Page 87 of Abandoned

“Something about a house, but then I put my headphones on because he said he was going to kill them just like the others.”

“Others?”

Corbin nodded.

Will took a deep breath. Brett had murdered before? Zara! Oh God, please protect her. Help her fight.

Doug indicated he caught the conversation with a nod. “I’ll see what I can find out. Remington called social services. They’ll be here soon.”

Will comforted and distracted Corbin until the social worker arrived. Will and Logan left the home.

As Will walked down the steps, he spotted something teal on the ground. He stooped and picked it up. One of Zara’s hair ties. Had she dropped it on purpose? Despite its dampness, he stuffed it in his pocket.

Doug sat in his sedan with a serious face. Will went over and Doug rolled down the window. Will leaned on the edge of the roof and looked inside.

“Find anything good?”

“Yep. I’ve discovered the company Brett works for, a demolition company. I called and they’re sending over a list of houses that have been listed or inquired about for demolition. More than I would have expected for our little city. But it’s a place to start. I also called Becca, and she and Gavin are following up on a hunch I had.”

“What hunch is that?”

“Brett seems to have moved around a lot over the last ten years. His last residence wasn’t too far from here but close to where that body that Becca and Gavin are investigating was found out in the woods.”

“What’s the connection to Brett?”

“He was the boyfriend of a missing girl out there. He moved around the time her parents reported her missing. I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman in the morgue is that woman.”

“Corbin made it sound like it was more than one. Worth checking all of his last known locations for missing women.”

“Exactly.” Doug cracked his knuckles. “There’s the email. Let’s start hitting this list and find Zara and Miley.”

“Agreed.”

Will and Logan jumped into the squad car and followed Doug and Remington in the unmarked to the closest location on the list.

The rain pounded against the ground outside the crawlspace. Zara had lost all sense of time. She didn’t know if the lack of light coming through the cracks around the entrance to the crawlspace was because the sun was going down or if the storm clouds had grown darker.

But the already dark crawlspace had become nefariously dark. Downright creepy, really. She couldn’t think about all the things that could be crawling around her.

A shudder coursed through her entire body. As hot as it had been outside, the crawlspace was cold and making her bones ache.

She needed to focus on something else. What else could she do to escape?

Crawling around to explore would probably help, but she couldn’t bear the idea of encountering spiders and centipedes and who knows what. As independent and tough a cop as she was, she really looked forward to having someone to kill spiders for her.

She shuddered again. Nope. She’d stay where she was and pray for a rescue.

But that wasn’t very independent and tough of her. She tested the length of the chain. She wasn’t going anywhere anyway. It was only three feet long at most.

She needed to think about something, or she’d start panicking again. Help?

Miley.

Oh, that wasn’t going to be much better. Was Miley okay? Where had Brett taken her? And what was it that Miley had signed?

She thought through the spelled word again. It didn’t mean anything to her. But why not? It could be a name. Who was it? No one Zara knew of. Was it a location? She had a map of the city almost completely memorized, but she couldn’t remember a road or place by a name like that. Had it been spelled correctly?

E-n-z-w-e-i-l-e-r.