked like a handsome gym-going accountant. He looked like a man who enjoyed making babies cry.
“You sound like you blame me for this.”
He shook his head. “I warned you at the bar. I said, ‘Don’t make yourself a target.’”
“I do recall something like that,” I said as he unlocked the heavy exterior door of the barn. It was the only opening I had, so I took it.
I spun around and took off into the dark, but my broken heel and the uneven gravel made running impossible. I felt like I was in the middle of one of those nightmares where you’re trying to run but you’ve forgotten how.
A big, meaty hand closed around my shoulder and I was yanked backward.
“You’re a real pain in my ass, you know that?” he told me as he threw me over his shoulder.
“I get that a lot. So you’re in real estate, aren’t you?”
“Shut up.”
He carried me back to the door, then dumped me on the floor inside.
It was pitch-black and I froze, trying to get my bearings. “You know real estate doesn’t land people in prison often. Not like abducting women from grocery stores,” I said as I got to my feet.
“Bigger the risk, the bigger the reward,” he said in the dark.
That was Pritzger Insurance’s unofficial motto.
I heard a snick and then an overhead light fixture illuminated the space. It was a fancy foyer for a barn. The floor was stamped concrete and the wood-clad walls were nicer than my place in Atlanta. Electricity. That was good. Maybe it meant there would also be a phone somewhere inside.
On the wall directly across from me was a large metal sign that said Red Dog Farm.
Realization dawned. This was the foreclosed property where Nash had found the runaway horse. Had Hugo been this close all that time?