Page 127 of Conrad

Conrad swiped up his keys. “Call Harper and get me Oscar Pepper’s cell number. We need a location on Penelope.”

“If Franco did take her, he will have turned off any GPS,” Jack said, reaching for his jacket.

Conrad bit back a word. “Right. Okay, so where then, tracker man?”

Jack ran a hand across his mouth. “He won’t want her found. So that means he won’t dump her body anywhere accessible.”

“Please don’t saybody.”

“Okay, so it’s daylight. He’ll have to take her somewhere he knows, somewhere remote, somewhere he can?—”

“If you saydump the body, I’ll hurt you.”

“—deal with her.” Jack had pressed dial on his phone. “Harp, babe. Listen, what have you found out about this Franco guy?” He put her on speaker.

“Nothing. He lives on-site with the Pepper family. His brother was found dead a month ago in a fire . . . a motel fire in Duck Lake?—”

“The body we found.”

“Wow. Okay, so that’s a question for later, but if Franco was in on the previous kidnapping, he took her to the Loon Lake housing project last time—my guess is that he knows this area. But how—wait. His father has a house on Frederick Lake, on a small plot of land near Declan Stone’s estate.”

The world couldn’t be that small.

“We can start there,” Conrad said, heading to the door.

“I’ve been there,” Jack said and pushed out behind him. “Harper, call Jenna Hayes, tell her that Penelope has gone missing again.”

“I feel like the boy who cried wolf.”

“That’s why you have to do it—you’d never call Jenna unless it was real.”

Conrad didn’t hear the rest as he climbed into his truck. Jack took the passenger seat, glanced at him.

“You sure you want to do this? You’ll miss the game.”

He pulled out. “I’m going to miss everything if I don’t find her.”

“Right,” Jack said, and buckled in.

* * *

Why hadn’t she dialed 911? Penny sat in the back seat, the child locks on the doors, trapped, watching the winterscape of barren cornfields and remote farmhouses pass by.

Think.

Her face burned from where he’d grabbed her phone, a move she should have seen coming when he’d abruptly pulled over, turned in his seat, and lunged for the device.

She’d tried to get out then and run, but of course, he’d engaged the locks. And then he’d slapped her—which she most definitelyhadn’tseen coming. She’d sat dazed for a whole minute as he’d pulled back out on the highway, her phone sailing out his window.

Why hadn’t she watched more car-hijacking videos? Then she might know how to disable him—but all she saw was herself grabbing the wheel, shooting them off the highway at seventy-five miles an hour, and plummeting through the windshield.

Think.

“I thought Edward was your friend. Why did you kill him?”

Maybe not the best way to calm Franco down, but hopefully she’d get him thinking. Regretting.

The man gripped the wheel with both gloved hands, his jaw tight, frustration radiating off him.

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