Page 73 of Crash and Burn

The second voice laughed. “I'm not your disposal system.”

Now Geller’s voice turned hard. “But we're in this together, your evidence was in that house, too. I've been hiding it for you for years and, if I go down, so do you.”

“Please,” the disdain was clear even from a room away. Merrit Geller wasn’t even the scariest man in the room. The other voice went on. “Do your own wet work.”

“It's not what I do.” Geller bordered on whining now, and Maggie hoped she never saw the other man. He would kill her without a second thought and lose no sleep over it. “I'm sorry, is it not fun for you? I thought you liked it.”

She was definitely listening to a conversation between the La Vista Rapist and the Blue River Killer. The comment about “hiding his evidence” was far too clear. She tried to remember what she could about the second voice, to think of descriptors for it. If she could get out of here, she would be full of evidence.

If…

Though Maggie had believed before that Geller would not let her live, this conversation was further proof of the things she suspected. But none of it mattered if she died. She could die full of all this evidence she had, but she’d still be dead. And they’d still be free.

The conversation moved further away and their voices garbled. While she could tell they remained at odds, she now had no idea what they were saying.

Swallowing hard, she took a deep breath and tried to think through her options. Geller had drugged her, but she was coming around. If she was smart, andlucky, that would be his mistake.

She had no idea how the hell she was going to fight off two of them though.

Her eyes darted out the window, this time not just focusing on sunlight, but gathering intel. The glass had multiple panes with wood molding between them. She was probably in a small, cute, old cabin. And ‘old’ meant it was probably well constructed. It also probably meant the panes were real glass, which meant she could break them. But it looked as if she was going to have to open the window in order to fit out of it. Opening the window meant getting across the room and that meant getting her hands and feet undone.

This was going to take everything she had.

Maggie thought she remembered something about exercising toxins out of her body. That a person could get through something like, say, drunkenness, faster by exercising to increase their metabolism. She had no idea if that would work in this case, because she had no clue what Geller had given her. There was always the possibility that she was only alive because she was metabolizing whatever drug it was slowly. But dying from poison would be far superior to dying at either of these men's hands. She'd seen what Merrit Geller did to his victims. And he left his victims alive.

Those were not his plans for her though.

She had only one option for survival—for getting back to Sebastian—she was going to have to get the hell out of here herself. She looked around the room as far as she could see from her position in the chair and began to make a plan.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Sebastian bolted back to the house. The run to the dock had revealed nothing and had wasted his time.

Maggie either hadn’t come here, or she’d been through long enough ago that there was no evidence. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out ready to answer … a social media notification.

He almost threw the phone, he was so angry. But he couldn’t afford to turn off any alerts. His fists clenched, his jaw ratcheted down so tight that he thought he might crack a few molars. Maggie was gone and he couldn’t even hit anything.

He thought about throwing his head back and screaming or growling into the air. He’d just found her. He’d argued with her so much that he hadn’t fought her on Seline staying at the house overnight. He’d been so stupid to leave her alone, even for a few hours in the daytime.

He swallowed down the bitter rage and tried to move forward. The only thing that would save Maggie was moving forward. He could survive the Miller boy dying in his arms. But if he found Maggie and she didn’t make it? If she was simply gone before he got there? He’d never survive that.

This was his fault.

His head fell forward and he squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the hot rush of pressure that wanted him to fall to his knees in the forest and give up.

When he reminded himself that he was trained to handle emergencies, he forced his mouth open, forced his lungs to suck in air, and forced his eyes open. Whatever he felt, he could suck it up. Maggie had it worse.

Through the sheen that blurred his vision, he caught a glimpse of pale blue to his right. He focused on it. Out of place in the forest, the color called to him, and finding out what the blue was seemed like a small task he could handle. As he pushed the shrub back, his heart clenched. A shoe.

A pale blue shoe that had to be Maggie’s.

Snatching it from where it lay, he looked it over as if he could identify the shoes she wore on sight.

“Fuck!” he yelled at himself. He’d just destroyed evidence.

Too late to undo his own fingerprints. He yanked his phone out, fumbling until he almost dropped it, and then he took pictures of the shrub the shoe had been under.

Clutching the one clue he might have found, he bolted back toward the house. Not even five steps further, his phone rang and his heart kicked that it might be Maggie.

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