Text (Take It Off) (6 page)

Nathan

The inside of the police station was like a ghost town. It seemed odd that they would have such a skeleton crew working on a Friday night.

I rushed in the set of front double doors, expecting to be greeted with noise and uniforms, with concerned faces and a staff of support ready to help me find Honor and bring down that sick bastard Lex.

I wasn’t expecting to be met with a bunch of ringing phones and a couple of secretaries sitting behind desks cluttered with paper.

One of the women perked up when she saw me stop behind the chest-high counter between us. She got up from her desk and hurried forward, her blue dress swishing around her ankles as she moved.

“Can I help you
, sir?”

“I need to report a missing person.”

She pulled out a stack of forms and a clipboard. “When’s the last time you saw the missing person?”

“I’ve never met her.”

That earned me an odd look. The woman lowered the clipboard. “You want to report a missing person that you’ve never met?” I nodded and opened my mouth to explain further. She got this pinched look on her face. “I don’t have time for pranks, young man.”

“This isn’t a prank. I have proof. And I’m pretty sure she was kidnapped.”

For some reason, that statement didn’t seem to warrant any kind of urgency. Frankly, I found it offensive. I opened my mouth to tell her exactly what I wanted her to do when she thrust the clipboard, bursting with papers, in front of me.

“Here, go sit down
. Fill these out. Someone will be with you when they can.”

“This is an urgent matter,” I said.

“As soon as someone gets back, they will help you.”

“Gets back from where?”

She sighed, exasperated. “There was a massive pileup over on Route 210. Mass casualties. All our personnel have responded.”

“How long ago was this?” I asked, thinking that might be the traffic Lex
said held him up on his way to poker.

“About an hour ago, maybe a little more.” The phone on her desk started ringing and she gave me a look before rushing off to answer it. I glanced at the other woman behind a desk
. She was on the phone too, writing something down.

A feeling of dread formed in the pit of my stomach. An accident with mass casualties could keep the station here busy all night. I sat down in one of the black, uncomfortable chairs against the wall and glanced at the papers in my hand.

Name of missing person. Address of missing person. Date of birth. Address. Last known location. Description.

I swore under my breath. The only thing I knew was her name. I didn’t know any of this. The only way I was going to get someone to take me seriously was to show them the texts on my phone.

I glanced down at the dark screen.

She hadn’t replied to my last text. I wondered if she even got it.

I need to know where you are,
I typed out.

I sat there for a long time, waiting for an officer to come and help, waiting for a reply from Honor.

I’m in the woods. In a hole.
My phone buzzed with her reply. I felt immediate relief because at least the lines of communication were still open… at least she wasn’t dead.

Where?

Not sure. I was in Slatington when he took me. On the trail.

I wasn’t that far from Slatington now. I could go and look around. Unfortunately
, there were mountains and woods all over this part of the state. The trail in Slatington ran for thirty miles. I could veer off the trail to look in the wooded areas, but that was a lot of ground to cover.

But it was a start.

Do you have GPS?
I texted back.

Several long moments later
, I got her answer.
Yes.

I stood up abruptly
and laid the clipboard in the now empty seat, and I headed for the door. I heard the secretary call out behind me, but I didn’t stop.

Screw waiting for help.

I was a United States Marine.

I was the help.

I climbed into my Jeep and fired up the engine.

This is what I want you to do
…
I texted and then started to drive.

Honor

I walked forever it seemed. Looping around the hole until there was a definite path in the crudely dug ground. Hope was a strong emotion, but it was fleeting.

How incredibly hard it was to hold on to when it seemed that everything was working against me. The words of my kidnapper seemed to echo in the enclosed space around me.

I’ll be back.

What kind of grim fate awaited me when he returned? The writer in me conjured up all sorts of scenarios
—not one of them good.

I didn’t want to admit it to myself
, but I knew what was coming. I knew the kinds of things that a man who kidnapped women wanted. I shuddered and leaned against the damp, muddy wall. I should prepare myself.

How did one prepare herself for rape and grisly murder?

Just when despair seemed ready to take a giant bite of my sanity, the phone buzzed.

I need to know where you are.

It was Nathan. He hadn’t forgotten about me. He was still out there; he was still trying to help me.

I sank down the wall until I was sitting on the ground.
My body sagged, weak with relief. Nathan was my best hope for survival.

Renewed hope took root inside me and blossomed like a flower in the spring.

Quickly, I texted back my reply.
I’m in the woods. In a hole.
If I wasn’t so exhausted, I would have done a happy dance when it went through.

Where?

Not sure. I was in Slatington when he took me. On the trail.
I worried that it wasn’t going to be enough information for him to find me in time.

Do you have GPS?

A GPS? Did he think I just walked around with one of those strapped to my ass? God! I cleared out of the message, frustrated, and stared down at the phone. My eye went right to the maps app. Oh my God, I
did
have a GPS!

I pumped my fist in the air. I didn’t even care that it made my ribs scream.

Yes,
I replied.

This is what I want you to do
…

It took a few more minutes for the rest of his message to come through
, and my stomach knotted as I thought I’d lost the connection again. But then the phone vibrated in my hand and I glanced down.

Type in directions. Use ur current location & get directions to somewhere. The map should pull up ur location when it pulls up directions. Text it to me.

Could this phone really be smart enough to know where I was? Was the signal strong enough for it to calculate a route while I was in a deep hole? How far off the beaten path did that man haul me? What if Nathan was too late? What if I was far away?

Enough. Just do it.

I snapped out of my internal freak-out and did as Nathan instructed. Why hadn’t I thought of this? It made me angry that I hadn’t. I knew I should give myself a break, that I was likely in shock, was injured and scared, but now wasn’t the time for weak emotions. Now was the time for action.

It took the map a long time to load. The screen went dark twice while I waited. I
stood and began pacing, unable to sit a second longer. My knees wobbled as I walked, but I ignored it and continued moving.

Finally, my location pulled up.

Reading a map wasn’t one of my better abilities, so I took a screen shot and texted it to Nathan.

It failed the first time I tried to send it.

The second time took five minutes, but it went through. By the time the job was done, there was only thirty percent battery remaining.

I slid down into the dirt and leaned against the wall.

And I started to pray.

Nathan

I parked haphazardly in the yard by my house and rushed inside. I kicked off my sneakers and shoved my feet into my tan work boots. I tossed a ratty baseball cap on my head and went down into the unfinished basement and dug through my gear and loaded my pockets with everything I thought I might need.

My weapons were already in my Jeep.

Back upstairs, I shoved some vanilla-flavored power bars in my pockets and grabbed a bottle of water and a jacket on my way out the door. The sky was dark, no stars in sight, and the wind was picking up, making it feel much colder than it was outside.

I hoped Honor had some kind of protection from the elements wherever she was.

Once I was settled into the Jeep, the screenshot of the map came through my phone. I plugged my own phone into the car charger and turned on the engine. There in the darkness of the cab I studied the map.

It gave me a general idea where she was
—about fifteen miles outside of the town of Slatington. She was definitely in the woods because there were no roads mapped around the little dot that marked her location.

I would drive as close as I could and then go on foot.

I decided to take the back roads, the ones least traveled. Due to the pileup, I figured a lot of the roads were going to be congested and I didn’t want to get caught in it. I was glad when I got stationed here six months ago that I took the time to drive around, learn the area, and scout out roads.

It was more or less something I was trained to do and even though it wasn’t really required for where I was working now, it was clearly proving useful.

As I drove, images assaulted me, images of the desert, of a gunfight, of blood. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. The stress of the situation was just putting my mind into overdrive.

I felt this insistent need to find Honor, to save her.
Maybe it is because I wasn’t able to save them.
The thought drew me up short, but once it was there, I couldn’t deny it.

It was quite possible the reason I was going off alone, rogue
, to find Honor was because I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else dying—someone I knew I could help.

I turned off the main road and onto a
lane that literally curved up the side of a mountain. The sign beside the gravel entrance read:
Travel at your own risk
.

I drove the Jeep forward
. The sound of loose gravel hitting the underside of the vehicle was loud and startling in the dark. I continued up, looking at her map and cross-checking it with the one I had pulled up. The farther up I went, my headlights illuminated the narrow gravel road, and I hoped no one else was out driving tonight because only one car would fit at a time.

On the right side of the road was a steep drop
. It was lined with trees and plants. I figured if something did happen and I happened to lose control and fall off, then I likely wouldn’t plunge to my death. Surely the many trees would stop the Jeep from going too far.

Off to my right
were more woods. I couldn’t see very far in because it was so dark, but I figured if she was anywhere, it would be over to this side. When I realized I was around the area where she was, I stopped the Jeep and got out, walking into the trees to search for a place to put my Jeep. Leaving it out in the open seemed like a bad idea.

About a mile f
arther than I wanted to be was a small clearing beneath a canopy of trees. I jogged back to the car and drove it forward, using my four-wheel drive to go off the gravel road and basically four-wheel through the trees and over the uneven ground. I nudged the Jeep between two trees with low-hanging branches and then cut the lights and the engine.

I sat there a long time, listening to the sounds of the woods, wondering if anyone else was out there.
The night remained still, except for the distant rumbling of thunder above.

I prayed the rain was moving away from us and not closer.

Before starting off on foot, I pulled out my phone and sent word to Honor.
I think I’m close by. If you hear me call out for you, answer.

I didn’t get a reply right away and I hadn’t expected one. My service was low and I knew hers was worse. Hopefully she would at least get the message.

I palmed the pistol beneath the front seat and tucked it in the waistband of my jeans and then tucked the knife I always carried in my front pocket.

Then I pressed a few keys on my phone and held it to my ear.

Patton answered on the second ring. “Hallow,” he drawled.

“Patton, this is Reed. Don’t say my name.”

“What’s up?” he said, his tone staying the same, but I knew he was alert.

“You still playing poker?”

“Sure am!”

“Lex still there?”

He paused. I knew he wanted to ask me what this was about. I really hoped he didn’t. “No.”

I swore.

Patton stayed quiet on the other end of the line. Then I heard his muffled voice say, “I gotta piss.”

I hear
d the opening and closing of two doors, and I imagined the path he was taking through the door by the bar, across the laundry room, and then into a tiny two-piece bathroom beside it.

“He left,” Patton said, turning on the faucet as he talked.

“How long ago?”

“About thirty minutes.”
He paused. “He seemed a little distracted after you left.”

Fuck.
I probably shouldn’t have pointed out his phone was missing. He hadn’t known, and I called attention to it. I might have cost myself—and Honor—precious time. I was merely acting in the moment. I hadn’t yet fully decided if those texts were the absolute truth. But once I saw his reaction to the missing phone, added to the picture and the necklace… I couldn’t
not
believe it anymore.

“What’s this about?” Patton asked
, and I heard the sound of a toilet flush.

“I’ll explain later,” I said urgently. I needed to find her, and fast. “Don’t tell anyone I called.”

“I won’t.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear
just as I heard Patton say, “Hey.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“If you need anything, I got your back.”

“Good to go
,” I replied.

“Semper Fi
,” Patton said and then he cut the line.

Semper Fi
. Always faithful. It was the Marine Corps way of life. I knew if shit hit the fan, I could call and Patton would be there.

I hope
d it didn’t come to that.

I didn’t bother to lock the Jeep when I got out and walked into the trees. I pulled the bill of my hat down low and tucked my hand in my jacket
, pulling out a high-powered flashlight that was the size of a pen.

But in this case, size didn’t matter.

This little baby would cut through the worst of the darkness tonight. Overhead, another rumble of thunder rolled. It covered the sound of a text coming through my phone.

I pulled it out, silenced the ringer
, and looked down at the message.

Two words.

Two words that made my blood run cold.

He’s back.