Page 91 of Defending Casey

The more they searched the more Hale’s skin began to crawl. “They’re not here.”

Zeke shook his head and dropped a pile of flattened cardboard boxes down. “You’re sure the tracker-”

“It’s right here!” Hale stared down at his phone and watched the blinking indicator on his phone. “There’s got to be some kind of answer.”

Bodie shook his head. “Casey knows the necklace was a tracker, right?”

“Yeah,” Hale nodded and ground his back teeth together, “she knows. She wouldn’t take it off without-” The reality of it lanced through him.

“Hondo! Here!”

He shoved his phone in his back pocket and ran over to the open recyclables dumpster. Zeke swung over the edge and got down on the top layer of collapsed boxes and picked up the necklace that had all but slipped through the pile.

“Here.”

Hondo didn’t want to touch it, but he held out his hand, palm up, and Zeke dropped it onto his palm. Tilting his hand back and forth in the sunlight, he saw that the clasp was still closed. The chain had been broken through.

He knew.

He knew who it was.

He knew why.

Damn it.

It was too simple to think that Brian would slink off and leave them alone.

“I’m going to kill him.”

He looked at the others.

“I’m going to fucking kill him.”

#

“Hale?”

Clint caught the hand that reached out to him.

“Sorry, sir. Hale’s out looking for Casey and Nora. I’m Clint, one of his friends.”

“Friends,” David Jones sighed in relief, “and part of his team.”

“Yes, sir. We’re all a part of Trojan.”

“Good. Good.” His hand only tightened on Clint’s. “He’s going to need you.”

Clint pulled his phone out, ready to dial in to Hale. “Sir, is there anything you can tell me about what happened to you? Who did this?”

David rolled back onto the gurney and let go of Clint’s hand. He pressed that palm flat against his chest as if he was trying to stifle the pain. “He came to me. He told me that Casey was leaving with him. I told him-” he winced and gasped as the monitor on the opposite wall of the ambulance sent out an alert that had the paramedic pushing between them.

Clint pressed back against the wall of the ambulance and tried to make himself as thin as he could. As the paramedic took David’s vitals, he continued to talk.

“I told him she wouldn’t go. She… she was meant to be with Hale. Always-”

The paramedic adjusted the IV he’d started and cautioned David to calm down.

“My-” David reached his hands down to his pants, patting at his pockets. “My phone.”

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