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A wave of anxious quiet rolled through the room.
This was what we’d been waiting for.
Knowing Frederick would make contact some way.
I gulped around the animosity and hate that butted up against my own swell of hope.
My nod was slow.
Encouragement.
Charleigh was shaking as she answered and put it on speakerphone. “Hello?”
A wave of depravity rushed from the hushed silence that hovered on the other end of the line. It was the type of silence you knew without a doubt was a trap.
“Hello?” she asked again, her voice tripping on what amounted to a plea.
The man on the other end of the line tsked. The sound was malicious and cruel. “Chastity. You’ve been such a devious little wife.”
A shiver jolted her, and the oxygen clogged in her throat.
“After all the things I gave you,” he continued.
I wanted to snatch the phone from her lap and demand to know where he had Nolan. Utter all the ways I was going to torture him so he could stew and fret in the trepidation before I made the nightmare a reality.
But we’d agreed if he called, it needed to be Charleigh who did the talking.
“Where’s Levi?” she whispered.
“Don’t worry, Sweet Pea, he’s fine. You wouldn’t think I’d harm someone I love, would you? Especially after I’ve been mourning his death for five years?”
Horror streamed down Charleigh’s face, rods of pain that drove through her middle, and her hand was on her heart like she was trying to keep it from bleeding out.
I ground my teeth. Searching for restraint. To be fucking patient so we could ferret out this piece of shit.
Frederick Winston released a discordant laugh. A clang of malice and spite. “I would have been mourning my beautiful wife, too, ifI hadn’t known the second I went to identify her body that it was not actually you. I’ve been searching for you for years. The second I saw pictures of the two of you on that dance floor…I knew he was alive, too.”
“What do you want?” Charleigh gasped it. “Just tell me what you want.”
“What I’ve always wanted…You.”
Revulsion beat against her fear, and Charleigh’s expression morphed into this deep-seated sorrow, though it was cut with devotion and determination.
I squeezed her knee. A silent reminder that I was there and she wasn’t alone. Not anymore and not ever again. And more than anything, I wanted to reassure her that we were going to get Nolan back.
She looked up at me. Caramel eyes shimmered with pain, though the cinnamon flecks blazed with fire.
She cemented her voice. “You can have me as long as I see Levi is whole and unharmed.”
My hand squeezed again. Riddled with pride because my girl was fuckin’ stronger than anyone I’d ever met. It was twisted with the ruthlessness that carved me into shards. The crushing urgency to get my son back.
“1645 Mabel Street in Keeton.”
Fuck, he had him in the next town over.
“Seven o’clock. Come alone. You’ve heard it said it is the child that pays for the sins of his mother.”
Then the phone went dead.
