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“You’re not tracing my call this time, I imagine. I made sure, even if you were in a position where you could.”

“We found your doppelgänger.”

I heard the smile in his voice and curled my free hand into a fist. “Of course you did. You think that you found my first number or got a lock on me without me knowing? I’m fucking untouchable and you know it. And now you know what happens when you try to steal from me. Did you learn the lesson?”

“Where is she?” I barely recognized my voice.

A soft laugh. “It’s already too late, Lucas. She’s been laid to rest. Like I promised she would be.”

Through the phone I heard a sound. What was that?

Bells. There were only a couple of churches in Garnet Bend, and only one had bells. And it was a church with its own graveyard.

“But maybe you could get to me in time to save her. Part of me wants to see you try.”

I ended the call. She was alive, and I knew where Nathan was. That was enough.

“The Baptist church in town,” I said. “That’s where he is.”

Jude turned the truck around without question. I dialed Daniel to tell him where to go next. For the first time in hours, I had something to hold on to.

I was going to save her.

Chapter 29

Lucas

While Jude raced Lena to the hospital, Daniel and Harlan met me at the entrance to the church’s graveyard and we strode through the gate.

He wasn’t trying to hide. He was relaxing against the wall of the church, perfectly at ease. He could be smoking a cigarette and not facing down three pissed ex-SEALs.

Daniel had called Charlie on the way, and the police would be here in minutes. We would have him. Finally.

The face matched the voice. Of course I’d seen pictures, but it was always different meeting someone in person and feeling their energy. I could see his charming side that could make people love him. I didn’t doubt it at all.

“Where is she, Nathan?”

“I said I wanted to see you try. Where would the fun be if I told you?”

Steel entered my spine. Now that I was here and I had him, this was familiar. He wasn’t some invisible enemy with infinite reach. No longer a ghost. He was only a man, and I could put my hands on him. “I’ll make sure you go away forever. For murder. We already have one body.”

I lied about Lena. It was an instinct, and neither Daniel nor Harlan contradicted me.

The prick just smiled. “You know? Money can get you almost anything you want.”

He pulled an envelope out of his back pocket and held it out to me. My friends stiffened. But I took the envelope. Nathan was playing a game. He wasn’t going to kill me with powder in an envelope.

Inside were documents—not originals. I glanced through them. A death certificate with Ev’s name on it. Rehab admission papers for Lena. And the last document, a marriage license with Evelyn’s scrawled signature.

“Money can get you documents that prove someone was terminally ill. It can provide a will that shows your wife wanted to be buried in Montana. It can provide a history of drug abuse and an easy overdose for the naïve girl with the shitty car.” He smirked at me. “No one is going to mourn a fucking drug addict, and no one is going to convict me for burying my wife in the manner she wanted.”

I moved before I was conscious of doing so, and I had him up against the wall, my arm across his throat. Harlan and Daniel shouted at me, but I wasn’t listening to them.

“Tell me where she is,” I said, my voice as low and sharp as a blade. “Right now.”

Nathan’s grin was that of a snake. A snake that knew it had already won. “You’ll never find her in time,” he whispered.

Daniel stepped up beside me and took over the hold on Nathan. “I have him. Check the graveyard.”