AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Seemingly ignoring his words, she stared up at him and asked, “Where are you goin’?”
“I’m going to look for our daughter.”
“What? Wait, take me with you,” she pleaded, rising to her knees.
“Songbird, you need to stay. If the police find her, one of us needs to be here.”
She frowned, her expression indicating that she knew he was right, but she didn’t like it.
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. Every motel from here to Nashville—I don’t know.”
“Your brother said—”
“Damnit, Nora—I don’t know, but I have to try.”
She nodded, sitting back on her haunches. “Go. Please be careful.”
“I will. Please eat,” he said in reply.
And then he was gone.
No one tried to stop him as he donned his jacket and grabbed his keys. Keaton offered to ride shotgun, and Wayde insisted he wanted in on the search, too. They decided to split up—Keaton and Wayde in one vehicle headed south, and Lawson in his own headed north. They didn’t have much of a plan, but that didn’t stop any of them. They had the make and model of Ashlynn’s car and her license plate. They also had nothing to lose but time.
He drove for hours. At ten, his phone rang. He answered it immediately, not bothering to look to see who it was. When he realized it was Dax on the other end of the line, he understood how Nora felt when his parents showed up at the apartment. It wasn’t who he wanted to hear from—but he took the call anyway.
When Kyra had gone missing the previous year, Fuchs had done everything he could to track her down his way—with his computer hacker skills. He’d tried to do the same for Evelyn, but he’d come up short. The easiest way to find Ashlynn was to get her to answer her phone, and she still wasn’t answering. Nevertheless, Fuchs wanted to help. When Lawson informed him of his own private search party, Fuchs grabbed his keys, hopped in his SUV, and pointed it east.
Not long after he disconnected with Fuchs, Cruiz was on the line. Still with Leo and Finn in Lynchburg, their job finally at an end, Lawson brought them up to speed. Not surprisingly, they all wanted in on the search. Moretti and Dobbs went in one direction, Vollucci in another.
That night, no one slept.
Neither did they find Evelyn.
Lawson had stopped at nearly every lodging place in every little town between Shelbyville and Nashville. When he got to Nashville he was exhausted. Knowing he couldn’t do a complete search in a city so big all on his own, he parked at a rest area off the interstate. With his head resting atop the steering wheel, he closed his eyes and said yet another prayer. It was three in the morning, and his worry had long since turned into fear, morphed into anger, and then shifted into numbness.
Where are they?
As soon as he asked himself the question for the hundredth time, his phone rang.
It was Atticus.
Evelyn
Her shoulder hurt, and she was hungry.
The pretty lady wasn’t pretty any longer.
First, she was a liar.
Then she was mean.
Then she was scary.
Until she was strange.
They drove for a long time.
