Page 141 of Until the Sea Runs Dry

“Go ahead” the automated male voice answered.

Such relief surged through her that she almost burst into tears. “Call Logan” she instructed.

Immediately, the system started to call him. She gripped onto the wheel, fingers dead to the world as she waited anxiously for the call to be answered. It was finally picked up on the sixth ring.

“Hello, Logan’s phone.”

The sultry female voice clearly wasn’t his.

“I need to speak to Logan. It’s an emergency.” The terror in her voice brokered no argument.

“Is this Jane?” Asked the concerned female.

“No, it’s Clare, her friend. Something terrible has happened to her. Please, can you just put him on the phone?”

“Of course. One second.”

There was the muffled sound of the phone being handed over to him before Logan’s voice came down the phone.

“Clare?! What’s happened?”

The explanation spilled out of her in-between tears of fright. She felt awful for calling her friend out then dumping her at the park. This was her fault. If anything happened to Jane, she’d never forgive herself.

Logan listened as she explained, his breathing becoming terser and terser as he barked out the occasional question. When she was finished, the strain cracked his voice. It was the voice of a man out of his mind with worry for the woman he loved.

“Are you calling the police? I don’t know what to do,” she admitted, wishing she could be more helpful.

“We’re going to call them on the way to the station. Can you meet us there?”

“Yes.”

He gave her the address of the closest LAPD, but as she went to hang up the call, he stopped her.

“Clare? Please be careful. Don’t get out of your car for anyone, understand? Not anyone but me. Just come straight to the police station.”

She promised and hung up before his last words sank in… and then she couldn’t get them out of her mind.

Why had he stressed that?

What on Earth was happening here?

* * *

The world was spinning.

There was a thumping inside his head that threatened to collapse his skull. A woman’s voice spoke to him, calm and soothing, trying to cut through the pressure building inside, but she might as well have been a world away for all the good it did.

All he could think about was Jane and what could be happening to her right now.

“Logan. I’m going to need you to snap out of this if we’re to have any chance of saving her.”

A pair of elegant fingers snapped loudly in front of his eyes and it seemed to do the trick, shocking him out of himself. He looked at the woman beside him in the car, driving with such expertize that she could have been one of the stunt team on his movie.

Except she wasn’t.

Yanking on the wheel, she took a sharp turn that sent the manilla folders on the backseat sliding into the footwell. Notes, records and surveillance photographs spilled out, colliding with a state-of-the-art digital camera with its wide zoom lens.

A MacBook Air that was used to download evidence captured by the camera, teetered on the edge of the seat but stopped short of toppling over.

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