Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 97944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
“Didn’t pay much attention, but he was slim. Sandy-blond. Pretty boy.”
“Fuck.”
“What?” Rochel turns to me in question.
“It’s him. I know it. Vince—the motherfucker who stopped Mindy’s assault.”
Rochel jerks his eyes to mine. “How sure are you about this?”
“It’s gotta be him.”
“Fuck. Okay.” He pulls out his phone. “Miller, I need the report for Miss Park’s attack. The statement from the witness. Vince. Run the database for any known address, property, vehicle plates, or a fucking P.O. Box. I want to know what this guy ate for breakfast.” Rochel hangs up and turns to Sheldon. “Better hope your story pans out. Otherwise, I’m adding breaking and entering and theft to your already long rap sheet.”
Rochel walks out of the room, me hot on his heels. I grab my phone and dial Mindy’s number before remembering I never gave her phone back. The knife in my chest twists deeper. I grab the back of my neck. “Fuck. We need to contact the cop who drove her home.” Why didn’t I bother to get his information? “Phillips. He was instructed to bring her straight home.”
Rochel nods and gets on his phone, ordering a dispatch to the officer. He waits on the line until they reach him, and it doesn’t take me hearing the voice on the other end to know something’s not right. “When did you last see her? You’re sure it was a man named Vince?” Fear creeps into my veins. My mind drags me down to a dark place. One that stabs into my chest and carves out the words, “You failed her.” “How long ago was this?”
His attention turns to me as he starts firing out orders. “Put out an APB on them and the girl. Check the security footage from the store. They’re some time ahead of us. They could be anywhere by now.”
He hangs up, and the words travel up my throat like acid. “Does he have her?”
His sullen gaze is a punch to my gut. I fight to breathe. “Yes.”
Clamping my eyes shut, I drag my hands down my face. This can’t fucking be happening. “How? That fucking cop was instructed to take her home.”
“He did. She couldn’t get into her place. She didn’t have a key.”
She didn’t have a key. Because it’s in my bag. Along with her phone.
I twist around and slam my fists against the wall. My chest heaves, fighting down the bile rising in my throat. He can’t have her. He can’t fucking have her. “How?”
“She asked Officer Phillips to take her to a store to get some things and met up with a man she claimed to know on an intimate level. Told the officer she was leaving with him and his sister.”
“His sister?”
“A younger woman. Blonde.”
I almost rip the door off its hinges as I bolt back into the interrogation room. “Who the fuck is Vince working with?”
“No idea. I told you all I know.”
“Stop fucking lying!” I’m on him in seconds, grabbing his filthy shirt. “If something happens to her, this is on you—”
“I told you everything, man! When we met, he didn’t even give me his—”
“Wait, when you met? Where did you meet? A bar? In an alley?”
“I—I don’t know. It was dark. He drove me out into the woods. To—to a barn or something.”
“What kind of barn?”
“Man, I ain’t a barn expert. It was a barn. Smelled like hay and shit.”
“How long were you driving?”
“Forty-five minutes. Maybe a little longer. I wasn’t paying attention—”
Rochel pulls out his phone and punches in a number. “Miller, I need a full layout of any cabin or barn within a fifty-mile-mile radius from the last place Miss Parks was seen. Where are we at with that APB? I don’t care! I wanted information five minutes ago.” He hangs up.
“I told you what I know. I helped you. You gonna let me go—”
I cock my fist back and slam it into Sheldon’s face. He howls as blood squirts from his nose.
“Goddammit,” Rochel hisses.
“I’m gonna make sure you rot in jail, you piece of shit.”
“Tate, enough!” I take one last look at him, then turn on my heel and storm out of the room. My head is spinning. I can’t breathe. If anything happens to her, it isn’t on Sheldon—it’s on me.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I pray it’s her. My lips thin at Theo’s name. Grabbing the back of my neck, I answer. “Theo—”
“What the hell is going on?”
The words taste bitter on my tongue. “It was a setup. We caught the wrong guy—”
“How the fuck do you catch the wrong guy? And why weren’t you with her?” Because I’m a selfish asshole, who put my own insecurities before my love for her and her well-being.
“Where is she? What’s going on?” I hear his hysterical fiancée in the background. “Do they have her? Is she okay?” I imagine she wrestles the phone away from him as her voice comes through the line. “Tate, where is she?”