Page 99 of Montana Memory

Lachlan stood near the fireplace, eyes scanning the mantel. “No recent mail, no keys, nothing personal. Like he’s been staying somewhere else.”

Lucas looked at me. “You think they’ve got her stashed somewhere off-grid?”

“I don’t know. But she’s not here.”

Frustration clawed at me, sharper than before. My breath was tight in my chest again, like I’d swallowed glass. We were close—I could feel it—but we were still one step behind. Every minute we wasted was another minute she was in their hands.

And that thought made me want to level the whole goddamn block.

Before I could say anything, my burner buzzed in my pocket. I yanked it out and saw Jace’s name lighting up the screen.

Maybe we finally had something to go on.

Chapter 32

Hunter

“Tell me you’ve got something else,” I said to Jace, already moving toward the SUV. “Johnson’s and Kelly’s places were both a bust.”

“I do,” he said without preamble. “Tracked them leaving the station this morning. They got into a gray Tahoe registered to a department fleet. No GPS, but I pulled traffic cam footage and started piecing their route.”

Lucas opened the driver’s door while I climbed into the passenger seat and switched the call to speaker. I’d come back to get my rental car later.

“They were headed north,” Jace continued. “Bank camera caught them turning off the main highway at a gas station near Red Rock, then nothing. Last hit I got was at a mile marker on Highway 43. That stretch doesn’t have much surveillance, but it’s all backcountry and wooded as hell.”

Lachlan slid into the back seat and leaned forward. “How far out?”

“That camera was probably twenty-five or thirty miles from the edge of the city. Road splits at some point, so if they were trying to vanish, that’s the way to do it.”

Lachlan pulled up GPS on the vehicle’s center screen. Lucas and I met each other’s eyes as we saw exactly where we were looking at on the map as Jace kept talking. We didn’t have to say it. We both knew where that road led.

The cabin. The one Jada had taken Kenzie to. The same damn one where Alan had injected her with the memory drug.

It made sense in the worst kind of way. It was isolated, familiar to Alan’s circle, and far enough out that even if she screamed herself hoarse, no one would hear her.

Jace paused. “I can keep digging, but that’s as far as I’ve got unless they hit another camera.”

“This is good,” I said, gripping the dash. “There’s a cabin off this road that definitely has ties to Jada and Alan Ard.”

Lucas nodded, threw the SUV into gear, and started driving.

“Speaking of Alan Ard, I was able to dig deeper there too,” Jace said. “Found something buried in a deleted server log from the prison.”

“What?”

“It was a recorded interview,” he continued. “Johnson and Kelly. They were at the prison the day before Alan Ard was killed.”

Lucas let out a sharp breath beside me, his grip tightening on the wheel. Lachlan leaned forward from the back seat, silent but listening.

“They weren’t there in any official capacity,” Jace went on. “At least, nothing logged in the visitor schedule with a badge. This video was tucked away in a subfolder. My guess is someone tried to wipe it after the fact.”

“Did they talk to him or threaten him?” I asked.

“Bit of both,” Jace replied. “Ard was cocky. Kept saying something about how he’d make things right. Kept repeating that Jada had the money. He told them he’d given it to her before he got picked back up.”

“What money?”

I could hear Jace continue to type even as he talked. “Some sort of payoff for them helping him get out. Half a million, Hunter. People have killed for a hell of a lot less.”

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