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Because Nate had been there.
He’d been.
I knew it.
Knew it to my soul.
And Paisley wouldn’t have been skeptical of him showing, either. She would have trusted him. She would have climbed right into his truck, lured by a monster who’d hidden in broad daylight.
I wracked my brain for any hint of recognition. Where I knew him from. How we were connected. What I had done to him that made him believe warranted the vile depravity.
There was nothing there. No recollection of his face or his family name.
There had to be a reason.
A tie.
I couldn’t fucking believe he’d been right here, under my nose the whole goddamn time. He had passed my rigid background check. Had slithered around like the scum that he was while wearing that smug smirk on his face.
He’d been the one in control. The one manipulating this fucked up, twisted match. Toying with me, biding his time while he had me in knots, spinning me in fucking circles while he’d been pulling the strings.
Lurking.
Taunting.
Waiting to strike.
Horror curled through me in a snarl of sickness. I just prayed to God we’d get to him in time. That he wouldn’t harm them before we found him.
Because everything about this felt different.
Before he hadn’t left a trace, and now, it seemed he wanted me to know his face.
And somehow—somehow, I knew they were near. Could feel their hearts bounding in my veins. Could sense their spirits. Could almost hear them calling my name.
I’d just finished going back through the barn when my cell rang.
“Mert,” I answered, desperate for news.
He cleared his throat. “There are some fresh tire tracks leading out to pasture three. Fence is clipped again in the same spot as last month. Not sure how long it’s been that way, but gauging by the dirt, looks recent to me.”
My mind raced, hopelessly searching for a connection, for anything that would draw someone out that way.
“The cabin.” I wheezed it when it hit me, remembering Paisley and Evelyn telling me about the dilapidated cabin they had found on one of their rides out in that direction. “The cabin.”
I ended the call without saying anything else, immediately dialing Ezra who was searching the next property over. “Did you find something?” he asked when he answered.
“Think I know where they are. There is an old cabin to the northeast of my property. Paisley and Evelyn found it on one of their rides. Mert found some tracks that led that direction.”
“Stay where you are, I’ll be right there.” He ended the call.
That was not going to happen. Every second that passed lessened the chance that they would be found alive.
I didn’t hesitate, I ran from the barn and toward one of the hands who’d returned after searching on horseback. “I need your horse.”
I mounted it, taking the reins, kicking my heels into its flanks and sending it bolting across the ranch. My gun burned where I had it tucked in the holster at my side.
A thunder of hooves pounded below me as we blew out of the main area of the ranch and into the fields, rushing over the land.
Here, the grasses were knee-high.
We barreled through the disorder.
I felt it.
The mayhem that whipped through the hot air that blew against my face.
Chaos.
She was near.
I felt her like a reckless dream that electrified my soul.
A thrumming call in the distance.
The horse must have felt it, too, the urgency in his stride as we raced over the hills. We followed along about two hundred yards from the river, taking a scant path that drove us east.
My chest squeezed as we made it over a hill. There was a thicker section of trees tucked close to the river, but what seized my heart was the sight of the pickup truck sitting a ways back from them, as if it couldn’t go any farther and had been abandoned.
The closer I came, I could see the doors sat open.
I flew past it, jerking the horse to a stop when the terrain became too rough, and I’d be faster on foot.
I jumped off, racing for the trees, finding a path that ran the edge of the river where the trees had become a narrow wood.
Dense and thick.
Massive branches stretched out in a vast canopy, shrouding the rays of sunlight and creating a lush garden below.
I fumbled along beneath them to the sound of the rushing river, the chirping of birds, and the thunder of my heart that beat like a war drum in my ears.
Pulsing and banging as I tore through the green grasses and wiry brush.
Intensity swelled.
That feeling I’d thought I could never recognize. The one I’d wanted to shake.
It possessed me then. Overflowed. Became the life beat in my soul.
I slowed when I was impaled by the aura.
Menacing and cruel.
A frenzy was in the middle of it. Fear so thick it coated my tongue, filled my lungs with their desperation.
