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Please don’t let this happen.
Please send Mitch—or his officers, a passerby, anyone—to help.
Please don’t let this happen to me.
Please!
It wasn’t the best prayer. It wasn’t eloquent or poetic. It was a plea, a beg, and she had no idea if God had heard her or not.
“It started with a vision—a dream. One night I had the most beautiful dream. It was so powerful that, when I woke up, I could still feel the energy running through my veins. I knew I wanted to hold on to that feeling forever. So I painted what I felt in that dream. My mother was number one. Then Jessica, Rebecca, Lillian, Ellen, Lana, and finally Olivia and Camilla. Ellen was not part of the plan, but I couldn’t interrupt the sequence. She came down to the shed one day and saw it all. I couldn’t let her ruin my masterpiece, so I added her to it. But this time I won’t have any interruptions—this time there will be no mistakes. It will be a perfect masterpiece,” he said, waving his hands as if he were an orchestra conductor.
Zoe was running out of time. There would be no convincing Peter he was making a mistake, or that he was wrong.
She also had zero chance of escaping while her body was paralyzed.
Tears filled her eyes, or at least the sensation of them did.
Is this how Lana had felt?
Where are you, God?she silently screamed.
CHAPTER34
MITCH
They were nearly at Redwater and Mitch lowered his foot on the accelerator. His officers were scouring Redwater, looking for Zoe, but she was nowhere to be found. Her phone was at home and there was no sign of a struggle. Mitch had pieced it together, but it was too late. Jonathan had gotten to her first. The officers had been at her property, but when Jonathan had waved at them—as he’d done the night before—they’d only waved back. Zoe herself had waved as she left with him, and now neither of them had been seen since. Why hadn’t she taken her phone? At least then they could’ve tracked it.
The second he learned that Peter’s stepbrother was Jonathan, he knew that’s how they would get to Zoe. Mitch wondered how many minutes too late his call to her phone had been.
The thing Mitch couldn’t work out is why Jonathan helped his brother commit these crimes.
Was he as mentally unwell as Peter?
Was it out of some disturbed sense of loyalty?
Mitch had every officer knocking on doors and searching sheds. He even had sniffer dogs out. But if Jonathan had driven her somewhere, the dogs wouldn’t pick up the scent.
Mitch’s chest tightened. Every minute was crucial. It might already be too late.
Mitch’s jaw clenched.
He refused to believe that.
He refused to give up.
They had installed hidden cameras in Graham’s shed and had left it as a trap after they’d finished collecting their evidence samples, but no one had returned to it since.
“Mitch, we’ve received the asset list for Jonathan’s company. There’s a house in Redwater. I’m sending you the details now. I’ve dispatched four patrol cars. It’s two properties over from Zoe’s house.”
“I’m on my way!” Mitch said, taking a sharp left and steering onto the dirt road. Mitch knew these roads and he didn’t need a map to know they’d passed by the back of Zoe’s house.
He left a cloud of dirt behind him and held the steering wheel tight as the car swerved on the slippery surface.
“How long has it been since I called her?” Mitch asked.
“Two hours, seventeen minutes,” Jackson said.
Mitch’s stomach churned. He didn’t want to ask the question they were both thinking:
