Page 95 of The Kidnapped

“Dylan just called. There’s a lead. She wants me to meet her at the police station.”

“I’m leaving now. Stay at the house,” Hollis replied.

“I need to go,” Raleigh argued.

“No. I don’t want you to drive right now, Raleigh. I’ll get there, and we’ll go together, okay?”

“Hollis, I can’t wait.”

“Ten minutes, okay? Please. I can’t lose you in some car accident because you were racing there.”

“Okay.” Raleigh sighed. “But, please, hurry.”

“I’m already at the elevator. Do you want me to stay on the phone with you?”

“Yes, please,” she replied.

CHAPTER 30

“So, what did Dylan say exactly?” Hollis asked as soon as Raleigh climbed into the car.

“Just that she has a lead,” Raleigh replied.

Hollis backed out of the driveway and said, “Did you make sure the–”

“The nurse knows you’re with me. I checked on your mom. She’s sleeping and won’t even know we’re gone.”

“Thank you,” Hollis replied, going ten miles over the residential neighborhood speed limit. “Wait. I don’t know where we’re going.”

“Directions,” Raleigh said, placing her phone with the map already loaded in the cup holder of Hollis’s rental car.

“West,” she said. “Got it.”

“It’s midday. We should be there in, like, ten minutes,” Raleigh added.

“I’ll try to get us there in five,” Hollis said, taking Raleigh’s hand over the center console and squeezing it. “How are you?”

“My heart is racing so fast; I feel like I might have a heart attack soon.”

“It’s going to be okay. No matter what, it’ll be okay,” Hollis told her, trying to find calming words to say and only finding those.

“Dylan sounded like it was a good thing. She wouldn’t have told me there was a lead and to go to the station if it had been something bad, would she? If she found a bo…” Raleigh faded out. “A body.”

“Hey, there’s no body. It’s going to be fine.”

“Hollis, it could be. There’s always a chance – a big chance – that that’s what they’ll find.”

“Let’s just see what Dylan has to say before we worry about that, okay?” Hollis suggested, her own heart racing now because she couldn’t stand to see Raleigh in that kind of pain.

“Was it really okay that you just left work?”

“Probably not. But I texted Kenna on my way to the parking garage and told her why I had to go. If they have to fire me for this, so be it.”

“Hollis, I don’t want you to lose your job because of me,” Raleigh said.

“There are two things that matter to me right now.” Hollis pulled up to a red light and turned to Raleigh. “You and my mom. That’s it. Nothing else matters in the end.”

Raleigh nodded, and they drove the rest of the way in silence as Hollis repeatedly squeezed Raleigh’s hand. When Hollis parked in the lot at the station, she lifted Raleigh’s hand to her mouth and kissed it.

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