It was Dean’s turn to look uncomfortable. He shifted in his position. “We knew this case would be huge as soon as we found out she’d been with Love International. One of the first things we did was investigate any former complaints or charges against them, and we didn’t have to look far. Cases popped up everywhere, especially the one of a twenty-four-year-old girl named Willow. Her parents always suspected Love International had something to do with her disappearance, and they’d never given up looking for her. They were extremely helpful with our investigation.” He cleared his throat. Cleared it again. “The good thing about guys like Ray is that they think they’re smarter than everybody else and above the law, so their conversations were gold mines of information, because they never expected anyone to be listening. It wasn’t long before we were connecting dots everywhere. Unfortunately, the dots led to three bodies in Oregon that our teams found in unmarked graves.”

Scott narrowed his eyes to slits. “You’re still not answering my question. Why let them kidnap Abbi?”

“We needed to get them on kidnapping charges so that we had something that would stick. We hope one of them flips on the other, but we needed to hold them long enough to build our case against them. And this case is going to be huge. Believe me, Scott, so many families are going to get answers once this is all said and done.”

Scott leaped up from his chair and shook his finger at Dean. “You used her as bait! That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? How could you?”

Dean lifted his hands in surrender. “Please, Scott. I’m sorry, but just listen to me. Each step of the way was carefully monitored, and, believe me, Scott, I wouldn’t have done it if there was any other way.”

“Carefully monitored?” Scott shrieked. “I just heard on the news before Meredith got here that someone died at the scene.”

I jumped up next to him. “What?” I wanted to hit Dean too.

“Calm down, please. Calm down. We do things like this all the time. It’s what we’re trained to do.”

I didn’t care how many times he’d done it. This was Abbi we were talking about.

“Ray’s partner, Will, fired at the police officers, and they had no choice but to use deadly force to protect themselves,” Dean said, like that excused his behavior.

“And if he would’ve chosen to shoot Abbi instead?” Scott asked what I was thinking.

Dean didn’t have a response. I’d never seen him speechless before. I couldn’t help but wonder what Abbi knew about all of this. “Can we see Abbi now?” I asked.