52. Colt

52

COLT

The lead detective from the state police stood on the back deck, hands on his hips, staring down his nose at me. “You want me to start a statewide manhunt for someone because your sister remembered someone chewed grape gum?”

I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood. “He fits the profile.”

“A made-up profile from cases we aren’t even sure are related,” Detective Holden spat. “And between you and me, your sister doesn’t seem all that stable. Her testimony probably wouldn’t even hold up in court.”

A whole different sort of fury surged. My fingers clenched, knuckles itching to collide with Holden’s nose. As if reading my mind, Ryan stepped in front of me. “We’ve already put Shawn Sullivan in the vicinity of four other missing women just weeks before they disappeared.”

Holden scrubbed a hand over his face before shaking his head. “Come talk to me again when you’ve put him at the scene of the disappearance. We’re wrapping up and heading back to headquarters. We’ll keep you in the loop of the investigation.”

He shot that last sentence at Ryan specifically. Because he’d wanted me off the premises of the crime scene from the moment he’d arrived. It was just too bad for him that it was my sister’s house.

“I found something,” Marshall called, running up the steps to the back deck.

My hands fisted tighter as I tried to hold on to control. But I could feel it slipping. Too many awful images flew through my head. Ones I knew because of all the crime scene photos I’d studied over the past month.

Knowledge was supposed to mean power, but I’d never felt more powerless. Those images flashed in my mind, but instead it was Ridley’s face on their lifeless bodies.

“Tell me,” I snarled.

Marshall didn’t deserve my rage, but he didn’t take it personally. He knew I was holding on by a fraying thread. Instead, he started talking. “We got a hit on the gray Jeep. It’s registered to an LLC. The same LLC that reserved the single campsite at the bluffs for the next two weeks. It took a little digging, but that LLC has a single member.”

“Shawn Sullivan,” Ryan finished for him.

Marshall nodded.

But I was already moving. Running for my SUV. I didn’t give a damn about protocol or procedure. All I could see was Ridley.

I was halfway to my vehicle when a hand caught my arm. Ryan jerked me to a stop as deputies donned their Kevlar and moved to their squad cars and SUVs. “You know you can’t go.”

“The hell I can’t,” I growled.

“And what happens when we take him down and the whole arrest is called into question because you were the one to do it?” Ryan challenged. “What happens if we lose him because of you ? How are you going to explain that to the families of those missing women? To the family of the one who disappears next?”

Rage blasted through me, but I knew she was right. I also knew I couldn’t not go. I had to be there for Ridley when she needed me. “Don’t cut me out. Let me be there in the end. She needs me.”

Indecision swept over Ryan’s face until she finally relented. “You ride with me. I don’t even want any record of your official vehicle on the premises.”

I jerked my head in a nod and ran to my SUV to grab my vest. Pulling it over my head, I secured the sides and slid into Ryan’s sedan. She was already behind the wheel and barking orders over the radio.

The instructions were to go in quiet, no lights or sirens, nothing that would spook Sullivan. Ryan led the parade of law enforcement vehicles, all of us making the trip in record time. As she pulled to a stop at the campsite, my stomach hollowed out.

A gray Jeep and a large RV stood sentry. The RV’s door was wide-open and flapping in the wind. But it was more than the ghostly reception that had me frozen to the spot. It was that they were familiar.

“I’ve seen that RV before,” I choked out.

“Where?” Ryan clipped.

“At Ridley’s campsite. I’m not sure when that was exactly. Before her attack.” My gut soured. I’d missed it. Hadn’t thought back to that fancy RV I’d seen previously, thought to check the camp’s registry. “He’s been watching her all this time.”

“Hold it together, Colt. If you don’t, I’m going to have to cuff you to this squad car, and I really don’t want to have to do that.”

“I missed it. Should’ve seen…”

“But you’re seeing now,” Ryan reminded me. “So let’s go get your girl.”

We were out of the car in a flash, Ryan whispering orders into her radio as officers fanned out.

“I’ve got blood,” an officer with only a few months on the job said as he and Marshall approached the RV.

Marshall slipped inside, Sanchez on his heels. Seconds later we heard a clear over the radio.

“Blood trail, broken vegetation,” another deputy called from the tree line.

All I could hear was the word blood over and over. It haunted me with each pound of my heart until finally my body went numb altogether.

I fell in line behind a handful of officers, Ryan leading the charge through the woods. She had search and rescue training that I knew helped her to see the lay of the land now. Broken branches and trampled underbrush that I prayed would lead us to Ridley. A Ridley who was safe and unharmed.

A shot shattered the silence, and the numbness disappeared in a split second, replaced by a terror I’d never known. Different than when I’d realized Emerson was missing. This terror was deeper, more vicious, because I knew the monster who’d taken Ridley. And that monster had a gun.

Every single officer broke into a run. Ryan’s voice crackled across the radio, shouting orders. But all I could think about was Ridley.

Ryan hit the clearing before the bluff, gun raised. “Shawn Sullivan, this is the Mason County Sheriff’s Department. Lower your weapon.”

A laugh split the air, a sickening cackle that only spurred my muscles on until I broke through the trees. I saw it then.

The image my nightmares were made of.

Shawn had Ridley by the hair on the edge of the bluff, a gun pressed to the underside of her chin. This spot was one favored by especially adventurous tourists. Occasionally rock climbers rappelled down the cliff’s edge, but that was with ropes and spotters.

The drop was over one hundred and fifty feet into the lake below—you hit that water wrong, and you’d be dead before you realized how cold it was.

Shawn jerked Ridley’s head back in a vicious snap, and she cried out in pain. That’s when I saw the blood. It had seeped through her tank top and shorts, and trailed down her leg.

He’d hurt her. Cut her.

“Lower your weapon, Shawn. And we can all walk away.”

He laughed again, that same sick twistedness to his tone. “Sophie Ryan. Second-in-command. I wonder if you’ll get to take the sheriff’s job when they realize how badly he bungled this.”

My fingers itched to pull my weapon, to be the one to end this bastard, but I couldn’t. I had to trust that my people had every available shot. I had to believe in everything I’d bled into them.

Ridley’s gaze connected with mine as tears welled in her eyes. “Love you, Law Man.”

Shawn gripped her hair harder, shaking Ridley like a rag doll. “You don’t get to love him, you whore. You don’t deserve any of this. My plan was perfect until you. You’re going to pay for this.”

“Shawn,” Ryan warned, raising her weapon higher.

Ridley’s eyes didn’t move from mine. “Beyond the shallows, remember?”

Everything slowed. Heartbeats thundered in my ears as my mind connected the dots a split second before Ridley acted. A no was on my lips, but it was too late.

She reared her head back and slammed her forehead into Shawn’s already bloodied nose. He howled in pain, his hold on her loosening for the barest second. It was only a moment, but Ridley didn’t waste it. She shoved back, away from Shawn—and over the bluff.

Bullets pierced the air, but I was already running. Because she believed I’d be there to catch her when she fell.

So there was only one thing to do.

Jump.