* * * * *

Cher

From my place, lying in the backseat of a car, hands zip-tied behind my back, I stared at the profile of Walter Jones, who was driving.

“You’re not ex-FBI, are you?” I whispered.

He said nothing.

“You’re not ex-FBI. You’re one of those sick fucks who gets off on all things Dennis Lowe,” I guessed.

“Shut the fuck up.”

He was.

God.

He was.

And he had me.

“I got a kid. I got a mom. I got a man. I got a life. I’ll repeat, I got a kid,” I told him.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“He’s eleven.”

I rolled to the floor when he suddenly stopped the car, pain shooting up my shoulder and across my hips, both of which hit first.

By the time I twisted my head to look up, he was leaned around the driver’s seat, pointing his gun at me.

“I said,” he whispered, “shut the fuck up.”

I shut the fuck up.

He waited.

Then he turned back around and drove.

* * * * *

Garrett

“She didn’t run.”

Garrett stood in the parking lot of Bobbie’s with Colt, Mike, and Sully, listening to Susie Shepherd talk, Mia standing next to her but not close. Both of them were visibly freaked right the fuck out, but surprisingly, it was Susie who had it together to report what had happened.

He tried to stay locked on Susie, but he couldn’t.

His eyes wandered to the back of the Equinox. The hatch up.

She’d been loading bags when Mia confronted her. Interrupted by his fucking ex-wife, then abducted by an unknown man with a weapon.

Six shopping bags he could count.

Fucking six.

She was excited for Christmas. Christmas with him and her boy.

Pink ornaments.

“It was too late, though. He was right on her. Snuck up the side of her car. She didn’t see him because she was dealing with Mia, and I didn’t see him because I was too. Cher didn’t have time to run,” Susie finished, and Garrett looked back to her.

“Merry,” Mia whispered.

Abe ran up. “BOLO out on the vehicle. They’re settin’ up roadblocks. Everyone’s been called in.” His eyes fell on Merry. “Everyone, dude. Everyone’s out lookin’.”

Even though the man had shot three rounds into the air to make his point, everyone getting that point and scattering, Susie had managed to have it together enough to see what car the man took Cher to. Make, model, but she got no plate.

Now they had a BOLO.

“Merry,” Mia whispered again.

“Describe him again,” Garrett clipped at Susie.

“Dark hair. Receding. Gray in it. Same with his goatee,” she described. “Good clothes. Blue shirt, nice jeans, nice leather jacket. He had some heft, but it worked on him.” She glanced at Colt before she returned her attention to Merry. “You know my type, so just to be helpful, I wouldn’t fuck him. He’s too short, he wasn’t all that, and he’s clearly a psychopath, shooting gunshots in the air in a fucking garden shop parking lot.”