Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
I looked from Cole to the depths of the well, took a step forward, and dropped into the dark.
Chapter Thirty-Two
WEST
“Where the fuck is he taking her?” I demanded, my eyes skipping from the road ahead to the map on my phone, Avery, a blinking red dot moving deeper and deeper into the mountains.
“To the middle of fucking nowhere,” Hawk answered, his voice distant through the speaker. He trailed behind, speeding to catch up, watching the same map he’d shared with me.
“I’m going to lose you if we keep going in this direction,” I said, watching as the signal bars on my phone vanished one by one until all I had left was a stubby, single bar. Hawk’s voice faded in and out, and Avery’s red dot on the map had stopped blinking.
No signal meant Hawk’s tracker was useless. No signal meant I’d lose Avery, too.
My heart was a block of ice in my chest. Finding a missing person in these mountains was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. I’d been on search and rescue before. I knew how easy it was to walk right past someone in the woods and not see them. And that was when you had an idea where to start looking.
The map refreshed, and I realized I’d missed a turn.
“You got me, Hawk?” I asked, not expecting an answer. The timer on the call clicked upwards. Hawk was there, but not there. From here, I’d be lucky to get another update to the map. I wouldn’t hear from Hawk again until he caught up.
I was on my own.
Rolling to a stop, I threw my SUV into reverse, almost hitting the tail end against the side of the mountain as I negotiated a careful five-point turn to reverse direction on the narrow dirt road. I crept back down a quarter mile to swing to the left, up a trail barely wide enough for a vehicle. The fresh tire tracks in front of me told me I wasn’t the first to drive this way.
My heart lurched, thudding against my ribs. How far behind them was I? Ten minutes? Fifteen?
My phone beeped as the call with Hawk officially dropped. The map he’d been sharing hung motionless, Avery’s red dot frozen. My SUV crawled past her last tracked location. She’d come this way, but if they’d made any turns or left this trail, I’d lose her again.
Whatever Haywood had been driving wasn’t equipped for the terrain. He’d scraped rocks, knocked over fallen branches, and rolled fallen logs, leaving clear evidence of his passage. Slowly, with every turn of my wheels, I was penning him in. As long as he kept going, I’d find him. Unless this trail led to an actual road. Then I’d be screwed. It seemed unlikely based on what I could see on the map. There were no roads for miles.
But where was he taking her? Why here?
This land was privately owned and had been on the market for years. Developers had dreams of exclusive gated communities with luxury homes and panoramic views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. None of those dreams had come to fruition. The cost of bringing in basic utilities, paving the road for regular use, and grading to build those mega mansions had been too high to make any kind of development profitable, and the land remained wild and mostly untraveled. As far as I knew, no one had lived up this way in my lifetime. What was here? Unless Haywood was just looking for somewhere remote to kill her and dump her body. That was the most logical explanation.
I had to get to Avery.
I pushed forward, pressing on the gas. My police issued SUV wasn’t equipped for this kind of terrain either, but it could handle it better than whatever Haywood was driving. The woods were tight to the trail, the mountain rising on one side, trees dense on the downhill slope. If Haywood’s vehicle had left this path, I’d see it. But so far, the trail stretched in front of me, the ruts of his tires showing me exactly where he’d been. My gut churned. I was moving too slowly. I needed to get to Avery before he did whatever he was planning to do.
The trail curved to the right, no longer hugging the side of the mountain as it opened onto a patch of tall grass, the clear blue sky visible through the break in the trees.
A single vehicle, a luxury sedan, sat alone in the clearing. How had Haywood managed to get that thing all the way up here? No one was inside the car that I could see. There wasn’t any movement in the grass surrounding the parked car, nor in the trees at the edge of the clearing.
I threw the SUV into park at the head of the trail, pocketing the keys. He wouldn’t be able to get past me to leave. If he went anywhere, it would have to be on foot. And on foot, I was faster. So was Avery, if she were still able to walk.