Nate shook his head, and he already looked exhausted when the search had only just begun.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Jackson offered.

  “That’d be great.”

  Jackson led Nate into the kitchen. “I’ve been researching the Gamblin brothers online. I haven’t found much of anything that I didn’t already know.”

  Jackson’s phone rang, and seeing Eryn was calling, he quickly answered.

  “Tell me you and the team are on your way,” he said.

  “Vince’s chopper just landed.”

  “Then I’ll see you soon.”

  “Yeah, but I wanted to tell you we just received information on that shoeprint Riley cast outside Maggie’s house.”

  “And?”

  “And the shoe’s not from a traditional manufacturer. It’s a 3-D custom-printed shoe.”

  “Say what? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “The company’s a web-based business. Customers use a smart phone app to send a digital photo of their foot. This allows the company to see about five thousand data points on an individual’s foot. They then produce a shoe within a couple of millimeters of the person’s foot size.”

  “Do you think if we send this casting to them, they could ID the buyer?” he asked, though he knew it would take a full day before they would receive the cast, and he couldn’t believe he wouldn’t have brought Maggie home by then.

  “Better yet, the lab took precise high-resolution 3-D images of the print, and I’m forwarding those shots to you along with the company contact information. If you can get them to agree to work with you without a warrant, you could forward the photos, and they might be able to provide the customer’s name.”

  “The sheriff is here, and he could get the owner to work with us.”

  “Good. I’m sending the files and will be boarding the chopper after I do.”

  “Roger that.” Jackson ended the call and told Nate about the shoeprint.

  “I’ll call them the minute you receive the information. If they won’t play ball, I can have a warrant in an hour or so.”

  Jackson’s phone dinged, and he quickly opened the text from Eryn with a shaking finger. He hated the way his nerves were impacting his body, but at least now they were nerves of excitement over the lead and not solely the fear of losing Maggie.

  20

  A bus. Maggie’s abductor planned to flee in a big old Greyhound bus. The last vehicle she expected a criminal who wanted to stay under the radar to use, but he said he had hoped to take her without anyone seeing him and no one would have even known what had become of her, much less look for a vehicle of any sort.

  She parked the Camry as he directed. The big silver bus with a faded Greyhound on the side sat on a narrow drive deep in the woods. It explained the keychain she found next to Andre’s body. This creep had dropped it.

  She couldn’t help but shake her head over his choice of vehicle. “Why a bus?”

  “Why not?” He grabbed the keys from the ignition.

  He opened his door, the infernal gun still pointed at her. “I’m going to back out slowly, and you’re going to crawl over here and get out, too. If you try anything—and I mean anything—I don’t need you anymore, and I won’t hesitate to shoot.”

  “If you don’t need me, then why not do it now?” she asked and hoped she wasn’t encouraging him to kill her sooner rather than later.

  “I may not need you, but I still want to carry out my plan.” He inched backward and settled his feet on the ground, keeping the gun aimed at her.

  She’d known on the drive that he wouldn’t kill her while she was behind the wheel, but now? Now his life didn’t depend on hers as he just confirmed, and he was free to shoot at any time.

  Fear rushed through her veins feeling like cold water, and she couldn’t move.

  “Get out now or I shoot. You have to the count of five.” His angry eyes locked on hers. “One. Two.”

  “Stop. I’m coming.” She climbed over the middle hump, making sure to keep her focus on him and not make any unnecessary movements. The moment she stood on the ground littered with pine needles, his arm went around her neck, and he planted the gun on her temple again. He pushed her up against the bus and unlocked the door.

  “Inside—now.” He gave her a shove toward the door, the gun not leaving her head.

  Was he going to kill her in this bus?

  She feared so, but there was no choice but to climb up the steps. She shot a look down what would’ve once been an aisle lined with seats, but he converted the bus into a home on wheels.

  On the right was a sofa in a hideous blue floral pattern, and the same fabric served as curtains for the many bus windows. To her left an orange swivel chair and tiny table butted up to a small galley kitchen and a bedroom filled the back wall. The whole place gave off a retro sixties vibe—when she suspected he’d converted it.

  “In the chair.” He gave her a push down the aisle

  She dropped onto the worn vinyl chair.

  “Hands behind the chair.”

  She leaned back and extended her arms.

  He reached back to the counter holding a pile of thick zip ties. The gun lifted from her head. She seized the moment and shot to her feet. He spun and cracked the gun across her skull.

  Pain razored into her head. Stars danced in front of her eyes. She blinked hard and dropped to the chair before she hit the ground.

  He poked the gun into her forehead and got in her face, his breath stale and nauseating. “Try that again, and I’ll shoot you in the back as you run.”

  He jammed the gun harder. “You hear me?”

  “Yes,” she got the word out, though she felt like she might throw up.

  He backed up and grabbed a zip tie, the gun never leaving her head. “Hands behind your back.”

  She followed his direction, and he moved behind her. She braced herself for another poke of the gun to her head, but it didn’t happen. He fastened one end of a zip tie around her wrist, cinching it so tight that she cried out.

  “I might’ve been nicer to you if you didn’t try to run.” He secured her other wrist and came around front again. He glared at her, then backed away, the gun pointed in her direction. He stooped to retrieve a thick rope from the sofa and moved behind her again.

  The rope came around her chest, and he jerked it tight. She could still breathe, but it was a struggle. He wound it around her several times and tied it off.

  “Okay,” he said as he stepped back to survey his work. “Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  She fought through the pain in her head and the rope constricting her body to find the courage to stay alert. “Where are we going?”

  “Where?” he asked, a sick smile sliding across his face. “A place where your body will never be found.”

  Nate hung up from his call to the shoe company and faced Jackson. “Guy’s name is Tyson Fenwick.”

  Jackson was overjoyed to finally have the identity of the jerk who’d taken Maggie six hours ago. “I know that name. He was mentioned in the stories I just read. Ozzie raped his sister.”

  Nate nodded. “I have his address. It’s a trailer park near Medford.”

  Perfect. “The team should have boots on the ground in a few minutes. Give me the address, and I’ll send them over there to do recon while we head that way.”

  “I’ll share it on one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “They can only do recon and can’t take the law into their own hands unless her life is in imminent danger.”

  Jackson nodded. “I’m good with that. We’ll likely be there before they finish recon anyway.”

  Nate rattled off an address. Jackson dialed Gage and quickly relayed the information along with Nate’s instructions.

  “We’re just touching down now,” Gage said. “We’ll need to load the necessary equipment in our vehicle first. I estimate our ETA for that address at eight minutes.”

  “Roger that. I’m on my way.” Jackson grabbed his pack from the sofa and headed for the door. He heard Nate’s footsteps right behind him.

  On the porch, he stopped to lock the door, thankful that Daria had gone and he wasn’t leaving her alone. Nate rushed past Jackson and jogged down the stairs to climb into his county vehicle.

  Jackson jumped into the passenger seat. He would rather take control and drive, but Nate could run lights and siren and get them to the trailer park faster.

  Nate soon had them racing down the road with the lights and siren running just as Jackson hoped. They’d only traveled about ten miles when Jackson’s phone rang.

  “It’s Gage,” he told Nate and answered.

  “Bus is gone,” Gage said.

  “Say that again.” Jackson plugged his free ear to block the siren’s wail.

  “Fenwick lives in an old converted Greyhound bus, and it’s gone. I talked to the neighbor, and he said Fenwick was taking a short trip and would be back in a day or two.”

  Jackson let the comments filter through his brain for a moment. “You think he ditched the car and has Maggie in this bus?”

  “Would be my guess.”

  “Then we need to get back up in the air. A bus will be easy to spot.”

  “Coop has the helo fixed and ready to go.”

  “Perfect.” Jackson glanced at Nate. “We have a change in plans. We need to get to our chopper.” Jackson shared the location. “What’s our ETA for that?”

  “At this speed, ten minutes.”

  “Can you go any faster?”

  “Sure.” He grinned and punched the gas.

  Jackson turned his attention back to the call. “I’m going up with you. We’ll be at Vince’s place in less than ten minutes.” Jackson hung up before Gage argued that it would be better for them to go up now.

  Jackson couldn’t let that happen. If the team took off and spotted the bus, they wouldn’t come back for him, and he planned to be in on every step of Maggie’s rescue.

  Jackson told Nate about the call, speaking loudly to be heard above the siren.

  Nate reached for his radio. “Dispatch, issue an alert for a ’64 silver bus with blue accents and greyhound emblem on the side.” He added the Oregon plate number and the general location where they believed the bus to be located. “Driver is armed with hostage. Detain, but do not approach. Repeat. Detain, but do not approach.”

  Jackson went straight to his phone to pull up pictures of a 1964 Greyhound bus. He and the team would soon be breaching this vehicle, and he wanted to learn every detail possible to guarantee a safe breach.

  Several pictures of the older bus filled the screen, and he studied each one. Their actions when approaching the vehicle would depend on Fenwick’s location in the bus at the time, but assuming they stopped the bus on the road and he was in the driver’s seat, they could easily take him down before he could harm Maggie.

  Nate finished his call and glanced at Jackson. “Is the bus you’re looking at the right year?”

  Jackson nodded and held it out, allowing Nate to get a better look without having to take his focus from the windshield while they were speeding down the road.

  Jackson lowered his arm. “From what I’ve seen in my search, we’re lucky Fenwick didn’t choose an older model. Those buses have smaller windows and would’ve been too little to breach.”

  Nate raised an eyebrow. “You’re assuming that you’ll be doing the breaching.”

  Jackson eyed Nate. “You think your team would do a better job?”

  “Likely not, but I can’t just turn my back and let you all have free reign in my county. The legal repercussions are too great.”

  “First, you’re assuming the bus is still in your county. They could be far away from here by now.”

  “True. And second?”

  “Second, once we’re up in the air you won’t know what we’re planning to do, and you wouldn’t be culpable for our actions.”

  “I don’t know, man.” He let up on the gas as if he was rethinking things.

  “Let’s just get to the chopper as fast as we can, and then we can hash out the plan.”

  Nate’s brow furrowed, but the car sped up again. They reached Medford, and fortunately for them, the logging company was on the near side of the city. As Nate had said, in less than ten minutes they pulled up to the helo that was fired up and waiting.

  Jackson was out of the vehicle before Nate came to a complete stop. Jackson raced to Gage who stood talking to Alex out of rotor range.

  Nate moved quickly, too, impressing Jackson that he joined them before Jackson could utter a word to Gage. Jackson introduced him to Gage.

  “I’m going with you,” Nate demanded.

  Gage eyed him.

  “Look,” Nate said. “We can either stand here arguing or we can get moving.”

  Gage shot Jackson a questioning look.

  Jackson eyed Nate. “We’re a well-oiled machine, and we can’t mess this up by having a stranger interfere.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll hang back, but if you do find Fenwick in my county and put down, you might need ground transportation to get to him, and I can arrange that.”

  “Then we’re a go.” Jackson bent forward and jogged to the helo. He took a seat by the door. So what if the others had to climb over him to take their seats. He would be the first one out of the helo when they located that bus, and he would do whatever he needed to do to make that happen.

  Maggie’s abductor nodded off. The bus hit the gravel on the side of the road.

  “Wake up!” she cried out before he ran them into the steep ravine abutting the narrow road.

  He jerked the bus back onto the pavement. The rear-end fishtailed, sending her chair tilting. He gained control and got the vehicle pointed down the road.

  She released a long breath. “You need to stay awake.”

  He eyed her in the rearview mirror. “What difference is it to you?”

  She didn’t bother to respond but kept her eyes on him to watch for his head to droop again. With each mile that had passed under the bus, she’d tried to come up with a way to escape his clutches but thought of nothing.

  She only hoped Jackson figured out how to find her. But she feared the only way he could was if he figured out who killed Andre Gamblin. That way Jackson would have this man’s ID and might be able to find the bus.

  They rounded a bend, and the bus slowed. He eased it onto a wayside stop where she suspected logging trucks traveled. She glanced out the window. Large trees and plenty of scrub filled the area, so they were well hidden. He parked, killed the engine, and swiveled to the side to rest his head against the window behind him.

  “Why are we stopping?” she asked, but dreaded the answer.

  “Need a quick nap.”

  She wanted him rested so he didn’t crash the bus, but she also wanted answers. She hoped knowing something about him might help her figure out a way to escape. “You never said your name.”

  “I didn’t.” He remained in place, not bothering to look at her.

  “Don’t you want me to know who you are?”

  “Don’t much care.”

  “But you care enough to kill me. You must want me to know why.”

  He shrugged.

  “I deserve that much.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you kill Andre Gamblin?”

  He sat forward and shot her a look. “You were able to identify him, then. Reporters said you couldn’t do it. That his dental records wouldn’t help because he was too burned to use DNA.”

  “I have a friend who’s pioneering DNA extraction from burnt bones.”

  “Shoulda known this would happen. It’s the way the world works.” He shook his head and got up. “A guy like Gamblin gets off with lesser charges on a technicality, and I do one thing wrong and you have some super technology that will convict me.”

  “So you did kill Andre?”

  “Didn’t say I did.”

  “You all but admitted it. You’re going to kill me. Why not tell the truth?”

  “Why not indeed.” He strolled to the kitchen and grabbed a soda from a small refrigerator.

  She stared up at him. “What’s your name?”

  He held his finger over the can as if he planned to open it but was deciding if he should. Or maybe he was pausing to question if he should share his name.

  “C’mon,” she said. “You won’t let me live so why not tell me who you are.”

  He popped the soda top, and it hissed into the air. “Tyson Fenwick.”

  Tyson Fenwick. His name didn’t sound familiar. She was sure she’d never heard it before. “And how do you know Andre?”

  “How? How?” His voice climbed up an octave. “He sat by watching as his brother raped my sister.”

  “Oh…oh, no. That’s horrible.” She looked at him, and his expression hardened even more. “I’m sorry to hear about your sister.”

  He took a long drink of the soda and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Yeah, like that was the worst of it, but it wasn’t. She never recovered and lived in fear every second of every day. Got so bad, she couldn’t leave the house. She even lost her job. Her life was basically over. So one night,” he paused and seemed to struggle to take in enough air. “One night, she took a bottle of sleeping pills.”

  He clenched his jaw, set the soda on the counter, and laid his hands on it, his head down. “I vowed that night when the Gamblin brothers got out of prison, I would make them pay. So I started with Andre. Seized the opportunity to shoot near a dive bar when he was drunk. My buddy was in Florida so I hid Andre’s body in my friend’s shed until I could prepare Andre’s final resting place. Then the fire broke out. Of all the bad luck.”

  “I can understand your anger and grief, but murder? Doesn’t that make you like them?”

  He spun on her. “You don’t know a thing, lady.”

  “You’re right I don’t, and I can even understand your desire to kill these brothers but taking me hostage makes you just like them.”

  “No. It. Doesn’t,” he ground out between his teeth. “I’m not violating you like they did my sister.”

  “You’re going to kill me. Isn’t that even worse?”