Page 51 of Bait and Switch
Greta was going to kill him.
They roughly pushed him onto his front and held him down with a foot on his back while they fastened something—zip ties, maybe—around his wrists so he was effectively immobilized.
All without a word.
What the fuck? Again, he heard the wail of a siren—closer now, but still not close enough. Whatever was going down, the responders weren’t going to arrive in time to help him. Worse, Calvin had gone eerily silent too. Where was he? Had he fled the scene, or was he in cahoots with whoever this was?
A heavy-booted foot slammed into his ribs not once but twice. Crying out, Casey tried to curl up, to protect himself, but it was no good.
Everything hurt, and he shut his eyes for just a second.
EIGHTEEN
Gabriel
Wednesday evening
“Here.”Elton held his keys out to Gabe. “You drive.”
Gabe accepted them with a raised eyebrow—two could play that game—and veered to the driver’s side, wondering what had brought on the change of heart.
They’d exited the post office, having dropped off Kelly Perkins’s mountain of boxes, much to the chagrin of the man behind the counter. Gabe was itching to know what she bought and sold while also actively realizing that probably he didn’t want to know at all. He decided to imagine that she traded in rare Beanie Babies or Furbies.
Conveniently, the store of oddities that doubled as the island’s post office carried a few cheap cell phones among its stock of inexplicably obscure hand tools, plastic beach toys, puzzles, and barbecue supplies. Who would’ve guessed? This was the best-kept secret on Heartstone, and Gabe had immediately set about picking a phone out for himself andgetting it set up. When Elton hadn’t been paying attention, Gabe had added a second phone for him but left it in the packaging for now. They could argue about it later.
“Gimme that phone. We need to talk to Casey a-sap and I have his number memorized,” Elton said once he was settled in the passenger seat.
Case in point.
With a shake of his head, Gabe handed over the phone he’d activated.
“Drive faster,”Elton demanded. He had his left hand tucked underneath his thigh, almost as if he was resisting the urge to shove Gabe out of the way and grab the wheel.
“Old man, I’m driving as fast as I fucking can. This may come as a shock to you, but Wheel Man has never been my specialty. Not once.”
“I didn’t get a chance to tell Casey what Kelly told us about Snowcap,” Elton grumbled, continuing to hold the phone to his ear. “We’re still connected, I’m not hanging up.”
“Hanging up,” Gabe teased, trying to lighten the mood. “We aren’t living in the eighties anymore.”
Sure, Casey had intended to click off, but he hadn’t.
“He must have been distracted and slid his phone into his pocket and?—”
“And we’re eavesdropping on the longest butt dial in the history of butt dials.”
It wasn’t a butt dial, but he couldn’t think of what else to call it.
And, Gabe reasoned, neither of them liked what they were hearing.
The connection wasn’t particularly clear, and a couple of times Elton claimed they’d lost the connection only to hearCasey’s voice again after a few seconds. What they were listening to was fucking disturbing, and it was taking too long to bump their way up the road to where they assumed Casey was. When Gabe jammed his foot down on the accelerator, the truck’s engine screamed in protest. The steep, winding, pothole-filled roadway was not designed for fifty miles an hour, and he was not one of the Fast and Furious guys.
“Dammit, I can’t hear anything again. I think we lost ’em.”
He was focused on the road, but Gabe still saw Elton jab a gnarled finger against the cell phone’s screen with vigor.
“Don’t break that thing. It’s the third one I’ve bought in less than a month, I’m not made of money.”
“We need to go faster.”
