Page 119 of Fractured Sky
The breeze moved the trees, and sunlight lit a path up ahead—a trail. My eyes strained. There was an old, gnarled tree trunk. A pine that had been struck by lightning. One I knew.
Relief charged through me. I could follow that path. I knew where it would lead. Back to Ramsey. Back to my home.
A hand snatched out, grabbing my hair.
I screamed as Howard yanked me back against him. His chest heaved, his sour breath filling my lungs. “You can’t run from me. You’ll never escape. I should’ve seen it from the beginning. You were always meant to be mine. I’ll break you and remake you into the perfect wife.”
46
RAMSEY
“They’ve got a location.”Hayes was already moving towards his sheriff’s department SUV.
I jogged after him. There was no way I was letting him go without me.
“Where’s your backup?” Calder called, hurrying behind us, the rest of the family on his heels.
“All our search parties are in the opposite directions. It’ll take them at least thirty minutes to get there. We may not have that long.” Hayes beeped the locks on his truck.
“I’m coming,” Calder immediately said.
“Me, too,” Hadley echoed.
Calder turned on his wife. “Hads…”
“Oh, so you can play cop, but I can’t? Because I’m a woman?”
Calder framed Hadley’s face with his hands. “Because I have firearms training, and you’ve never held a gun in your life.”
I didn’t miss the Glock holstered at Calder’s hip as if he’d known he might need to step in.
“I’ll come, too,” Gabe offered.
“Dad, you’re the only other person armed. We need someone to stay, just in case any trouble winds up back here,” Hayes argued.
Gabe’s face hardened, but he nodded. “Call me the second you get her.”
“You know I will.”
I slid into the passenger side of the SUV, and Calder climbed in the back. Hayes cranked the engine. Rocks flew as he sailed down the drive. “You know how to handle a weapon?”
I hit the button for the gate on my phone. “Had my own ranch since I was eighteen. What do you think?”
Hayes inclined his head to the glove box in front of me. “Got my personal backup in there. Take that. Code to the lockbox is 8-8-2-1.”
I leaned forward, opening the glove box and entering the code. I made quick work of checking the weapon and then slid the holster onto the side of my jeans.
“Backup is twenty-five minutes out,” Hayes said, obviously repeating something someone had shared through his phone’s earpiece.
“How many?” Calder asked.
“Got about eight officers in this first group. Everyone else is on their way.”
That was good. The more people looking, the quicker we’d find Shiloh. But all I could think about was what could happen to her in the time between now and then, and all the ways she could be hurt—or worse.
I gave my head a hard shake, trying to clear the images. Hayes took a sharp left, moving deeper into the forest. The trees towered above us, blocking out much of the sun as if the world around me knew that I was in danger of losing my light.
Hayes hung a right and screeched to a halt in front of a rundown cabin I’d had no idea was even in the area. We were all out of the SUV in a flash.
