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“Yes, but I didn’t expect it to end like this. I’m sorry, Bri. Don’t hold it against me, okay?”
Did she seriously want absolution?
Didn’t matter. It was important to tell her what she wanted to hear.
“I understand the predicament you’re in.”
“I hoped you would.” She examined Travis’s pistol. “This is going to be hard.”
That was her cue to act.
Praying for strength and fortitude, Bri filled her lungs with the stale air in the bunker, bent forward to scoop up a few pebbles while rubbing her leg, then leaped to her feet and gave a shriek.
Alison jerked back a few steps. “What’s wrong?”
“I think a rat brushed up against me.” She hopped from one foot to the other, waving her arms.
“Oh, geez. I hate those things.” Alison’s gaze darted away. Long enough for Bri to hurl the pebbles behind the other woman.
As they skittered on the floor, Alison let out a yelp and whirled around, giving Bri the window she’d hoped for.
Without hesitation, she sprinted for the firefighter-turned-murderer, dived for her legs, and prepared to wage the battle of her life.
THIRTY-ONE
“WHAT IF WE’RE WRONG?”Marc gripped the edge of his seat as Jack executed a hard left on Highway 94 off I-64.
Posture taut, Bri’s brother accelerated. “We can’t be. This is where triangulation led us—smack dab in the middle of a state conservation area. A perfect place to take a victim if you’re up to no good. And the gaps in service before and after the carrier picked up the last transmission are fishy. Why would someone turn on their phone only long enough to make a call?”
“To conserve the battery?”
“Not buying that in this scenario.” He zoomed past a slow-moving vehicle, lights flashing. “I think he’s—call coming in.” Jack took one hand off the wheel and yanked out his phone. “Tucker ... Where? ... Got it. We’re five minutes out. I’m putting my colleague on the line.” He held it out. “The conservation agent I talked to did a drive-through of the area. He spotted the rental car at a trailhead parking lot. See what else you can find out.”
Marc took the phone and identified himself. “Tell me what you have.”
“Like I told Detective Tucker, the car you’re looking for is here. There’s only one other vehicle in the whole place, in the next lot over, so the one you were after was easy to spot.”
Two cars in relatively close proximity, in an isolated area, after dark?
Suspicious.
“Is it unusual to have people there at this hour?”
“This time of year, yes. We have very few visitors after dark. That’s why I took down the other license, in case you wanted it.”
“Go ahead and give it to me.” He pulled out his notebook, squinting in the dark as he jotted down the information. “Tell me about the trail off the parking lot. Where does it go?”
“Into the woods. There’s nothing much to see on that hike except an old WWII munitions bunker.”
Marc’s antennas went up.
If Holmes was using that bunker, it could explain the gaps in his cell signal.
“Is it accessible?”
“No. We have a hundred of them, and they’re all padlocked.”
Unless someone picked one of the locks.
