“I’m scared,” she whispered in Wilder’s ear as he hugged her.
He stroked her hair. “I know. It’s okay, though. They have nothing. I’ll call my contact at the department and handle it.” He squeezed her tightly. “Hour tops and you’ll be out of there. Aurora will see to that. She’ll be fit to be tied.”
Thankfully, Aurora had her license to practice in Georgia. Cosette had never dreamed she’d be needing her as a defense attorney. “I’ll be brave because I trust you to come get me and keep me safe.”
“I won’t let you down.”
“Miss LaCroix...”
Cosette followed Detective Chase to his vehicle.
“You can sit in front,” he said. “Courtesy.”
“Thanks.” Her flat tone said it all. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. I didn’t do anything. You’re looking at the wrong person.”
“Says the only one alive.”
It did look bad. As bad as it could. Did something go wrong with Jeffrey’s plan? Could there be someone else behind this? Someone else working with Jeffrey, or alone?
Detective Chase barreled down the long drive from CCM and turned left onto the back road that led to the interstate. Cosette reeled. Jeffrey was dead. But this didn’t feel over.
A popping sound dragged her from her thoughts.
“Hold on! Tire blew.” Detective Chase gripped the wheel. Glass shattered. Blood sprayed across the windshield and Cosette shrieked and instinctively ducked.
Detective Chase stared blankly, his head lolling to the side.
The tire hadn’t blown. It had been shot out. Just like the back window, where a bullet had zinged through and hit Detective Chase.
Cosette grabbed the wheel, her head pounding. She was headed straight for the ditch. Yanking the wheel hard to the right, she tried to swerve away from a tree, but wasn’t on time.
The car smacked into the trunk with brute force and the airbag blew.
And Cosette saw only darkness.
* * *
Wilder rushed into the control room. “Wheezer, I need you to work fast and hard. I want all financials on Jeffrey Levitts.” He was dead, so invading his private accounts was on the table now. “If he’s used a check, debit or credit card, I want to know where. I want to know when and I want to know what he purchased, even if it was a pack of nabs.”
Wheezer wheeled his chair around and went to work clacking keys, no questions asked.
Shepherd stormed into the room with Evan on his heels. “What do you need from us?”
“I don’t know yet.” Wilder pawed his face. “Help me connect the dots. What are we missing?”
Shepherd pulled out the whiteboard and grabbed a dry-erase marker. He wrote Cosette’s name in the middle, then drew lines to each person she was connected to. “Wheezer, see if you can find a connection between any or all of these people. Evan, you take over financials.”
Evan grabbed a chair and took the laptop Wheezer had been using to hack Levitts’s finances. “Jody will be here in twenty minutes.”
Wheezer nodded, typed furiously and swung around to another computer. “Social media is a good place to start. We’ll see if any of them are friends.”
Kariss and Malcolm could have met outside the clinic and become friends or more. Jeffrey could have seen them as two birds, one stone. But how did he end up dead? That didn’t make sense. What weren’t they seeing? Had he and Malcolm fought over the fire in the stable and it had ended badly? Had Malcolm approached him about Kariss and it escalated? Wilder growled and fisted his hand.
“Where is Aurora? I called her twenty minutes ago!” Cosette would be going out of her mind. He had to get her out of this. Rescue her.
“She’s at a doctor’s appointment. Beckett took her. Baby picture today. Chill. It’s not like Cosette’s not safe with the police.” Shepherd tapped the marker in his palm and stared at the board.
“Nothing on any social media sites,” Wheezer muttered. “Not even a friend of a friend. I’m going to see if any of them have friends in New Orleans or Washington. Maybe I can track a connection that way.”
Wilder paced the floor like a caged animal. He grabbed his cell phone and called Teddy. She answered on the first ring.
“Teddy, I need a favor.”
“Of course you do.” She crunched into something.
“That robe and the house shoes at Levitts’s place. Cosette says they’re not hers. Can you find out if he’s dated anyone in the time that Cosette has been gone? That’s odd. What woman would leave her night stuff there and allow him to have photos of him and Cosette all over the place?”
“None. He hasn’t been here since his leave of absence. I’ll stop off at his place of work.”
Wheezer popped up. “Levitts’s social media says he’s in a complicated relationship.”
“Find out with who.”
Nodding, Wheezer went to work hacking. A few minutes later, he pumped his fist in the air. “I’m in.” He scrolled the social media site. “He has a picture with a woman he dated about a year back. I see nothing of Cosette.”
“Find the woman.”
“Found. Lisa Jackson. Her site is set to private. No personal information.”
“Find a number. Yesterday! Maybe she knows something.”
Wilder’s phone rang. Jody. “Where are you?”
“Wilder.” Her voice shook and she cleared her throat. “I’m about two miles from the house. Long story short, I’m standing in neck-high weeds and looking at a dead Detective Chase. Cosette’s been taken.”
NINE
Wilder’s heart beat at lightning speed as he bolted from the office to the SUV. Beckett had finally arrived with Aurora and was hot on his heels. “Wilder, calm down.”
“Calm down?” How was he supposed to remain calm? The woman he loved had been abducted.
There it was. The words to his feelings. He loved her.
And he’d failed her.
She looked to him to keep her safe. To come for her. He had zero control right now. No clue who had her. Where they might be. What might be happening to her.
He should have immediately followed and not waited on Aurora. He’d forgotten she’d had a doctor’s appointment. Who had taken Cosette? Couldn’t be Jeffrey Levitts. He was dead. No doubt the dental records would confirm it.
Beckett jumped in the passenger seat and Wilder peeled out the drive and to the site where Jody waited. He wanted to beat the police to the scene. Jody’s vehicle was up ahead. Wilder slammed on the brakes and parked, then jumped from the SUV and raced to the detective’s car.
Cosette’s purse was on the floorboard. He took it and checked her phone. “It’s password protected.” What would she use? Her birthday. Boom. He was in. He scrolled through her texts. Nothing out of the ordinary. No further weird calls. Just several phone calls from her dad’s lawyer.
“Someone shot out the tire, then fired two more rounds into the back windshield. Not a bad shot. He clearly wasn’t aiming for Cosette,” Jody said.
Of course he wasn’t. He wanted her all to himself. The lipstick heart. The notes about missing her and loving her. Wilder’s stomach clenched. If this man laid one hand on her, so help him... Spots formed in front of him. He was literally seeing red.
“Wilder. I know that look. Relax.” Beckett held eye contact with him. “We’re going to find her. Levelheadedness will get us there. You showed me that.”
Fear coupled with fury broke out in sweat droplets on his forehead and spine. Sirens wailed in the distance.
It had been about an hour since Cosette left the house. Whoever had her was racing with time on their side. They’d vanished.
Wilder’s lungs squeezed. He couldn’t think straight. Images of what might be happening to Cosette consumed him until he shook uncontrollably. She was counting on him. They all were counting
on him.
He blinked and realized he was in the passenger side of the SUV. Beckett was pulling into the circle drive at CCM. Had time slipped? He didn’t even remember talking with the police on the scene, but he must have. He was losing it. Fighting to muster control and strength, he squeezed his eyes shut and prayed.
God, where is she?
“Wilder.”
Wilder ignored Beckett and slunk up the porch steps and into the house, where he fell to his knees. All the pain, every weight he’d been carrying, every secret he’d pushed aside came crashing down on his heart at once, sucking oxygen from him and leaving him cold, weak.
Alone.
His mind kept screaming at him to get up. He was a soldier, a navy SEAL, a leader. A fighter. He was responsible for this team. His family. His clients. Cosette.
But no matter how much he told himself to stand at attention and pull it together, he couldn’t muster the strength to stand—to speak.
Cosette was gone.
Lost.
And it was all his fault. Tears burned the back of his eyes. A fresh cold sweat broke out.
“He can’t breathe,” someone said. The voices were muffled, as if he was miles away and locked in a cavernous prison. “Get a paper bag.”
“Dude, you’re scaring me.”
“Get him some water.”
“Wilder!”
“Should I slap his face?”
“Not if you want to live.”
With his hands on the floor to hold himself up, he gasped for air. His team was seeing this and yet he couldn’t stop it. What if Cosette died? He hadn’t even had the chance to tell her he loved her. So much.
But she didn’t love him. And she’d surely add weak to her list of flaws for him.
He was weak. He couldn’t even get off the floor.
His eyes burned and filled with moisture.
“Wilder, breathe into this. Deep.” Aurora. She was placing a lunch sack over his mouth. Someone rubbed his back. “Keep breathing. We’ll find her. It’s okay.”
Beckett prayed over him, then spoke. “Wilder, I know how you feel. You think it’s your fault. But it’s not.”
He shoved the paper bag away and stood. “Yes, it is. It’s all my fault. Allie. Meghan.”
Beckett’s eyes clouded. “How is Meghan your fault?”
He swallowed the lump in this throat and looked around at his team members. Members he was supposed to be protecting and leading. “I was there,” he whispered. “She was alive, Beck. Barely and for only seconds, but she was.”
Beckett’s face turned pale. “What?”
Wilder told him about that night as he wiped away tears of weakness, regret and grief over his sister. “I couldn’t save her.”
Beckett stood there stunned. Aurora put her arm around him to bring comfort. The one woman who could comfort Wilder was gone.
“Wilder...” Beckett finally spoke. “I need to process this, but what I do know right now is that you can’t blame yourself for not saving her any more than I can. God controls everything. I don’t have answers to why, but I don’t have to have them to know He’s got everything in the palm of His hand.”
Wilder could barely hold his head up. He’d revealed how pitifully weak he was. “I’m sorry. I’ve failed you.” With that he jumped up, hurried to his office and stared at the whiteboard. Cosette could be anywhere.
His entire team followed him, Jody at the helm. “Wilder, you’re our leader,” she said. “Our boss, not our God. We don’t expect you to always know the answers. To always get it right. We’re a family. We stand united. We fall united. Do you understand that?”
He scanned each face and found no judgment.
Had he been playing God? When he couldn’t save Allie or Meghan, he hadn’t questioned God or even been mad at Him. Wilder had questioned and been mad at himself for not controlling the situation and rescuing them. Maybe he’d expected more of himself than he did God. He shook his head, stunned at what his heart conveyed.
“You’re not weak, Wilder, you’re human,” Evan said softly.
But he didn’t see himself that way. Never had. Not since he was three years old and his father laid the responsibility on him for protecting Meghan and then Caley.
“Let’s rally and find our headshrinker,” Shepherd stated.
Wilder couldn’t find words to say and right now it didn’t matter. He had to pull it together. “I should have covered every base. But I trusted Cosette—I do trust her. She said it was Jeffrey and I believe her, but he’s dead and someone took her. Who? Why?” He and Cosette had both made mistakes and it was costing him time and possibly her life.
“It could have been Levitts stalking her, but maybe he needed help from someone. Someone he could manipulate and deceive. Maybe this person found out what he was really up to and killed him.” Jody perched on the edge of Wilder’s desk. “The part that remains unclear is where Malcolm Hayes and Kariss Elroy fit in.”
“I think our initial speculation, that Levitts used Kariss as a pawn with the muffins and the car, is our best option. And he probably did get Malcolm to burn down the stable. Killing them to cover his tracks makes sense. But somehow he was betrayed by another person and was killed, too.” Wilder raked his hands through his hair. Hair he wanted Cosette to touch again. Only she’d made her feelings clear. But that kiss...that was more than heightened emotion. Or was he just feeling what he wished was there?
Jody splayed her hands in front of her. “Whoever it is would have to be equally or more cunning than Levitts. Someone who could fake being pliable to Jeffrey’s whims and plans.”
“It’d have to be someone who would know which patients could be used. Because he had access to them and to Cosette,” Beckett offered.
Wilder gripped the desk. “A colleague. Wheezer, check and see if Levitts had any kind of connection to any of the other doctors or staff at the clinic. Make sure to do a thorough check on Dr. McMillian and Roger Renfrow. Dig deeper than our initial search.” When Cosette had come clean, Wilder had had Wheezer do a background check on the staff and doctors at the clinic. Nothing had raised a red flag. Now it was time to look under rugs and in the back of closets. They should have done this earlier, anyway.
Wheezer grunted. “This will take more than a minute, Wilder.”
A minute more than they had.
“Wilder,” Jody said. “If Cosette had to ask for time off from you, then she’d have to ask her boss at the clinic, too. She works some Fridays and occasionally Saturdays when she’s not here.”
Dr. Irwin McMillian.
Wilder wasn’t waiting on data.
“Wheezer, get his home number and address. Call it.”
Wheezer went to work, then made the call. No answer. “I’ll try the office. What do you want me to do if he answers?”
“Hang up.”
A few seconds later, Wheezer hung up and nodded. “He’s there.” He then called Renfrow’s home. No answer. He might be at the clinic, as well.
Cosette might be, too.
“Evan, Wheezer, stay here and keep looking at financials and possible online connections. If you can find a way to get files from the clinic’s mainframe, do it. Do whatever you have to. I don’t care about legalities.” Only finding Cosette. “Beck and I will go to the clinic. Jody, Shepherd, try Roger’s home. He may not be answering for a reason.”
Twenty minutes later, Wilder and Beckett busted into the clinic. “Offices are down this hall.” They strode to Dr. McMillian’s office. Wilder didn’t bother knocking.
The doctor startled. He was a tall man with a receding hairline and friendly face. If he had Cosette, he’d hidden her somewhere.
“Can I help you?”
“Do you know where Cosette is?” Wilder asked and reached for his sidearm. “I’d think real hard before you lie to me.”
<
br /> McMillian raised his hands and slowly stood. “Let’s all just calm down,” he said, in a tone he would obviously use on a panicked patient. Well, Wilder was panicked, and at this point he’d do whatever necessary to get Cosette back. Every minute they were losing time. “Cosette canceled her client appointments due to a personal issue. Which you know. I recognize you, Mr. Flynn.”
“Has she told you the personal issue?” Beckett asked.
McMillian remained stoic. “No, but I’m not her personal therapist or a confidant.”
“Short story. Someone is stalking her and she was abducted over an hour ago.”
The doc’s eyes widened. “What can I do to help?”
Wilder wasn’t sold on his innocence just yet. “You’re the only one who would know about her visiting New Orleans each Mother’s Day. Whoever took her has to know this, too.” Now that he thought about it, the dog being here and the letter were mighty convenient. “Who was working on the eighth?” Someone had to have access to her office in order to get the letter inside.
McMillian fired up his computer. “Everyone was.”
Roger. He had the puppy. He was the first to arrive. He knew Cosette took off work every Mother’s Day weekend. Right now, Wilder couldn’t connect him to Levitts or his death, but Wilder hadn’t liked him from the start and it wasn’t just because he wore a bow tie. “Renfrow. He here today at all?”
“Roger? No, actually. He called in sick for the rest of the week.”
That was way too convenient for Wilder’s liking. He called Jody. “ETA on Renfrow’s house now.”
“We’re stuck on the interstate. Car accident.”
Wilder growled and hung up, then called Wheezer. “Alternate route to Renfrow’s from the clinic. Now.”
Wheezer clacked keys and rattled off directions. Wilder hung up and addressed Dr. McMillian. “If I find out you’re lying to me about anything, I will come back. What I do will be slow. Painful. And you will regret it for eternity.”
“You don’t have to use violent threats, Mr. Flynn. I’m not involved, and I want to help. But I don’t believe Roger has abducted Cosette. You should consider diplomacy with him.”
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