Page 188 of Deliverance

And for a fraction of a second, the thought that her ex might have nothing to do with it warms me.

I’d rather her be free of me than be somewhere with him.

“Mr. Shaw?” The officer’s voice crackles over the light static on the line and I’m snapped back to reality. My Jeep is pushing forward through the midday traffic on the interstate, and my hands are so numb from gripping the steering wheel that I can’t feel the tips of my fingers anymore.

“I’m here,” I say.

“Could you please tell me more about your activities right before Ms. Kadence’s departure?”

I recall the events of yesterday, starting with my morning and ending with my night, without holding back. I do omit the fact that I killed the entire bottle of Patron. Not because I don’t want the police to know, but because I’m ashamed that Drew’s reaction to the ring rattled me so much. So much that I needed to get hammered. So much that I needed to stop feeling.

“Let me make sure I understand this correctly?” The officer clears his throat and then repeats everything I just said to him, the sentences sounding unsettlingly mechanical. You’d think he’s reading a shopping list.

“Yes.” My patience is wearing thin. “Are you going to send someone out to look for her? Look for the car?”

“Mr. Shaw, please understand, The Missing Persons Unit investigates almost four thousand reports every year. Just because Ms. Kadence isn’t returning your phone calls and didn’t clean her workspace before she went for a car ride, probably because she needed to clear her head in light of everything that happened between you, doesn’t mean she’s missing. There are a number of reasons why she may have voluntarily disappeared. Relationship discord is one of those reasons.”

“We don’t have any discord!” My voice pitches at that. This guy has the nerve to tell me that finding a woman whose psycho ex has already beaten her to a pulp once isn’t a pressing matter.

“Mr. Shaw, I’m going to have to ask you to calm down so we can finish the checklist.”

Checklist.

That’s what she is for these people.

I bite back my fury and concentrate on the road in front of me, a ceaseless gray ribbon blanketed by thick clouds of smog. “What’s the next question?”

The officer rattles it off and I supply the response.

We continue going over details long after I pass the Disneyland exits. Soon my surroundings turn into grim rows of industrial buildings—old, tattered, and covered by graffiti—and I realize I’m in L.A. County.

“Mr. Shaw. Do you have a way to check the location of the car?”

“Yeah, there’s an app,” I tell him, realizing how dumb my panic has made me. Why didn’t I think of it sooner?

“I suggest you do that while I’m finishing up the report and forwarding the information to one of the detectives.”

“And what do I do after?”

“Call us back if you recognize the location. We want to make sure Ms. Kadence is indeed missing before we get the cavalry involved.”

Un-fucking-believable.

I almost scream at him for being so dumb, but my common sense, or whatever’s left of it, prevails. Angering the one person who’s pretty much holding Drew’s fate in his hands doesn’t seem like the logical course of action.

Although nothing about this morning has been logical.

As soon as we finish the conversation, I pull over to the side of the road to download the tracking app on my phone. My fingers tap out a broken beat against my jean-clad thigh as I watch the progress the little faded circle is making at the bottom of my screen until the picture finally sharpens and bursts with a variety of solid colors.

I log on and study the map. The red marker is static, lit up, and sitting next to the dot that reads,Redlands.

What?

I zoom out and look at the picture again, my heart beating so fast, my lungs can’t keep up and it feels like my insides are shriveling from lack of oxygen. Somewhere at the back of my mind, an image is starting to form. Stretching my body across the seat, I reach over to the glove box and pop it open.

The large yellow envelope with all the information Jensen collected on Rhys Jacoby is still stuffed inside along with the car registration. I’d forgotten about it for a hot minute because I was too fucking happy and nervous over my decision to propose, but now it feels like all this happiness was just a dream.

Ignoring the fact that my Jeep is illegally parked on the shoulder of the freeway, I grab the envelope, remove the stack of papers, and lay them out on the passenger seat.

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