Chapter 31
Twists that Turn
Pearl settled as soonas not one, but two bits of evidence were recovered from under Reece’s truck. She probably relaxed once she realized the stupid humans got what she’d been signaling, and she came willingly, as if she understood she should tread as lightly as possible to preserve the area.
Reece returned her to the truck, and when he came back around, Shane was bagging and marking the items: a spent syringe and an empty pharmaceutical bottle. The look he gave Reece telegraphed they’d discovered something critical. Profoundly critical.
“O’Brien, sweep the entire area under that truck,” Sheriff Chesterton ordered. “Hunnicutt, you’re going to have to leave your vehicle here until O’Brien’s done. I’m going to head inside and have a look around for myself.”
Reecegot it, but he bristled at the order. He needed to bolt so he could start searching for Neve. Let these guys do their investigating; he had to find her. Every fiber in his being screamed that she was in danger.
Once the sheriff was out of earshot, Reece prodded Shane. “What did you find?”
Shane held up the bag containing the bottle in his latex-gloved fingers. “Ketamine.”
“Isn’t that the same shit that was stolen from the clinic?”
“Samekindof shit. Hang on, and I’ll tell you if it is, in fact, the same shit.” The deputy began scrolling through his phone. Stopped, held up the bag, and narrowed his eyes. “Read off that lot number.”
Reece did, and one side of Shane’s mouth curled up. “That lot number matches one of the bottles Neve reported missing.”
“What the hell’s it doing out here? And the syringe …” Puzzle pieces Reece didn’t like began clicking into place. “Do you think whoever stole the meds used them on Neve so they could take her somewhere?”
Shane pushed out a loud exhale. “I don’t know. Maybe they were after the Tahoe, and Neve got in the way.”
A voice inside Reece’s head boomed that this was not a carjacking. He gripped his friend’s arm. “Find out where Chelsea is!”
“What’s with you needing to know Chelsea’s whereabouts?”
“Just do it. Please.”
Sympathy shone in Shane’s eyes—or maybe he thought Reece had completely lost it. He mumbled something Reece couldn’t understand and pivoted to re-enter the clinic. Noah pulled up a split second later, and Reece jogged over to him. “I need your truck.”
Without a word, Noah got out and tossed him the keys.
“And I need your help to transfer my gear from my truck into yours so I can start searching for Neve.”
“Let’s do it.”
Reece looked up atthe glowering sky through his windshield and felt the wind buffet Noah’s truck. He smelled a storm moving in, andhe cursed aloud inside the cab. If a helicopter needed to be deployed, it wouldn’t be able to fly in this. Then there was the wind chill that made the freezing temperature feel even colder.
He struggled to shift his mindset back to his SAR persona. Gripping the steering wheel, he willed himself to stuff his emotions into a box and slam the lid shut. This mission was no different than any other. The delusion, repeated over and over, was the only way he could keep his wits sharp enough to find Neve and bring her home safely.
Shane was buttoning things up at the clinic and would join the hunt as soon as he was done. He hadn’t been able to reach Chelsea. Reece had even tried calling her himself, thinking she’d pick up if she saw his number on her screen, but he wasn’t surprised when she didn’t. His suspicions that she’d done something to Neve multiplied, along with his foreboding.
Word about Neve’s disappearance spread like bindweed, and members of his old search and rescue unit began mobilizing to assist. Neve hadn’t been gone long, and in another jurisdiction he might have been working solo, but not in Fall River. Everyone knew Neve. Everyone loved Neve. Everyone wanted to find her.
Even Micky volunteered to help. The guy might be an idiot about most things, but he knew the back roads as well as SAR, and Reece was glad to have him. In the meantime, Charlie was racing back to Fall River and would hit town in thirty minutes. Noah had wanted to ride with Reece, but Reece needed an incident command post with steady cell service, and the Miners Tavern was a good stand-in. So instead, Pearl rode shotgun beside him. She couldn’t talk and she was no trained tracker, but she had some kind of connection to Neve, and Reece was counting on her alerting to a scent.
Searching for lost souls was always tricky, but the patrols looking for them often had some idea where to start—the last place the person had checked in, coordinates they’d sent a loved one, one side of a mountain instead of the whole damn range, and when SAR wasreallylucky, a tracking beacon.
But he had none of those clues. Hell, he might not even have cell service soon. But he was striking out for Silver Summit Resort, the only place he could think of where someone might have seen Neve or heard of her movements. The lead was thin, but he was grasping at straws, and this was the only one he’d managed to snag.
His phone rang, adding to the jangle of his nerves.
“Shane, what did you find out?”
“First, have you seen any sign of Neve?”
