A pickup truck parked next to her, and Grant Barrett got out. He walked to the side of her vehicle. Stella stepped out of her car. Grant didn’t seem to notice the rain soaking his cargo shorts and T-shirt. Within seconds water plastered his short, blond hair to his head. His only response was to blink.

“A backup unit is on the way.” Stella wiped water from her forehead. “He was driving my grandfather’s car.” Stella turned toward her grandfather’s vehicle.

She took a pair of gloves from her pocket and put them on before opening the Lincoln’s door. Mac’s cell phone sat on the console. She grabbed the phone and slid it into her pocket under her jacket.

Grant was headed toward the bridge support. Stella ran to catch up. She grabbed his arm. “Be careful where you step. This could be a crime scene.”

Please let me be wrong.

He nodded grimly, stopping as soon as they were under the protection of the stone arch. The dirt was disturbed.

“Here are footprints.” Grant crouched and pointed to the ground. “Stella . . .”

She bent low. Scattered in the dirt were tiny colored discs the size of confetti. “Taser confetti.”

Her vision fuzzed as the implication settled in. “He was lured here with a message from Gianna’s phone. Then someone tased him.”

Grant’s face went hard. “And took him.”

She nodded, emptiness sliding through her body as if her blood was thinned with anesthetic.

The killer had Mac.

The best man she’d ever known. The man who made her heart thump and her pulse thicken with one blink of his clear blue eyes. The man who would kill or die for her.

“I have to call this in. We can trace the serial numbers on the Taser confetti.”

As she ran for the car, she saw another equally frightening sight on the muddy edges of the dried earth under the bridge: wheelbarrow tracks.

He had to work quickly. Succinylcholine was a fast-acting paralytic commonly used for emergency intubation. The injection would only last fifteen minutes, and he most definitely did not want Mac Barrett able to fight back.

Which was why he’d used the Taser.

He wouldn’t stand a chance if the fight was fair. Cheating was his only option.

Getting a full-grown man in and out of the trunk proved challenging, and one of the reasons he’d limited his subjects to women until this point.

But this would be worth the effort.

Mac was The One.

Not a victim, but a deeply flawed hero.