Page 68 of Unraveled Love

“Roger. I’ll let Briggs know and give him a heads-up.”

The tracker burned in my pocket. If I could have thrown it into the woods, I would have, but he was right—Briggs could help us figure this out.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Addi muttered.

She was right, on both accounts. None of this made sense, but we sure as hell would figure it out.

I released her hand and settled it back on her lap before starting the Jeep.

“Hold on, honey. The trip back is going to be faster and bumpier.”

24

Addi

Atracking device. What kind of futuristic spy movie had become the set of my life to have a tracking device in shoes I never wore? A thousand questions pummeled me, but I bit them back while Shawn jolted us all over the terrain.

Leave it to me. We started with a great day and ended it mired in my crap again.

Goddamn Daniel. Couldn’t he just give me one day ofpeace?

Shawn’s brow furrowed and his jaw was tight. He wasn’t just concentrating on the rocky terrain that tossed me to and fro and made me white-knuckle the bar in front of me and the handle at the top of the door frame.

He was trying to solve the puzzle.

With a voice so low it rumbled like distant thunder, he said, “Ifthey’re even tracking you, which makes no fucking sense, they won’t get close to the house.”

He was resolute in that belief. For me, I could only hope. They’d taken me from a crowded bar. I doubted pointing out that logic would do anything to make him feel better. I was one hundred percent he believed he could keep anyone who meant me harm far away from me.

Instead, I stayed quiet until we neared the house. Our cell service must have come back into range because Shawn’s phone started bleeping with alerts, so many my blood turned cold.

“What is it?”

He grabbed his phone, face turning pale, and without looking at me, he reached into the back seat where he’d stored the cases of guns and ammo we took to the range.

“Take this.” He grabbed a case and brought it to my lap. “Load it like I taught you, but keep the safety on.”

My hands settled on the black plastic case, my nerves going haywire, and I repeated my earlier question. “What is it?”

“Don’t know, but whatever is going on, I want you armed. Fuck!” He slapped the steering wheel, making me jump, and the gun case on my lap slipped off my knees.

I grabbed it before it hit the floor and settled it back on my lap.

“Sorry,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You’re not scaring me.” I swiped my hand over the case. The idea of needing to actually use the weapon he’d barely trained me on currently rattled me.

That and the whole tracking device thing. Still, even that didn’t make sense. How had it gotten there? The bag had never been out of my sight once I packed it, and outside the few times I wore them on a treadmill, the shoes had been in the back of my closet. How in the hell had a tracker been put in them?

“My dad,” I muttered, feeling a whip lash my heart. It was the only thing that made sense. How many times had he betrayed me?

“What?”

“My dad must have slipped that into my shoes. He was home when I was packing.”

“You don’t know that. Not with how slippery Daniel’s been.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t come after me right away. He didn’t chase me and take me immediately. There has to be a reason.” Silence thickened in the Jeep, and Shawn grabbed his phone as the house came into view. “Either Daniel didn’t know about it, or he wanted it and your dad wouldn’t give it to him.”

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