“Limo!” Evie cried frantically. “KK is saying limo!”
Thirty-two: Dante
Searching for cool,calculating logic and only hearing the roar of terror in his head and the echoing emptiness in his chest, Dante tapped into his mobile. Beside him, Roark recklessly drove the utility van down a two-lane road toward the interstate, hoping to catch up with a limo. Roark’s phone beeped, and Dante grabbed that one too.
“Ariel says stop at the abandoned gas station.” He read the message aloud, then returned to checking messages. As far as they’d ascertained so far, the ghost’s warning of a large black car in the neighborhood was correct, except no one knew its direction. All they could assume was that whoever had the children would be fleeing for an airport.
Dante’s worst nightmare was that the children wouldn’t make it that far. What hornet’s nest had they stirred? Jax had called Matt and Rhonda. Jane was out of the hospital. Who else?
Why the children?
To get him to do something. What? All he knew were artifacts. They wanted the necklace? He couldn’t force the sheriff to release it.
Focused on reaching Atlanta, Roark frowned and slowed the van down. “How she know where we at?”
“Ariel is included in the group text. I don’t know how she knows location.”
“Tracking calls,” Roark shouted excitedly. “My brilliant bébé learned to track the phones!” He swung the van off the road into the cracked concrete pad of an old service station.
Dante wanted to physically shove the van down the road, but it would take him longer to climb out than for the bicyclist he assumed was Ariel to cross the road and unlatch the panel door in back.
Ariel flung in her bike and slammed the door. “Not a plane.”
They’d alerted the police about missing children, but not even Sheriff Troy could make the leap of faith from a ghost sayinglimoto some unidentified Gladwell kidnapping Dante’s children for reasons unknown. KK hadn’t been clear on the occupants of the limo.
Evie had, however, persuaded the sheriff to send an Amber alert and notify the police in three states to watch the airports—after Evie’s mother produced a neighbor who’d seen the children being thrown into a limousine.
Dante had a suspicion that Mavis hadseenthat in her crystal ball and twisted a neighbor’s arm. Having learned to trust his family’s weird instincts, he was grateful any way it worked, although he was pretty certain his mother’s family didn’t lie to the law.
Dante couldn’t figure outwhyanyone would want his children, unless it was Lucia and she was alive. He needed to cling to that insane hope to stay sane, which only proved he’d reached the cliff’s edge of hysteria.
“Not a plane, then what, bébé?” Roark asked as the door slammed.
“Marina. Beaufort. Charge on Bella credit card.” Ariel began manipulating the assortment of equipment in the back of the van.
Before Roark could swing back to the road, Dante read another text. “Wait. Pris is right behind us.”
“Texting?” Roark cried. “The way she drives?”
Glad he wasn’t the only one who thought Pris drove like a fiend out of hell, Dante held his breath as a battered dual-cab Ford with a bed cover squealed into the pull-off. Roark muttered a few curses.
Dante’s phone rang. Answering, he heard Pris’s anxious voice on the other end. “Let Ariel navigate for Roark. If the kidnapper tries to escape through Atlanta, Roark can bring him down. But if the limo is heading for Beaufort, I can beat his dinosaur van. Wanna be my navigator?”
He’d seen Pris drive when she was on a tear and knew he was taking his life in his hands to climb in that vehicle. His children were worth the risk. Blessing her for realizing he needed to be in on this, he trusted her as his best chance of reaching the marina first.
He swung open the van door and eased out. “Text the others with the change of plans,” he told Roark while grabbing the cane Evie had given him. “Keep the lines open.”
“Rather you than me,bon ami,” Roark shouted after him.
Dante hauled himself into the pickup cab and buckled in. “Why a marina?”
Pris slammed the engine into gear and peeled off, leaving rubber on the cracked concrete. “Use your imagination.”
He’d rather not. He was a scientist. He wanted facts.
To take his mind off the nightmare of his imagination, he glanced at an incoming group text from Ariel. As instructed, he opened her email. Jax’s sister might not communicate much in person, but she knew how to disseminate information. The email contained lists of all the charges made recently on a Bella credit card. Those charges included first-class tickets to Atlanta fromLondonand a rented limousine.
Vincent. The only Gladwell left in London. But why? Nick had said Vincent had vowed never to return. But who else could it be? Lucia? As far as he was aware, everyone else was here.
