Page 83 of Montana Mystery

I was almost to my truck when my phone vibrated. Kate’s name was on the screen. “Hey,” I said with a smile. “I just got your voicemail. Are you on your way—”

“Noah.” The sound stopped me in my tracks. That wasn’t Kate. It was Brandon, and it barely sounded like him.

“Brandon.”

“They have her.” His voice was strangled. “She was here and—” An audible swallow and a groan. “She’s gone. Max.”

I swore. “You’re injured?”

“He shot me.”

“Hold on, Brandon, I’m sending help.”

Every one of my senses sharpened to a honed point. Kate was in danger. They had her. They had her. The desperation in Max’s voice as he’d demanded Kate’s presence was clear in my mind as I called Missoula’s emergency department. They were sending an ambulance to Brandon, and it was all I could do right now. He would be dead by the time I tried to help him. But I was still going to try. And I needed to find her.

I hopped in the truck, already dialing Daniel. “Hey, Noah. Kate told us to tell you where she was—”

“She’s gone.”

“I know, she went with her brother—”

I cut him off again. “No. Brandon just called me, bleeding out from a gunshot wound. They took her. I’m already driving. Grab gear. Grab whatever you can and follow me. I need to get to the apartment and see if there’s any kind of sign. And hope that Brandon survives to see the ambulance. Maybe he can help us.”

“Noah...” Daniel sounded devastated. “I told her she could go alone. That there wasn’t anything to worry about.”

Grim determination settled in my chest. “I thought the same thing when I listened to her voicemail. Worry about it later. Please, just help me save her.”

Save her. Those words ripped out of me, but they felt right.

“We’re on our way.”

The drive to Missoula felt like nothing. Time collapsed like it was in an hourglass without anything to slow the sand. I was lucky I didn’t get pulled over, pushing the limits as I was.

Nothing in Kate’s parking lot looked out of the ordinary. No strange vehicles that told me the place was still being watched or signs of where she’d been taken.

But the door to the apartment was open, and there was a new mess inside. Blood and things from the paramedics who’d come for Brandon. Kate’s phone was still on the floor. No other outgoing calls except for me. So they hadn’t called and blackmailed her.

There was nothing here. I didn’t need forensics to tell me that I wouldn’t find Kate by looking around here. I needed to talk to Brandon.

The woman at the emergency room intake looked shocked when she saw me. “Brandon Tilbeck,” I said. “I need to see him.”

“Are you family?”

“If I don’t see him right now, the only family he has left could die. No, I’m not his family, but I need to see him.”

She went pale, her face strained with the struggle between what she was supposed to do and what she could see in front of her—that I was telling the truth. “Hold on.”

She picked up the phone on her desk and made a call, turning away from me.

My phone buzzed. Daniel. “I’m at the hospital trying to talk to Brandon.”

“We’re almost there,” he said. “Emergency room?”

“Yeah.”

The nurse turned back to me and nodded.

“Gotta go.”

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