Page 53 of Girl Long Gone

Panic clogged his airway. “I’ll be there soon. Take good care of her.”

The man ran to the driver’s side and turned on the siren. The shrill warning wailed into the night.

“Connor.” The fierce bark of Officer Sanders’s voice broke into his thoughts.

He focused on Sanders’s hardened face. “We need to find Evelyn.”

“We need to find Gabriel Wilson,” Sanders countered.

Ice shot through his veins. He’d known Gabriel was up to something. He wanted to keep his twisted game going.

He wanted Evelyn.

“Monica said Gabriel blindfolded her then dropped her off. That’s all I know. Until then, top priority is finding Evelyn. She wouldn’t have left on her own.”

A second officer glanced around at the thinning crowd. “Maybe she went inside the restaurant?”

Connor sprinted to the restaurant and pushed through the front doors. A hostess glanced from a podium with wide eyes. “Has a woman with long brown hair and brown eyes been in here recently?”

He pressed the tips of his fingers into his eyes and searched his memory for what she had on. Dammit, why hadn’t he kept his eye on her? “Her hair was in a ponytail, black yoga pants, and a gray hoodie. No glasses.” He lowered his hands and found the blank face of the hostess. Frustration fisted his hands at his sides. “Did she come in here or not?”

The hostess took a step back. “I don’t think so, sir. I’m sorry.”

Connor ran through the narrow aisles between cramped tables toward the bathrooms. He shoved open the door to the lady’s room. “Evelyn!”

Nothing.

She wasn’t here. His world tilted. He needed to keep her safe, and he’d failed her. Determination straightened his spine and snapped him back from his momentary void, forcing him into cop-mode.

He wouldn’t fail her again.

He grabbed his phone and called Ben as he rushed back outside.

Ben answered on the first ring.

“I need to find Evelyn. Has Lacey heard from her?” “What the hell happened? Dammit.” The curse came out after a wave of Italian. “What do you need me to do?”

Sanders jogged to his side. “Find her?”

Connor focused on Sanders. “Call for backup and talk to everyone on this fucking sidewalk. Someone had to see something.” He pointed toward the roof at the front of the building. “There’re cameras. I’ll get copies of the tapes from the restaurant. This whole thing was another goddamn game. Gabriel has her. He couldn’t have gotten far. We need to act fast.”

Sanders barked orders to the other officer as well as the nosy-ass pedestrians loitering on the sidewalk.

Maybe they’d get lucky and one of them could tell them how Gabriel had managed to grab Evelyn.

He refocused on Ben. “Did you or Evelyn find anything new today?”

“She talked about trying to piece some stuff together. She had it on her laptop.”

“Go to Mark’s apartment and look at her computer. I gave Lacey a spare key. Call if you hear anything.” He disconnected the call, pulled up Mark’s contact information, and pressed send. He ran back into the restaurant, filling Mark in on all the horrible details.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”

“We need to talk to Simon. No more fucking games. Let’s catch this monster once and for all.”

25

The coolness of a hard wall seeped through the back of Evelyn’s shirt and pain sliced through her head. She squeezed her eyelids, wanting to hold onto the darkness and silence she’d escaped into before, but an insistent buzzing thumped against her skull. When she cracked one eye open, a strobing fluorescent light plastered in the center of the ceiling seeped into the narrow slit, and she retreated against the glare. One tiny movement, one small shaft of light, was enough to make her stomach heave.