Page 147 of Risky Passion

Whitney turned to Cobra. "Can you pull up the location from these coordinates?"

Cobra’s expression lit up as his fingers flew over the keyboard. "Let’s see where this takes us."

"Shit," Jaxson muttered, his scowl deepening. "Aria’s not picking up."

"I’ll try Maya," Whisper said, dialing her phone.

As the coordinates loaded on Cobra’s screen, the map zoomed in, and a red pin dropped into place. We all leaned closer.

"Maya didn’t answer either," Whisper said, exhaling sharply. "Not surprised though. They’re busy."

I studied the map. "Stanage Bay," I read aloud. "Anyone know it?"

Everyone shook their heads as Cobra switched to a satellite view.

"It’s about a hundred miles north of here," he said, squinting at the screen. "Sixty miles off the Bruce Highway, mostly unsealed roads.”

“It’s in the middle of nowhere," Whisper added.

"Exactly the kind of place you’d bury a body," Jaxson said grimly.

"Try Aria again," I said.

Jaxson dialed, but the call ended in silence. He shook his head. "No answer."

"Looks like it’s up to us." Whisper offered a wild grin.

"I don’t think so," Cody said, attempting to put his arm over her shoulder.

"We don’t have a choice." Whisper stepped back from his embrace. "If we don’t go after her, this doesn’t end." She flicked her hand toward the evidence wall.

Jaxson tried Aria one more time, but when the call went unanswered, he pocketed his phone and turned to us. "We need to do this.” His expression turned to stone. “We need to stop her."

And just like that, the decision was made.

Between us, we had four guns, with Cobra producing two more from his seemingly endless stash. He handed out body cams, insisting that he, Parker, and Jaxson wear them. He also grabbed a couple of photos from the crime scene wall and slotted them into his back pocket.

Jaxson, Whitney, Parker, and I climbed into Eddie’s cruiser with Onyx sitting between me and Whitney in the back seat. Jaxson took the wheel without consulting anyone else.

Whisper, Cobra, Cody, Piper, and Zac loaded into Maya’s RAV4 with Whisper claiming the driver’s seat. I’d been in her souped-up Mazda before, she drove like every road was a Formula One track, almost as crazy as Jaxson.

As we pulled away, Yasmin held Charlie in her arms, and Billie wrapped Jack in a tight hug. They stood on the schoolhouse steps with their taut faces showing their worry. But their partners were military ops specialists. Worry was the price of loving someone who put their lives on the line nearly every day.

As the gravel road blurred behind us and our vehicles kicked up clouds of dust in our wake, cold certainty settled in my stomach.

We were heading toward a known killer. A mass murderer.

A woman who eliminated people without hesitation or remorse.

Her isolated location may be the perfect place to bury a body . . . but it was also the perfect place to set a trap. A trap we were about to charge straight into.

In the rearview mirror, Jaxson’s face was carved from stone. Not a flicker of fear.

Meanwhile, I could barely breathe as my chest tightened with a stack of burning questions I didn’t want to voice:

What if everything we’d survived so far was just the prologue?

What if the real nightmare was still waiting for us?

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