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Everything in me bristled. I didn’t want to leave her alone, especially when she was sleeping. But they were right. We had to move. Now.
Gently, I pulled away from her, making sure that Aspen was still curled up close. I left a quick note explaining that I was at the lodge, and that both Grant and Liam were outside the door if she needed them. And finally, I couldn’t resist leaning down to press my lips against her temple.
Evelyn didn’t stir. Good. Hopefully, she wouldn’t know that I’d been gone by the time I got back.
Noah stood on the porch when I came out. I locked the door behind me. “You all right?”
He was a good guy and had been through more trauma than most people would ever know. I could trust him with my life, and Evelyn’s life. He would rather die than let anyone through. More importantly, I knew that if he was asking me, that he really wanted to know.
“I’m not,” I said.
He nodded. “Get over there, then.”
“Is me being over there going to make me feel better.”
“Probably not.” His eyes flashed. “But you’ll feel more stable if you’re doing something.”
That was the truth. Being helpless was the worst feeling. Especially when the danger was so real and so close. I waved to Noah as I jogged down the steps. It wasn’t that far to the lodge, but I jumped into my truck anyway.
Everyone was clustered around the monitors looking at security footage when I walked in. Ours, and it looked like Jude had the town’s cameras patched into our system now. “I’m here.”
“Good,” Harlan said without turning around. “Police chief told us that he’s seen someone matching Nathan’s description around town, but we haven’t seen him on any cameras anywhere. Also got reports of a cabin about forty miles out that’s abandoned, but people have seen lights.”
“He’s not anywhere?” I looked at the feeds, and Jude was looking too. Arms crossed and frowning.
“No,” he said. “I’ve got facial recognition running, so if he does hit a camera, we’ll know it.”
“If they don’t alter the footage first,” Daniel muttered.
Jude swore under his breath. He wasn’t happy that they were able to do that, or about his inability to find the digital loophole that allowed them access to the cameras when they were blocked from everyone else.
“He’s slippery,” Jude finally said. “There aren’t enough cameras in town to actually cover everything. He knows where they are and is avoiding them, if he’s here.”
“If he’s here,” I said, my frustration like sandpaper under my skin.
Liam paced along the back wall. “Everything he’s done. He wants us to know that he’s here, but he hasn’t shown himself. It’s like he wants to be a very present ghost. Why?”
I turned away from the monitors and leaned my hands on the table. Liam was right. What was going on here? I was the only one in this room who knew everything, so it was me who had to put the clues together.
Nathan was possessive. He considered Ev his because they’d been engaged. Hell, he’d used her engagement ring to scar her. Then he’d made a promise about where he’d bury her. I wasn’t sure I was right, but it was worth a shot. “He’s really caught up in the idea of people not breaking their word. He still thinks of Evelyn as his fiancée. Nathan made promises to her about what he’d do to her if she crossed him. All this time, when she’s been alone, maybe he’s been giving her chances, or what he thinks are chances, to come back to him so he didn’t have to follow through. But now she’s here, and she’s... with me.” I swallowed. “The final betrayal. Her actually being with someone else. It’s what started this in the first place, and so he’s finished giving her chances. Hence the deadline.”
“Could be,” Liam said. “This guy is a piece of work.”
“Tell me about it.” I almost choked on the words. They didn’t know the extent of Evelyn’s scars or the fears that she carried. She thought she was going to die, or cause someone else’s death. I knew that weight, and it was a horrible way to live.
“Well,” Jude said, “one of the reasons we pulled you away from Evelyn was that we’ve had a breakthrough.”
I turned to him. “Why wasn’t that the first thing you told me?”
He stared at me. Because when it came to Evelyn, they already knew I tended to go in guns blazing, and they needed me in a calmer, more rational, more clinical state of mind. Which I now was. “What is it?”
“One of my contacts. More like a last resort. He’s deep enough that I can’t say shit about him. But after way too much digging—West is definitely being protected—he found this.” He handed me a sticky note with a phone number on it. “It’s older, so we don’t know if it’s still his phone. But if it is, we can track it.”
Fuck. Relief and anger flowed through me all at once. Like breaking through the water’s surface and getting that first sweet hit of oxygen. “We gonna call it?”
Jude nodded and tossed me a phone that was connected to the security setup. “All ready to track it. If it’s him. He’s going to have encryption, so you need to give me time.”
I almost laughed. The old “keep them talking” thing that happened on movies and TV wasn’t the way you tracked phones in the digital world. But he was being protected, which meant we couldn’t just bounce his signal off the nearest satellite. Jude was going to have to hack it, or try. “Got it.”
