Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 82411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
I feel like a psycho thinking that her happiness is secondary to her safety.
I pace the hallway, waiting for the right moment. As if there’s some greater entity on my side, I’m only half an hour into waiting before Max appears at the mouth of the hallway.
“Hey, man,” he says when I stride toward him holding up my phone. “Something you need?”
I pull in a breath, knowing there’s a good chance the man could easily refuse my request, and it’s not like I can run to Kincaid and tattle like a fucking child.
“I need you to track Beth’s phone,” I blurt because there’s no sense in beating around the bush. We’re wasting time as it is.
“Her phone?” he asks as if he’s suddenly having a hard time with the English language.
He pushes open the door to the conference room, the motion sensor light automatically coming on when we enter.
I close us into the room, not a hundred percent sure that I won’t have to threaten the man if he refuses, despite the repercussions that could mean for me and my position with Cerberus.
“She isn’t answering her phone,” I tell him. “I’ve called a million times.”
“Have you considered that maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you?”
I narrow my eyes at him, but I can easily see that the man isn’t trying to goad me into an argument. Max is a genius when it comes to technology and hacking, but he also draws a line at invading people’s privacy when it isn’t warranted.
“Max,” I growl. “Please, man. I need to know if she’s okay. I’m not asking you to spy on her. I just need to know that she’s making it safely back to Texas.”
Max takes a seat behind his computer, the screen coming to life when he moves the mouse.
“I won’t be able to tell you much if she has it turned off for a flight.”
“She took the fucking bus.”
His eyes snap from mine, his fingers flying over the keys. As impressed as I am with his skills, we’ll have to celebrate this shit later. Now is not the time to praise him for being capable of doing something I can’t. The whole reason I’m here is because he has a set of skills I could never even touch.
“The bus? Why the damn bus?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t put her on a fucking bus. She chose the bus, probably because it’s the fastest way out of town.”
His eyes drop from mine, and back to his computer screen.
“She’s in Santa Fe.”
I tilt my head in confusion. “No, she can’t be. The Santa Fe stop was last night. She should be as far as Midland, Texas by now, if not further.”
His fingers continue to fly, and I hate the way his face falls with whatever he’s seeing on the screen.
“Her phone has been in Santa Fe since nine last night.”
My heart stops, the damn muscle malfunctioning with the news. When it kicks back to life, it’s as if I’ve run back-to-back marathons. I swear the man sitting at the computer should be able to hear it with how hard it’s pounding behind my ribcage.
“What are you fucking saying?”
“Give me a second,” he says, his attention more on his computer screen than me.
He turns the huge television on because that makes it easier for him to screen share rather than me breathing over his shoulder.
“She’s on the bus here,” he says, using the tip of his mouse pointer to indicate the circle on the screen.
It shows her phone moving at fifty miles an hour.
“At eight forty-nine, she got off the bus.”
The little circle doesn’t move far.
“Zoom in,” I insist.
“This is as close as I can get it.”
“So, she’s at that gas station?”
I see the truth in his eyes when he looks up at me.
“Her phone is. Let me check something else.”
I wait impatiently, my feet once again picking up the pacing I was doing in the hallway. I came to him because I wanted to check on her. My mind was racing with the terrible things that she could face, but I shoved them down. The chances of something actually happening to her should’ve been slim.
Despite the high incidence of people getting abducted, there are a far greater number of people who don’t. She should’ve been fine.
Guilt swims in my gut, making the back of my throat burn with the threat of puking.
The worst of the worst starts swimming through my head as my palms grow slick.
“She didn’t even make it into the store,” he says, grabbing all my attention.
I turn and face the television on the wall, wishing I could reach out to the vision of Beth walking toward the front of the store and pluck her right out of there.
I watch as she pulls out her phone.
“No, sweetheart,” I whisper when she looks down at the thing before walking around the side of the building. “Where did she go?”