In the rough weather, it took six minutes instead of the normal five to reach the right road, and another two minutes to reach the long, winding driveway that led to Ashley’s house.
A few inches of water covered most of the gravel, but his four-wheel drive clung to the road like a billy goat. He parked next to the front porch steps, figuring he’d save himself some soggy boots by avoiding the puddles in the yard.
He shook the raindrops from the last outing into the storm off his ball cap, shoved it on his head and threw the car door open. He slammed it shut behind him and jogged up the steps. Lights were on inside. He rapped on the front door. A few seconds later he rapped again, and rang the doorbell.
Nothing.
“Miss Parrish?” he called out. “It’s Detective Gray. We met this morning. I need to speak to you.” Another knock, but again, no sound or movement from inside.
The mild alarm he’d felt after talking to Lauren Wilkes was giving way to genuine concern. The little hairs on his neck were standing up. He drew his gun and held it down by his side as he stepped to the front window. He could glimpse the room through a slit in the curtains, but not enough to really tell him anything.
His boots echoed hollowly on the wood as he strode across the porch. At the corner of the house, he leaned around, looking toward the backyard. Pitch-dark. The landlord needed to get some lights out here, especially since the house was so isolated without any neighbors close by. He headed back to the steps to get a flashlight from his Jeep so he could walk the perimeter of the property.
The sound of a powerful engine had him jerking around.
Headlights flashed and a truck roared from the side yard. It raced past him, its tires throwing up huge sprays of water that splashed onto the porch.
There were two people in the truck. The passenger turned and looked right at him, her eyes wide, her face pale as her hands flailed ineffectually against the glass.
Ashley Parrish.
She definitely wasn’t in that truck because she wanted to be.
Dillon crouched on the porch and fired off two quick shots at the truck’s tires, hoping to disable it before it gained much speed.
The truck jerked to the side but kept going. Damn this rain and wind. He wouldn’t normally miss a shot like that. Taking the stairs two at a time, he hopped into his car, wheeled it around and floored the accelerator.
The Jeep fishtailed on the wet gravel. Dillon cursed and let up on the gas, then took off at a slower speed. The headlights from the truck bounced crazily as it turned at the end of the drive. West, it was heading west.
He grabbed his phone and pressed the button for dispatch as he barreled down the driveway. Nothing. He held the phone up. The light was on and he’d pressed the right button, but the call hadn’t gone through. Must be the bad cell tower, as he’d thought earlier.
After making the turn at the end of the drive onto the paved road, he floored the gas again. The truck’s taillights were barely visible up ahead in the pouring rain. There weren’t any streetlights out on this old rural two-lane. But he didn’t need more than his headlights to tell him what he already knew. The road up ahead was full of dangerous, sharp S-curves. If the driver of that truck kept his current speed, on this slick, wet road, he’d likely end up in a ditch or plow headfirst into a tree.
* * *
ASHLEYCLUNGTOthe armrest and braced her other hand against the dashboard. The rain was falling so hard the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. The truck’s tires kept slipping on the wet road, making the bottom drop out of her stomach.
“Please slow down,” she pleaded. “It’s too dangerous to drive this fast in these conditions.”
The driver raised his gun and pointed it at her without taking his gaze from the road.
She swallowed and held her hands up in a placating gesture.
He shoved the gun between his legs and put both hands back on the wheel, the veins in his forearms bulging from the effort it took to keep the truck on the road.
Ashley glanced in the side mirror. The lights from Dillon Gray’s Jeep were barely visible in the distance, but he was steadily gaining on them. She didn’t have a clue why he’d gone to her house, but he was the answer to her prayers. If he could catch up and somehow manage to get this eerily calm stranger to stop the truck...
She let out a yelp as the truck slid toward the ditch on their right.
Her captor let up on the gas. The wheels caught and spit the truck back toward the middle of the road.
* * *
DILLON’SHEARTPLUMMETEDas the black pickup carrying Ashley Parrish slid dangerously close to the edge of the road for the second time since he’d started pursuit. At the last second, the truck straightened out and shot back toward the centerline.
He let out a pent-up breath and pushed his Jeep even harder, the engine whining as it struggled to catch up. His four-wheel drive was built for power, not speed, which was why he didn’t normally use it when on the job. And it wasn’t aerodynamic enough to make the curves without greatly reducing his speed. Neither was the truck up ahead. The ditches along this road might as well be cliffs, as steep as they were. And with all this rain, they were full of water, a death trap if the truck slid into one of them.
He tried his phone again, but it was no use. He no longer believed a failed cell tower was to blame. He’d gone too far from Ashley’s house for that to be the case. The driver of the truck had to have a powerful cell phone jammer. That would explain why Ashley’s call dropped when she was talking to her friend, and why Dillon couldn’t get a call through as he followed behind. His mouth tightened. Jammers weren’t cheap, and they were hard to come by. The man who’d taken Ashley had gone to a lot of trouble, and expense, to do it. This wasn’t a random abduction.
He debated pulling off the road to call dispatch for backup. But if he let enough distance pass between him and the truck to unblock his phone, he might lose their trail. He couldn’t risk it.
The road curved ahead, but no matter how hard Dillon pressed his Jeep on the straightaway, he couldn’t catch up before the pickup disappeared around the curve. When he rounded the bend, he slammed his fist against the steering wheel. The fool. The truck’s lights were visible up ahead, but not on the two-lane it had been on. Instead, the driver had turned down the side road that led to Cooper’s Bluff. And he was heading toward the low wooden bridge over Little River—the bridge the mayor had closed because the river was expected to top it.
Ignoring every sense of self-preservation he had, he pushed the accelerator all the way to the floor. The tires slipped. He cursed and let up on the gas, even though it nearly killed him to slow down.
The bridge was around the next curve, so he slowed the Jeep even more.
Taillights gleamed up ahead at a crazy angle.
Dillon’s eyes widened and he slammed the brakes, bringing his car to a skidding halt at the edge of the roadway. The last twenty feet of asphalt had washed away. The bridge was completely underwater, its support beams sticking up out of the angry, roiling waves like the skeleton of some prehistoric water beast. The truck had slid off the collapsed roadway, narrowly missing the bridge’s first support beam and sliding half into the river.
Dillon grabbed his flashlight and hopped out. He sprinted to what was now little more than a cliff, a fifteen-foot drop down to the strip of mud at the water’s edge. The front of the truck was submerged beneath the water, all the way up to the doors. The bed of the truck stuck up in the air, and even as Dillon watched, the truck slipped a few more inches into the water.
He took off, racing parallel to the shore until he found a break where he could climb down. His boots slipped and slid in the muddy,