“What pawnshop?” Nick Gallagher asks as he tears out of the Saint Ambrose parking lot. “And where am I going?”
“I knew it. I knew he was Dexter Robbins,” Brynn half moans, pulling out her phone. “This is all my fault.”
“What’s your fault?” Nick asks. “And who’s Dexter?”
“Oh God,” Brynn moans, clutching his arm. “Just drive, okay?” Despite everything, the energy between them seems okay, so I’m guessing Nick had a good explanation for why he was in the woods with Mr. Larkin. But that’s hardly our biggest problem right now, so I don’t ask. The last thing we need is a distracted Nick. We have to find Ellie, and fast, before she gets hurt and I spend the rest of my life hating myself for not getting to her in time.
I shouldn’t have stopped in my tracks, not even for a minute, when I realized the guy from Last Chance Pawnshop was standing in our gymnasium. And once he started following Ellie, I should’ve shoved every dancing classmate between me and her with enough force to knock them out of my way. Because by the time I made it outside, Pawnshop Guy was
already shoving her into his truck. All I could do was run after them, way too late, and then run back toward school for help. Before I got there, I spotted Brynn in Nick’s car.
“She has her Snapchat location on,” Brynn says breathlessly. “It looks like they’re on Binney Street.”
“What the hell is happening?” Nick demands. “Is Ellie okay?”
Brynn ignores him and twists in her seat to look at me, her face a picture of misery. “It’s my fault,” she says again. “I never should have gone there. He must—he must have seen my license plate and tracked us down. Oh my God.” She puts a hand over her mouth. “Wait a minute. We saw him in the Saint Ambrose parking lot tonight, didn’t we? The truck that cut Mason off. And I didn’t even realize…But why would he take Ellie?”
“What. Is. Happening?” Nick bites out. He’s driving way too fast for the back roads of Sturgis, but there are barely any other cars on the street.
Brynn turns to face front again. “Dexter Robbins is Mr. Larkin’s father,” she says. “He’s also an abusive asshole, and I don’t think…” Her voice breaks a little. “I don’t think he knew his son was dead until… recently.”
“Will’s father?” Nick asks blankly. “I don’t understand.”
“Just keep—” Brynn starts, but then we’re on Binney Street and I catch sight of taillights in front of us, framing a license plate that starts with a six. That’s all I remember from the truck that sped past me, and I lean forward between the seats.
“That’s them,” I say as the lines of the truck come into focus.
“Oh, thank God,” Brynn cries out. Ellie’s head is visible in the passenger seat, as close to the window—and as far from Dexter—as she can possibly get.
“Now what?” Nick asks, slowing to keep a couple of car lengths’ distance between him and the red pickup. “Is Ellie in danger? What does this guy want?”
“I don’t know,” Brynn says, sounding near tears. “Make them stop.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Nick asks. “I can’t—I don’t want to turn this guy reckless. Not with Ellie in the car.”
“I’m calling the police,” I say, pulling out my phone. Which I probably should have done in the first place, except I wasn’t thinking anywhere close to clearly.
“Good idea,” Nick says.
“Don’t lose them,” Brynn urges her uncle as I dial 911.
“He’s speeding up,” Nick says, following the pickup into a sharp turn. “I think he caught sight of me.”
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” a voice says in my ear.
“Yeah, there’s a—someone took my friend,” I say. “In their car. Truck. We’re following them, and—” Nick goes careening around a corner after Dexter, and I almost drop my phone.
“Are you in a moving vehicle right now?” the voice asks.
“Yeah,” I say, watching the taillights weave in front of us. I’m not sure where we are. We can’t be all that far from Saint Ambrose, but the road is dark and the streetlights few and far between. I can’t see anything except masses of trees on either side of us. “We’re in Sturgis, I think, or maybe Stafford, but—”
“Sir, I need to ask you to pull to the side of the road to continue this conversation,” the operator says.
“I’m not driving,” I say. “We’re following a red Ford pickup truck. The license plate is six three seven oh—”
We hit a massive pothole, and this time my phone does go flying. “Damn it,” I hiss, leaning forward to scramble for it.
“This isn’t safe,” Nick says. “He’s going too fast, and these roads are dark. We need to stop and talk to the operator.”
“No!” Brynn says urgently as I claw at the floor, searching for my phone. I can’t reach far enough; I’m going to have to take off my seat belt. “We can’t lose sight of her. Please, Uncle Nick. Please don’t let him get away. You can’t—”
Then she screams.
There’s a screech of brakes, and Nick violently yanks the wheel to one side. I’m flung hard against my seat belt as the car spins, then slams so hard
into something that every part of me rattles. Brynn is still screaming, and I think I must be too, or else Nick is, but—no.
He’s not making a sound.
The car has stopped, its engine running. Headlights illuminate the gnarled bark of the tree we rammed into, visible through a still-intact windshield. No airbags inflated, so either Nick’s car is so ancient that it doesn’t have them, or we didn’t crash hard enough to trigger them. Which seems impossible, but then again…I’m all in one piece. When I lean forward to check on Brynn, it looks like she is too. But Nick…
Nick Gallagher is slumped over the steering wheel, motionless.
“Brynn,” I say, undoing my seat belt with shaking hands. “You guys okay?”
“I am,” she says in a small voice. “But I don’t know about…” She twists to look at me, eyes roving worriedly across my face before she turns to her uncle and puts a tentative hand on his arm. “Uncle Nick? Are you all right?”
He makes a slight groaning noise but doesn’t move. Still, relief washes through me and I start searching for my phone again. “I had 9-1-1 on the line. Let me just—”
“Tripp,” Brynn says in the same small voice. “Look.”
