Page 89 of I'm Yours

“Fuck!”

“Got my guy looking right now,” Henry says, fingers flying across the screen of his phone much faster than I’d expect of a man his age. “Investigator,” he explains. “He’s good. Fast. I don’t ask questions,” he says to Goodman, making it clear that whoever it is working on his end isn’t exactly doing things legally.

I continue to pace, feeling like I’m about to come out of my skin. “I can’t stand around here.”

“Me either,” Samuel agrees.

“That hers?” Goodman asks, nodding to the phone still on the garage floor.

I nod and he bends to pick it up with a plastic glove he pulled out of his pocket.

“Looks like they followed her home, got her here,” he says.

Samuel lifts his eyes from his phone and says, “Just got a text from Kandace. Guess she didn’t show up for class this morning. Kandace figured she was with you so she didn’t think much of it.”

Deciding not to comment on that, I look at Henry who seems to have more answers than the rest of us. “How dangerous is this Bryce McCabe?”

His thumb slides up on his phone like he’s reading something. “Dangerous enough.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dad asks, voice hard and angry.

He looks up from his phone. “It means he has a violent record when it comes to women. Ex-wife ended up in the hospital from his fists. One sexual assault charge against him but no conviction.” Henry’s voice is hard. Angry. A little scared.

My knees buckle but Justin’s there to catch me, helping me sit down. “We have to find her,” I say quietly. “We have to find her,” I repeat.

Goodman’s phone rings and he steps outside. We all watch him as he listens to whatever the person on the other line is telling him. In the garage, it’s silent as we try to hear what Goodman is saying but his back is turned to us and his voice is too quiet. When he hangs up, his strides are purposeful when he returns. “Got a vehicle matching McCabe’s spotted about ten miles from here. My guys are on their way now. Quietly.”

“Let’s go,” I bark, heading toward my pickup. Goodman doesn’t fight me about going with them, which is good.

“Wait!” Henry stops us. “Got him. Traced both Lee and McCabe’s phones. They’re not together.”

“What?” Goodman asks a little irritably. I’m sure Henry isn’t his favorite person, either. But now’s not the time to worry about that.

We all do our best to gather around Henry’s tiny phone screen when he uses his fingers to expand the map that his investigator sent. He points to one and says, “That’s Lee. And here’s McCabe. They’re nowhere near each other.”

Goodman points to McCabe’s dot on the map. “That’s where the vehicle was spotted.”

“He left his phone in it?” Justin asks, dumbfounded.

Goodman’s eyebrows scrunch together. “Possibly. Maybe they knew we’d be looking. Trying to throw us off.”

“So who do we follow? Do we split up?” Samuel wonders.

“Lee,” Goodman says. “Go to where Lee is.”

Henry pockets his phone and crosses his arms over his chest. “Agree. Lee’s too dumb to realize that we’d figure out the connection between him and Bryce. Need to keep your guys off the radios, though. He’ll be listening.”

“Let’s go,” I bark. “We’ve stood around here waiting for long enough as it is. Who knows what these fuckers have done to her by now.”

No one says anything else as we climb into vehicles. Samuel and Henry ride with Dad as Justin and I follow behind Goodman who got the address to Lee’s location from Henry.

Neither Justin nor I speak the entire way. My stomach is in knots, worried over what we’ll discover and Justin seems to pick up on the fact that I need the quiet to think.

Goodman turns down a gravel road then turns right onto a trail that leads across the base of a small mountain. The pickup lurches from side to side as we drive quickly over the bumpy terrain. My fingers are gripping the steering wheel so tightly, my knuckles are turning white. Goodman slows to a stop but sticks his arm out his window, waving us forward. I stop next to him and roll down Justin’s window.

“Another half mile. There’s a clearing on the other side of that tree line,” he says, pointing a finger in the direction he’s talking about. “We’ll park on this side just in case they’re watching.”

I nod and he takes off. We follow him around a corner and I see two cop cars speeding up behind Dad along with a car I don’t recognize.

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