Page 85 of Love Bound

I step on the gas. In two miles I'd hit a dead zone.

"Explain."

"What? Oh. Well, I was going to go over there in like half an hour and then she sends me this long text about how the surgery is complicated and she won’t be able to meet with me. That's how she put it, 'meet with you,' until two o'clock, but that's when she opens for the afternoon patients."

"Weird, how?" I edge toward eighty now, convinced something's very, very wrong.

"I don’t know. It’s just—"

I hear my own bark into the phone: "Look at the text again and tell me why it's not her."

There's silence on the line for a second and I can practically hear Devon shift gears. "Okay. Here it is." She pauses again, and I'm about to hit that dead zone. "She spells everything out. You know Y-O-U for you, not a U. This is all in Textlish. Text-talk. Shorthand."

The connection drops.

I turn off onto Main Street and see smoke pouring up into the sky and my mind goes into overdrive. All Miller's victims either drowned or crashed. All of them. A bathtub, a lake, a corn silo, a brook, and a pool.

My pool.

The fire is a diversion.

He has her.

I press nine-one-one over and over and get nothing. There's too much going on, overloading a system with little bandwidth. Then the radio crackles on the dash. It's the helicopter line.

As I pass Molly's place, rotary blades chop air and I can see the H155 from here settling in the middle of the road.

Bryce leaps from the 'copter while the blades slow. He's already cut the engine. I shoot gravel in the driveway.

"Nic's inside," he yells.

When I dive into the clinic, Nic's standing there taking in what I see as well.

"He drugged her," I say, looking at the mask.

Nic checks the tank. "It’s almost empty."

My heart slams hard against my chest. "He's out on the water with her. On the Savvy-T."

"No. It’s dry docked for repairs in Portsmouth."

Dry docked. All that asshole would need is a good alibi and he was never here.

I glance out the window, but all I can see is the barn. And then just to the left, in that slip of a sea view between the barn and house, I see her red dinghy out on the water—with two people in it.

"Fuck." My mind is screaming something, and I look around. Something is here. Something is here that I need. The BVM. She might need it.

Bryce, an ex-medic, grabs it.

In seconds we've scrambled down to the pier. Nic's scored a black motorboat with keys dangling from the ignition. After he revs the motor, he tosses me binoculars, while expertly steering the boat toward the open water. Bryce is next to me, checking the cylinder of his handgun while trying to see what's going on.

I'm standing, braced, binoculars pressed to my face, my eyes finding them instantly.

Claire's in the bottom of the dinghy, eyes open, unmoving and he's touching her neck, talking to her. I want to fucking kill him. He's touching her hair, then he smells her and stands, picking her up. For whatever reason, with the combination of the direction of the breeze, the sound of the waves, his idling motor, and the heady assurance of arrogance, he doesn’t notice our approach.

No, no, no!

I scream inside as he holds her over the water. She's dead already, I'm sure of it.