Page 84 of Montana Mystery

She stood. “He’s about to go into surgery, but his doctor wants to talk to you.”

I followed through the halls to a man in a gown and mask, hands already scrubbed in. “You want to see my patient?”

“He’s my girlfriend’s brother. She was taken. That’s how he got shot. He might know something that will help me get to her.”

The doctor’s eyes narrowed in the same appraising look the nurse had had only minutes before. “Okay. He’s woozy, so I can’t promise anything. But you can have a couple minutes.”

“Thank you. Will he be all right?”

“Whoever shot him wasn’t a great marksman. At that range, he got lucky. Can’t know the extent of the damage until I actually look inside, but I’m optimistic.”

Lucky. That was for damn sure. Lucky that Max hadn’t made sure Brandon was dead before he left with Kate.

They handed me a gown and mask. The lights of the operating room made me squint, and I fought the vicious familiarity of things I’d just come up against in session. Brandon was wearing an oxygen mask, which a nurse pulled away.

“Brandon. It’s Noah.”

His eyes found mine. Woozy, just like the surgeon had said, but clear enough to recognize me. “He promised. Max. Said he’d kill us both if I didn’t get her there, but we’d be fine if we did. He lied.”

There was only panic on his face, and in the background, his heart monitor sped up. I needed to calm him down. “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m going to find her. But I need your help.”

“It started coming back,” he said. “Fuzzy, but where they beat me the first time? It’s near Moiese. Close to the river. Abandoned like the others. All I could think of.”

It had to be enough. “I’ll get her back,” I promised. “You stay alive. Because if you die, you know Kate is going to resurrect you just to kill you again.”

A flicker of a smile flashed across his face, but he was fading. They replaced the mask, and I stepped away. Back outside. The nurse was waiting. “Can you call me when he’s out of surgery and let me know the outcome?”

“Of course.” She was still pale. That tended to happen when people realized situations were, in fact, life or death.

I scribbled my name and number down for her, heading to the parking lot as Daniel pulled up. “Back out,” I said. I told him the location, and Liam jumped in my truck to drive. Moiese was closer to Missoula than Garnet Bend, but it was still some distance. I needed to focus on other things. Like getting my bulletproof vest on and not freaking the fuck out.

“I’m sorry,” Daniel said, after we’d ridden awhile in silence. Jude was in the backseat. Lucas and Grant were in my truck with Liam.

I looked over at him. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know. But one of us could have gone with her. It would have been so simple. Maybe we could have prevented this.”

Taking a breath, I closed my hands into fists and then relaxed them. Again. I took a second to ground myself with my senses, like Rayne had been teaching me to do.

It would be so easy to put the blame for this on Daniel and Lucas. Of course, my mind was looking for someone to blame so I could direct my anger at anything except the sky. But it wasn’t their fault. I’d thought exactly the same thing when I’d listened to her voicemail, that she would be fine to pick up her brother alone.

“And maybe Max would have put a bullet through your head the second you walked through that door,” I said. “No point in gaming out what could have happened.”

Daniel nodded once, noting my tone perhaps and saying nothing more. I had no room to think about anything but what was happening now and how to get her back. If we needed to have a conversation about what happened before, it was going to have to be later.

Jude tracked the location while we drove, accessing property records and satellite maps to identify the biggest abandoned property in the area Brandon had mentioned.

She wasn’t here. I knew it as soon as we pulled up. Those instincts that were attuned to Kate—had been since the moment that we met—told me that she wasn’t here. And I was right.

No one was here.

“There,” Liam pointed. “Blood.”

A dark stain smudged across the floor. Several places. There were doors open and patches of dirt with footprints. Someone had been here. The signs of movement were everywhere, but they were long gone now. There was no proof that Kate had ever been here or how old the blood was. It could have been before Kate was taken.

The world narrowed to a single point. My chest was going to explode. Kate’s phone was in my pocket. Without it on her person, we had no way of finding her. This was the only clue that we had, and it was a dead end.

Nothing indicated they were still here. Jude had been all over anything he could find connected to Max. That phone number. That party. There was nothing. They knew how to hide their tracks. And if they did that now—

---