the weapon and shoot her.
She ran. Tanyalee ran as fast as her peep-toe pumps would allow through ruts and mud and clumps of weeds and tree limbs, her breath sawing in and out of her nose and mouth. It wasn’t pretty, but she’d made it across the clearing when she heard another shot fired. She ducked behind a broken-down trailer as the sound pierced the air and echoed through the hills. From there she ran into the trees.
Okay. Now she was panicking. She tried to follow Fern’s instructions, realizing with horror that she couldn’t distinguish between a hickory and a hornbeam, especially with so little light, but she found the path and kept running.
“Psst!”
Tanylee looked up. Thank God! Fern was leaning out of a wooden boxlike structure perched about twenty feet off the ground, and she realized that if Wainright Miller didn’t kill them, this tree house surely would.
“Hurry,” Fern whispered. “He’s got the gun and he’s going from building to building. He thinks you went into one!”
With the help of some nailed-in footholds and Fern’s strong arm, Tanyalee scrambled up the tree and into the wobbly wooden cave. She felt horrified at the idea that Fern had ever had to hide in here—this was no storybook clubhouse.
“Are you hurt?” Tanyalee whispered.
Fern put her finger over her lips and shook her head.
Tanyalee grabbed onto her and they scrambled together into the far corner, away from the entrance, and Tanyalee prayed the thing wouldn’t collapse under their weight.
Only then did she realize that she was violently shaking, from head to toe. Fern was, too.
But they’d made it out of that trunk alive, and Tanyalee was determined to keep them that way.
* * *
How many times had Dante driven this mountain road? Enough to remember each hairpin turn and dip, where the guardrail had collapsed, and where the creek tended to overflow. The familiarity came in handy, since he was going about sixty miles an hour on a stretch where forty-five would be death-defying.
He’d done everything he could do without being on the scene. O’Connor had called in an APB for the pink Coupe de Ville and Tanyalee Newberry, along with an Amber Alert on Fern. He’d told Westley to run Wainright Miller’s financials. Turner was handling the crime scene and had allocated the task force as backup for O’Connor—there should be several cars on the way just minutes behind him. Now all he had to do was get to the Spivey place before Taffy and Fern were killed.
Fuck. He should have put the pieces together a long time ago. He should have seen what was right in front of him!
Dante stopped himself. He needed to keep his mind clean—get to the scene and make an instant decision about what to do. Miller was a cartel middleman, probably a brutal killer, and armed. And Taffy and Fern?
They had been delivering cupcakes to old people.
Dante cut the engine and let the car coast in neutral, rolling down the road trying to get as close to the property as possible. He made it around the last bend, pulled into the weeds, and braked. Dante drew his weapon. Hunkering down, he wove his way through the trees to the rusty old gate that marked the entrance to Spivey’s land.
No voices. No car engines. No snapping twigs or the crunch of leaves. GPS tracking showed the phone was right here—but where were Fern and Tanyalee? He called again. He heard a ring tone but it sounded far away.
Dante swung around, weapon at eye level. There was the Caddy, the trunk popped and crushed cupcakes everywhere. What was with the cupcakes? He quickly scanned the dozen or more ramshackle buildings and rusted-out trailers on the property, and he knew from personal experience that there were a thousand and one places for a man with a gun to hide up here, and nothing but a wide stretch of open space between himself and the Caddy. If he ran he would be begging to get shot. If he hung back and waited for backup, he would lose the advantage of surprise. Waiting could mean the difference between life and death for Tanyalee and Fern.
So where the hell were they?
As silently as possible, Dante stepped from the tree line and moved out into the open. One step. Two. Nothing. No sound or movement anywhere. He decided to go for it.
Dante ran, moving fast but not fast enough due to the rutted ground surface. He was about ten feet from the