Page 154 of Distress Signal
“Noted.”
“You’re being an asshole,” Crew said when I disconnected.
Before I could chew him out, West told him, “If someone took Aspen, you’d be doing the same fucking thing, baby brother. Cut him some slack.”
Wisely, Crew shut up, and we passed the rest of the drive in silence.
I’d parked when my phone rang with a call from Lane.
“What?” I answered.
“We’ve got something. Get your asses back.”
Though West and Crew were halfway out, I shifted into drive and peeled out of the lot, and they barely threw themselves back inside in time.
“Warn a guy next time,” our little brother grumbled. “I almost pissed myself.”
“You run into fires for a living,” I said with an eye roll. “Grow a pair.”
I drove too fast back to Trey’s house, barely remembering to put the truck in park before flying out from behind the wheel and racing inside.
“What’s this news?” I asked without preamble when I stalked into the war room.
For a moment, Trey, Lane, and Owen shared an unreadable look, as though having the same sort of wordless conversation West and I often had.
I looked to Aspen for answers. If anyone in this fucking room would shoot me straight, it would be her. But my tough-as-nails new sister-in-law was curled in on herself in the chair we’d left her in, face white as a sheet.
“Little phoenix?” Crew asked softly as he approached, kneeling in front of her and putting his hands on her thighs.
“Hotshot,” she rasped out, immediately shaking her head, as if whatever they’d found after we left was unbelievable. “Fuck.”
“Someone tell us what the fuck is going on,” West demanded.
“I finally managed to isolate the footage from that night,” Trey explained. “Aspen confirmed it with the property records, and a call to the station told us he has a vehicle matching the description of the one that ran Reagan off the road registered to him.
“We found who took them.”
“Who the fuck is it?”
Lane scrubbed his hand over his face. “Come see for yourself.”
Annoyed as fuck that they wouldn’t simplytellme, I stalked over until I stood behind Trey and studied the screens, all paused on the same face.
At first, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.Him? There was no fucking way.
But there was no denying it.
The face in the image was none other than Lyle Tucker.
Known to his friends simply asTuck.
forty-three
. . .
REAGAN
I came to consciousness slowly—andregrettably.
