“Who took her?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said, gripping the wheel tighter. “But if Waylay’s missing too, my money’s on Tina.”
Lou swore under his breath.
My phone rang. It was Nash. I hit the speaker button.
“You find Way?” I asked.
“No. I’m bringing Liza J into town. Got some footage off the Morrison’s doorbell cam. Dark, shitty sedan pulled out of Liza’s about an hour ago. A big, black SUV was parked on the shoulder, waiting for it. Headlights set off the motion sensor. Timeline fits for Liza seein’ the brake lights. Also got a call about a hit and run. Someone smashed through the Loy’s fence along the road over at Lucky Horseshoe.”
Lou and I glanced at each other. “We’re on our way there now, tracking Naomi’s phone.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Nash ordered.
Lucky Horseshoe was a short drive, made shorter by the fact that I hit 90 miles per hour.
“Should be right up here,” Lou said, peering at my phone.
I let off the gas. Then hit the brakes hard when I saw the fence. “Shit.”
Tire marks swerved off the road and smashed right through the rail fence. I turned the wheel so my lights could follow the path and put the truck in park.
Mr. and Mrs. Loy were standing in the pasture surveying the damage. Mrs. Loy was huddled up in an oversize flannel jacket and smoking a small cigar. Mr. Loy came right at us.
“Can you believe this? Some son of a bitch smashed through the fence and then drove back out again!”
“Grab the flashlight in the glove box,” I told Lou.
“Naomi!” I called the second my feet hit the ground. The frosty grass crunched under my boots.
There was no answer.
Lou flashed the light into the pasture, and we followed the tracks. “Looks like they stopped here before driving back out,” he said.
“Must have been one drunk idiot,”
Something caught my eye in the grass, and I bent to pick it up. It was a cellphone with sparkly daisies on the case.
A chill stopped my heart and had me fighting for breath.
“Is that hers?” Lou asked.
“Yeah.”
“Goddammit.”
“What’s that? Is that evidence?” Mr. Loy demanded.
I drove back to Honky Tonk in a fog. Lou was talking, but I wasn’t listening. I was too busy replaying my last conversation with Naomi. I hadn’t wanted to lose her, so I’d pushed her away and lost her anyway.
She was right. This was worse. So much fucking worse.
Someone had coordinated this. Someone had conspired to take them both away from me. And I was going to make them fucking pay.
I pulled up to the front door of the bar, and half the damn town poured out.
“Where is she?”
“You find her?”
“Does he look like he found her, Elmer, you idiot?”
“He looks pretty pissed off.”
Ignoring the crowd and the questions, I pushed inside and found half the Knockemout PD surrounded by the other half of town. The specials board had been erased replaced with a hand-drawn map of Knockemout cut into quadrants.
Fi, Max, and Silver charged me, and Nash looked up.
“You didn’t find them,” Fi said.
I shook my head.
A shrill whistle cut through the noise, and everyone shut up.
“Thanks, Luce,” Nash said to Lucian, who immediately returned to whatever phone call he was making. “As I was saying, we’ve got an APB out on Naomi Witt, Waylay Witt, a gray sedan, and a black, newer model Chevy Tahoe. We’re starting the search in town and expanding outward.”
Amanda, dragging Liza J with her, hurried over to Lou, who pulled her into his side. “We’ll find ’em,” he promised. Then he wrapped his free arm around my grandmother.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t move from the spot. I thought I’d been afraid before. Afraid of turning into my father. Of crumbling after a loss. But this fear was worse. I hadn’t told her I fucking loved her. I hadn’t told either one of them. And someone had taken them from me. I hadn’t crumbled. It was worse. I hadn’t had the goddamn guts to love someone enough to crumble.
I shoved my hands through my hair and kept them there as the reality of what I’d walked away from set in.
I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder. “Keep it together,” Lucian said. “We’ll find them.”
“How? How the fuck will we find them? We know jack shit.”
“We’ve got a plate number on a 2002 gray Ford Taurus that was reported stolen from Lawlerville an hour ago,” Lucian said.