Mr. and Mrs. Loy were standing in the pasture surveying the damage. Mrs. Loy was huddled up in an oversize flannel jacket and smoking a small cigar. Mr. Loy came right at us.
“Can you believe this? Some son of a bitch smashed through the fence and then drove back out again!”
“Grab the flashlight in the glove box,” I told Lou.
“Naomi!” I called the second my feet hit the ground. The frosty grass crunched under my boots.
There was no answer.
Lou flashed the light into the pasture, and we followed the tracks. “Looks like they stopped here before driving back out,” he said.
“Must have been one drunk idiot,”
Something caught my eye in the grass, and I bent to pick it up. It was a cellphone with sparkly daisies on the case.
A chill stopped my heart and had me fighting for breath.
“Is that hers?” Lou asked.
“Yeah.”
“Goddammit.”
“What’s that? Is that evidence?” Mr. Loy demanded.
* * *
I drove backto Honky Tonk in a fog. Lou was talking, but I wasn’t listening. I was too busy replaying my last conversation with Naomi. I hadn’t wanted to lose her, so I’d pushed her away and lost her anyway.
She was right. This was worse. So much fucking worse.
Someone had coordinated this. Someone had conspired to take them both away from me. And I was going to make them fucking pay.
I pulled up to the front door of the bar, and half the damn town poured out.
“Where is she?”
“You find her?”
“Does he look like he found her, Elmer, you idiot?”
“He looks pretty pissed off.”
Ignoring the crowd and the questions, I pushed inside and found half the Knockemout PD surrounded by the other half of town. The specials board had been erased replaced with a hand-drawn map of Knockemout cut into quadrants.
Fi, Max, and Silver charged me, and Nash looked up.
“You didn’t find them,” Fi said.
I shook my head.
A shrill whistle cut through the noise, and everyone shut up.
“Thanks, Luce,” Nash said to Lucian, who immediately returned to whatever phone call he was making. “As I was saying, we’ve got an APB out on Naomi Witt, Waylay Witt, a gray sedan, and a black, newer model Chevy Tahoe. We’re starting the search in town and expanding outward.”
Amanda, dragging Liza J with her, hurried over to Lou, who pulled her into his side. “We’ll find ’em,” he promised. Then he wrapped his free arm around my grandmother.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t move from the spot. I thought I’d been afraid before. Afraid of turning into my father. Of crumbling after a loss. But this fear was worse. I hadn’t told her I fucking loved her. I hadn’t told either one of them. And someone had taken them from me. I hadn’t crumbled. It was worse. I hadn’t had the goddamn guts to love someone enough to crumble.
I shoved my hands through my hair and kept them there as the reality of what I’d walked away from set in.
I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder. “Keep it together,” Lucian said. “We’ll find them.”
“How? How the fuck will we find them? We know jack shit.”
“We’ve got a plate number on a 2002 gray Ford Taurus that was reported stolen from Lawlerville an hour ago,” Lucian said.
“We don’t have plate numbers yet,” Nash said, pausing to glance down at his phone. “Scratch that. 2002 gray Ford Taurus with a primer gray trunk lid.” He read off a license plate number.
“Lawlerville is half an hour from here,” I said, running the calculations in my head. It was the edge of a suburb of D.C.
“You’d have to be pretty stupid to steal a car and then drive it back to the scene of the crime,” Lucian pointed out.
“If Tina is involved with this, stupid is a factor.”
The front door opened, and Sloane and Lina rushed in. Sloane looked breathless and scared. Lina looked scary.
“What can I do?” Sloane asked.
“Whose ass do you want me to kick?” Lina demanded.
I needed to move. I needed to get out of here and find my girls, rip apart every single person who played a role in taking them, and then spend the rest of my life begging for Naomi’s forgiveness.
“Give us a moment, ladies,” Lucian said and steered me back outside. “There’s more.”
“What more?”
“I have a name.”
I grabbed him by the lapels of his wool coat. “Give me the name,” I growled.
Lucian’s hands closed over mine. “It’s not going to help like you think it will.”
“Start talking before I start punching.”
“Duncan Hugo.”
I released him. “Hugo as in the Hugo crime family?”
Anthony Hugo was a crime lord who operated out of both D.C. and Baltimore. Drugs. Prostitution. Weapons. Enforcement. Political blackmail. You name it, it had his filthy fingerprints on it.
“Duncan is the son. And a bit of a fuck-up. It was his chop shop where the car used in Nash’s shooting was found. I didn’t think it was a coincidence, but I wanted more information to corroborate before I brought it to you and Nash.”
“How long have you known?” I demanded, my hands balling into fists.
“Not long enough for you to waste time and energy on me tonight.”
“Goddammit, Luce.”
“Rumor has it he had a nasty and recent split from his father. Seems Duncan wants to strike out on his own. Rumors also mention a woman he’s been working with as well as fucking for the past few months.”
It clicked into place as neatly as the last piece of a puzzle. Tina Fucking Witt.
“Where is he?”
Lucian tucked his hands into his pockets, his expression giving nothing away. “That’s the problem. Since he had his falling out with his father, no one seems to know his whereabouts.”
“Or they’re not telling you.”
“Sooner or later, everyone tells me everything,” he said.
I didn’t have time to worry about how dark that sounded. “You tell Nash any of this?” I asked, digging my keys out of my pocket.
“Just the plate number. Could be a coincidence.”
“It’s not.”
The door opened behind me, and Sloane stepped out.
“Are you going to look for them?” she asked.
I nodded then turned to Lucian. “I’ll start in Lawlersville and work my way toward D.C.”
“Hold on,” he said.
“I’m coming with you,” Sloane announced.
Lucian stepped in front of her. “You’re staying here.”
“She’s my friend, and Waylay is practically a second niece.”
“You’re staying here.”