Expired Cache - Lisa Phillips Page 0,67
What was his deal here?
“Let me go so I can find her, doc.” This man was his mentor. Yet Dean had begun to sour toward the man recently. Or at least feel like things were…off. “Unless you’d care to share something pertinent?”
Jess skidded to a stop beside him. “What was that?”
“Nothing.” Doctor Gilane shook his head. “You’re right. You should find her, because the last thing she needs is a repeat of what happened to her before.”
Ted said, “What do you mean doc?”
The older man blinked. “Nothing. It’s just… being assaulted and all…”
Dean shot him one last look, then sprinted around the house to the back yard. He’d been out here before. The boundary line for the end of Chief Ridgeman’s yard was beyond the trees surrounding his land. In the dark of night, there was nothing but black.
Dean cupped his hands around his mouth. “Ellie!”
Her sister called out to her.
Ted did the same.
Jess said, “Here.”
He grasped what she held out. A flashlight. “Thanks. Spread out?”
“Copy that.”
Being assaulted and all… Dean wanted to be sick. Ellie had been assaulted before? It had to have been years ago when she’d still lived here. Of course she would move away with her mother after a traumatic incident.
He’d seen in her eyes several times an edgy tension of someone unsure of the risk they were under. Wondering if she could trust him. Judging whether or not she was safe.
Beyond this open land there was a side road. Had she been taken? All these attempts to scare her off from finding what her grandfather had buried. And now the perpetrator had switched it up by destroying her grandfather’s belongings.
This was an escalation.
Could be that after the success of the fire, the person who’d thrown that Molotov cocktail was high on adrenaline. He might’ve seen her, and she’d wandered closer to him but farther from her sister. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d grabbed her from the yard and hauled her back into the trees.
Dean shuddered and realized he’d palmed his gun.
He swept the beam of his flashlight across the grass and pine needles, considering the temperature. Weather conditions. She would be okay for a while out here. Exposure came at much lower temperatures and, last time he checked, there was no storm forecasted.
If she got away from whoever had grabbed her, she could sit tight somewhere until he found her.
But she would have to wait there knowing he’d failed her. Dean hadn’t protected her this time the way he’d protected her before—the time he’d been hurt himself. This time it was Jess who had been with her.
Dean ground his teeth together. He called out, “Anything?”
From his left, Jessica replied, “Nothing!”
“Me either.” That was Ted, to his right. “Where is she?”
I don’t know. Was Ellie even still alive? Nausea threatened to overwhelm him, just thinking about it. Kill Ellie, and no one was left with a vested interest and the skillset to find out what her grandfather wanted unearthed.
And yet, in hurting her, this guy would set an entire police department—and one angry former SEAL—on his path. There was no way they would allow whoever did this to get away with it. They would hunt him down like he’d hurt one of their own.
Because that was who Ellie was.
A strong, intelligent woman who had lived through an assault and still had the courage to trust him to take care of her. A Last Chance native. Someone he wanted to get to know better each time he was with her, and when he wasn’t with her, missed her. Wondered what she was doing.
Face it, you’ve got it bad for her.
That was all well and good, as far as realizations went. But if he was going to do anything about it—starting with asking her to forgive him for falling down on his job—then he had to first find her.
Jessica let out a frustrated sound. “Ellie!”
Ted called out, “Ellie, where are you?”
Dean kept going. Scanning the ground, he prayed with everything in him that he would find her. Assaulted. He asked God to protect her from the same trauma she’d already been through—or worse. She’d protected herself all these years. And now, because of him and Jessica, she was vulnerable again.
Dean heard the smallest of sounds. He tucked the flashlight and lifted one arm, making a fist in the air.
Right. They didn’t know what that meant.
“Ellie!”
He yelled, “Quiet for a minute.” Not meaning to come across that harsh, but it was the night that made sound seem