My blood runs cold at his words. He sounds worried, and that terrifies me.
I’d left her handcuffed in her house, unsure how I’d be returning to her. With an arrest warrant? A search warrant? A six by eight cell with her name on it?
In this moment, with the knowledge that she’s in trouble, I realize that is never what I intended to do. And I realize, with frightening clarity, that my captain is right. She’s not dangerous to people who don’t deserve it. She deserves people on her side, because she has been on ours the whole time, I just didn’t realize it. Hell, I didn’t exactly realize there were more than two sides.
I thought there was a good side and a bad side. But there is this sliver in the middle where those two sides collide, and that’s where Chloe thrives.
“Where is she?” I growl, and the hard edge and urgent tone of my voice surprises me.
My captain perks up in my peripheral, and I put Barry’s call on speaker.
“A warehouse off the highway. In the direction of Cedar Creek BLM. Chloe went in about five minutes ago, and okay—I thought maybe there would be a story. I was peeking in through the windows, and that friend of hers, Maeve, she’s tied up in a corner, unconscious. There’s another man in there, one of those guys your crew has been tracking. And a woman—”
Alex knocks on the captain’s door in front of me before pushing it open and coming into the room. He holds up a printed news article with a woman’s smiling face on it, all decked out in her new Devil’s Peak police uniform as she sat for her employment photo a month ago. “It’s Lucy.”
31
Chloe
Ibacked down my driveway so fast I’m surprised I didn’t veer off the lawn and take the wrought iron fence down with my Bug. And then I squealed away so quickly I’m sure there are marks in the asphalt, perhaps even chunks of rubber missing from my tires.
I didn’t miss Barry flipping around in the cul-de-sac, catching up to me just as I turned onto the highway that leads in the direction of the area Grayson died just a few weeks ago.
But as I pull into the dirt parking lot of the warehouse, I find myself flooded with relief that Barry followed me. I slow to a stop in front of the large metal building, and Barry hesitates from the highway before he pulls just inside the gate and stops, thinking I haven’t seen him even though it’s broad daylight.
I want to kick myself for throwing that tracker out. I’d done it out of spite, but now, walking into what is clearly some sort of setup—completely without a plan or a weapon—I’m not convinced it’s going to end well, and I wish Colin knew where I was. So, I’m thankful Barry tailed me, becauseI’m sure he will either relay my location to the proper authorities, or at least write a glowing article in The Peak that clears my name entirely once I become nothing more than a grey face in the obituary column.
I’d called Stella on my drive over, and her and Stone are too far away to be helpful. Stone answered the call to her phone and put it on speaker while the wails of someone being actively tortured resounded in the background.
“We’ll head back as soon as we can,” she promised, her voice laced with worry.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Chlo,” Stone demanded.
“I don’t have a plan,” I whined. Thoughts of Maeve being hurt wound through my mind, making me frantic, my mind foggy.
“Hey.” Stone’s voice penetrated my spiral, and his words grounded me, like Stella has mentioned they do for her. “You know exactly what to do,” he said, and he sounded so fucking confident in me that I had no choice but to believe him. “Save her.”
It’s the middle of the day, but it’s overcast, the sea of dark clouds above blanketing everything in a dimmer shade. The forest of trees that surround the building only adds to the eerie, grey tint of everything. There are no other cars that I can see besides mine and Barry’s. The grind of metal on metal coming from inside the building and a slow, blinking red light off to the side lead me to believe this is an active mill of some sort, but in all the times I’ve stopped in here to drop my car off, it’s been a complete ghost town.
With Stone’s words echoing in my brain, I tell Rue to stay put and stay quiet. I climb out of my car, walking toward the massive building illuminated only by the glow of lights from inside the windows.
The metal door handle is freezing cold under my fingertips, and I take one last glance back across the parking lot, back at Barry, wanting confirmation of some sort that I haven’t walked into an alternate reality.
It doesn’t come.
Perhaps I should have taken a stroll around the perimeter, scoped the place out, but my plans have always been a bit chaotic, and Maeve’s life is in danger, so I don’t really have the patience or the time right now to develop a proper strategy.
When I pull the door open, the scent of sawdust overwhelms me. It’s so strong that I stretch my arm across my face, burying my nose in the bend of my elbow and squinting my eyes as I continue into the open space. The place is empty, save for Maeve curled up in a corner on her side.
I break into a run, collapsing to my knees at her side and clasping her warm face between my hands. Her cheeks are red, and the sight knocks me into the present, the thick air suddenly making the vast room seem ten times smaller. There are beads of sweat trailing down her forehead, strands of wet, black hair stuck to the edges of her face.
“Oh my God, Maeve,” I whisper-cry. “Babe, wake up.” I shake her head in my hands, but she’s completely limp. The green of her irises barely peeks through the semi-conscious crack of her eyelids. I press my fingertips to the faint pulse in her neck as I glance around the warehouse.
There’s a conveyor belt running across the room, chugging along but not getting anything done because it’s empty. Old chains hang from the ceiling, swinging only about as hard as a slight breeze could push them. There are stacks of plywood off to the left, and on the right a giant stack of logs piles toward the ceiling on a trailer, appearing ten years past its due for collapse and held in place only by the aged, rusted metal of a lift gate.
Two voices in the midst of what sounds like an argument chatter from a dark hallway across the room, and I stand abruptly, jumping around the corner and pressing my back to the cool stone. I pinch my eyes closed, trying to come up with a plan, and my eyes pop open when a warm, firm hand presses over my mouth.
“Shhh.” The man in front of me presses a finger to his lips. His face is shaded in almost complete darkness, but his bright blue eyes shine. “Do you know who I am?”
