Page 46 of Forged in Secrets

The sky rushed away, and he saw the tail end of their attacker’s black truck as it roared up the road.

The car fell back to the ground with a crash that made Ben’s jaw hurt, but other than that, he felt just fine.

Thank you, God.

He smelled dust and tasted something metallic, and without meaning to, he started to laugh.

“You’re supposed to be the serious one,” he heard Grace say beside him, coughing as she reached over to unclip her seatbelt. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” he said, though he couldn’t stop chuckling. “I bit my tongue pretty bad, and it tastes disgusting.”

Grace made a face. “But you didn’t die.”

“I didn’t die.Wedidn’t die.”

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

GRACE

By the time that they dealt with the aftermath of the car accident and made it back to the Mistflower, it was nearly nine o’clock.

“I’m telling you, she’s either not here or not willing to talk,” Grace said as Ben pounded on Jade’s hotel room door for the fifth time. She tried to keep her tone light, but it was of little use.

Since the accident just a few hours before, they were both on edge. Especially Ben.

“She has something to do with it,” he muttered as one of the hotel’s maids wheeled her cart past them, giving him a disapproving glance. “I’m sure of it now.”

Grace reached over and poked him on the forearm with a manicured fingernail. “You don’t know that,” she reminded him.

“Who else had any reason to run us off the road? We could have been killed. You could have been killed.”

She wished she could tell him he was overreacting, andthat everything was fine. Instead, she felt a ripple of renewed fear slithering down her back.

Neither of them had been hurt, but the back of the rented SUV had taken a pummeling. Worse, the van driver in the oncoming lane had suffered whiplash from braking so hard. He’d been a sweetheart about the whole thing, but still, Grace felt terrible that an innocent bystander had ended up in danger due to their investigation.

“This is a good thing,” she said. “If someone is trying to scare us off the island, it’s because they think we’re getting closer to finding out the truth. We’re getting somewhere, even if we can’t quite figure out how the pieces fit together yet. It’s not the time to back off.”

Ben looked down at her, and despite the anxiety that lined his forehead, she could see a little of the usual teasing sparkle in his deep green eyes.

“Who said anything about backing off? I thought you knew me better than that.”

Something about the intensity of his gaze as he said it made her think his words may have had more than one meaning.

She wasn’t doing a very good job at backing away from him, that much was clear. Every step they took toward one another made it more and more difficult for her to pull away.

“You gonna tell Detective Hayles that Jade took off again?” she asked, hoping to change the subject to something less complicated than her confused heart.

The detective had taken their statement at the scene of the ramming attack and had driven them to the hotel, but she doubted he’d be able to do much about finding the unremarkable black truck.

Ben shook his head. “I’ll mention it if anything elsecomes up, but otherwise, I think you’re right. We need to just keep pushing forward on the leads we have.”

Grace sighed and leaned against the wall, a wave of exhaustion hitting her anew. Their leads didn’t feel particularly substantial at the moment, but they were still wasting time standing here.

“I want to talk to Katie’s dad again,” she suggested. “Give him an update. He might be able to get in touch with Jade’s family, and they might know what she’s up to.”

Ben made a noncommittal grunt that she chose to interpret as approval. At this point, it was worth a shot, though she had a bad feeling that Jade’s family was probably just as unpleasant as she was.

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