Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 70801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 354(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 354(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Salem stares out the window, eyes unfocused. Her voice is thin. “So he was there.”
“Maybe,” I say.
“Or someone else was driving his car,” she whispers, like she’s trying to protect herself from hope.
I glance at her. “Possible.”
Salem’s hands curl into fists. “But you said he’s missing.”
“He is,” I say. “Or he’s hiding. We don’t know yet.”
Poe’s keys click again on the line. “Ozzy, I’m seeing something. Hold.”
My stomach tightens. “What?”
Poe’s voice goes colder. “Vehicle was flagged on a traffic cam two nights ago. Heading out of town late. No follow-up. Then nothing until… today.”
Salem’s breath catches. “That means he was moving.”
“Or someone was moving him,” I say quietly.
The silence that follows is heavy.
Salem finally turns her head and looks at me. Her eyes are glossy but fierce. “We need to go back,” she says.
“No,” I answer instantly.
Her jaw tightens. “Ozzy.”
“We needed a clue,” I say, keeping my voice calm. “We got one. We do not go back without backup.”
Salem swallows hard, then nods reluctantly.
Poe’s voice cuts in. “Dean needs to know now. Send him the plate and location.”
“I will,” I say. I end the call and immediately message Dean through the secure channel with the warehouse coordinates, the plate, and the registration name.
Then I glance at Salem again. She’s staring at her hands like she can’t decide whether to shake or fight.
I reach over and cover her fist with my hand. “Hey.”
Salem looks up.
My heart slams in my chest at the rawness in her eyes.
“We found him,” she whispers.
I swallow. “We found his car.”
Her voice cracks slightly. “That’s closer than I’ve ever been.”
I squeeze her hand. “We’re going to do this right. We’re going to bring him home if we can.”
Salem nods once, sharp and determined. “And if he knows something, he’s telling us.”
A dark little smile tugs at my mouth. “That’s my girl.”
Salem’s lips part, startled by the words. Then her expression shifts, soft and terrified and warmed by something she doesn’t trust yet. “Okay,” she whispers. “Then what now.”
I keep driving, eyes scanning the road, mind already mapping next steps. “Now,” I say, voice steady, “we get back to Rainmaker, we lock down, and we wait for Maddox to bring the storm.”
Because if Arthur Charles’s car is parked behind a warehouse tied to Goldenbell, the game just changed. And I have a feeling the next move is going to be violent.
TWENTY-THREE
SALEM
The highway unspools beneath us in a dull, hypnotic rhythm. Trees streak past the windows in a smeared gray-green haze, their branches clawing at the edges of my vision before dissolving into nothing. Above, the sky hangs low and heavy, the color of week-old dishwater left forgotten in the sink. Inside the car, the heater drones a steady, toneless lullaby. The tires murmur secrets to the asphalt, soft and constant.
Ozzy’s hands rest on the wheel with practiced calm, knuckles pale but unmoving. Still, I can feel the tension rolling off him in quiet waves. It crackles in the space between our seats like invisible static, prickling the skin on my arms.
My stomach is a cold, hollowed-out place, as though I swallowed dread instead of coffee this morning and it’s been sitting there ever since, heavy and sour. Every breath tastes faintly metallic.
My mind races back to my father.
Arthur Charles.
Three syllables that have suddenly grown weight and shape. A real name attached to a real man who once drove a real car down real roads. A man who might have held me, or at least known my name. A man who shares strands of my DNA and may once have carried pieces of my story in his head.
Or may still.
I curl my fingers into my palm and press until the nails bite crescent moons into the skin. The sharp sting is grounding. Pain has always been a reliable anchor. It yanks me back when my thoughts start to spiral outward into panic.
I turn my face toward the window, letting the cold glass kiss my temple, and try to summon him.
A face.
A voice.
A gesture. Anything.
My mind offers only blankness. Nothing but a gray screen, flickering faintly like a television left on after the broadcast ends. No features rise to fill it. No memory of cologne or cigarette smoke or the low timbre of laughter. Just absence, vast and polite, waiting for me to stop asking.
I have spent my whole life with an empty space labeled FATHER, and now someone has drawn a circle around it and written MISSING in red ink.
I swallow and taste acid.
Ozzy glances at me for half a second. “You okay?”
I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to throw something. Instead I say, “Sure.”
Ozzy doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t push. His jaw tightens, and his eyes flick to the mirrors again. Road. Mirror. Road. Like he is counting threats.
I force a breath in through my nose. Hold it. Let it out slowly. I can do this. I can handle information. I can handle fear. I’ve handled worse.