Page 22 of The Missing Couple

She grunted something she hoped he considered to be an agreement. What was one more fib even if unspoken?

Charly watched in her rearview mirror as he sauntered away. When the coast was clear, she shifted into Reverse and exited the slot. The whole conversation had been utterly ridiculous. She hadn’t exactly helped.

By the time she merged into traffic headed home, she was outright indignant and more than a little ticked off. Had the sheriff asked him to bug Charly or had Cohen taken that duty upon himself? If she thought it would do one bit of good she would call and report him, but the sheriff would only be pleased by his deputy’s loyalty.

“Jerks.” Both of them.

For the next few miles, Charly focused on breathing deeply, holding and then releasing. She refused to let that bully get to her. And that was what the man was. A bully. Thankfully, most of the deputies were really nice, competent people. But there were always a few who weren’t in every walk of life.

By the time she turned onto Bakers Chapel Road she had calmed down. She wrestled with the idea of whether she should tell Billie what the jerk had said. Nothing he uttered was relevant to anything or news of any sort. Not really. His words only added to the idea that Southerners could be… Well, no need to go there. She would tell Billie if the need arose.

As she approached the next curve, a vehicle roared up close behind her. She hadn’t even noticed anyone in the distance of her rearview mirror. Where the heck had they come from? Suddenly, the larger vehicle was right on her bumper. SUV…black.

The driver wore a baseball cap, the bill pulled low.

The image of the driver in that video footage suddenly zoomed into vivid focus.

Fear rushed through Charly’s veins and her foot pressed harder on the accelerator. She rounded the curve way too fast. The other vehicle still right on her tail. Close enough to nudge her.

She hit a pothole and the steering wheel seesawed in her hands. She slammed on the brakes, tires squealing, and tried to straighten the front end but she was spinning.

Another glimpse of the black SUV…trees swirling around her and then she was looking into the ditch…deep ditch. Oh, God!

Her heart rocketed into her throat. She gripped the steering wheel tighter as she bounced over the terrain. Tried to slow down…tried to navigate. Not working. All sound and thought vanished…there was only the up and down motion of the vehicle and the blur of landscape.

A tree popped up in front of her. She wrestled again with the steering wheel in an attempt to swerve away from it but couldn’t.

The rupture of metal interrupted the silence.

Her seat belt snapped tight.

The airbag deployed.

Her side of the SUV—right behind her—curved around the tree. Wood splintered.

She bumped against her door.

Then everything stopped and there was silence again.

Chapter Eight

Bradly Retreat

Deep Woods Trail, 10:30 a.m.

Billie knocked on the door of Charly’s cabin. Her SUV wasn’t parked in its usual spot, which likely meant she wasn’t back from shopping, but he still knocked. When she didn’t appear at the door, he dropped into one of the wooden rocking chairs on her front porch.

The conference call with Victoria and the team back at the office in Chicago had proven troubling. He was grateful for what they had been able to find, but the facts recounted to him were even more disturbing than what he’d found on his own the past couple of days. There was definitely something going on in the area. The consensus was that his sister’s and her husband’s abductions were related to an ongoing trafficking ring.

An ache pierced his chest. He’d had his suspicions regarding the possibility right from the beginning. But there had been no concrete proof. But now he couldn’t deny the mounting evidence. He had to hand it to whoever was behind this nasty business; they were smart. There were seven counties fanned around Marshall: Madison, Jackson, Dekalb, Etowah, Blount, Cullman and Morgan. Madison and Marshall had the highest tourist activity. Marshall because of Guntersville and Madison because of Huntsville.

Like most in the country, the other seven counties had an average number of disappearances annually. Many were found; others were not. Those counties with large metropolitan areas had considerably more, of course. Marshall County’s annual unfound missing stats were somewhat lower than average. The part that bothered Billie was the fact that most of those not found fit into a certain profile. White, female, light hair and eyes…like Briana.

Granted, it was the perfect location for having a wide range to choose from considering the number of tourists from all over the world who flocked here. Madison County was a close second except the bigger portion of those not found were victims of color with dark hair and eyes.

It was a sickening scenario, but Billie couldn’t ignore it. Even the Bureau was watching the growing evidence that something was off with these statistics. That was the trouble with bureaucratic red tape. It always took far too long to reach a conclusion and then to decide to do something about it.

Billie wasn’t waiting. He intended to act now.