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“Let me run it right now,” Matrix says.

“He’s doing the search,” I tell Julia.

When Matrix comes back on the line, he’s excited. “I found the device, but it’s not on right now. It’s dead, or she turned it off. However, I was able to triangulate the last place it pinged, and the location is weird as hell. It’s in the middle of nowhere in the mountains.”

“Send the coordinates to my phone.”

“Done. Also, I sent Talon and Reaper the text. They’ll meet you at the location.”

“Good. Stay by the computer in case we need more help.”

“Sure, pres.”

I hang up. Julia overheard everything, so we get back on the bike and follow the GPS coordinates. The location is even more remote than Claudine’s house. We’re high up in the mountains when the road ends. I park and hold out my phone.

“We’re still several hundred feet from the triangulation point. We’ll wait for Talon and Reaper before going in.” I glance at the forest. Pine trees tower over us, shading us from the noon sunlight. Shadows stretch into the bushes, obscuring the view.

“It’s beautiful, but why would she be all the way up here?” Julia asks. “I don’t see any hiking trails or camping spots.”

This would be the perfect dumping ground, but I don’t want to tell her my suspicions. She probably suspects the same thing anyway.

The rumble of motorcycles is faint at first but grows louder as the guys approach. Talon and Reaper park in line with my bike. They get off and join us.

“Let’s start at the triangulation spot and move out from there,” I say.

“I’ll see if I can get some help,” Talon says, looking to the skies. He has an affinity for animals. He’s asked them for help in the past, and they’ve come through for us. Talon’s skills helped us escape our hellish prison, and for that, I will be forever grateful to him.

We use a special GPS system Matrix sent with Talon to find the central point. From there, we decide to fan out and search for Bonnie’s watch. Hopefully, we’ll find her alive and well, but I doubt it.

Julia stays by my side, helping me search. I use the compass app on my phone to head west. We climb over fallen logs and search through the underbrush. We haven’t found anything so far, but I’m not stopping until I’ve searched every inch of this forest. The kid needs his mom. It’s up to us to find her.

A hawk screeches overhead. I hear an answering call and know Talon has found us an ally. I get a text from him ten minutes later, asking us to meet him at the starting location.

“He found something,” I tell Julia. “Come on.”

When we rejoin the others, the look on Talon and Reaper’s faces says it all. “She’s dead.”

“There’s a shallow grave about twenty yards south of here,” Talon says.

“It smells like death,” Reaper adds.

“Did you touch anything?” I ask.

“No,” Talon says, while Reaper shakes his head.

“Good. We need to call it in. Not the local cops, though. If it’s Bonnie, I’m sure the sheriff has something to do with this.”

“It’s her,” Reaper says.

“How do you know?” Julia asks.

“She told me.”

“But she’s …” Julia’s voice trails off. She steps closer to me, so I put a reassuring arm around her waist. I’m sure she’s afraid of Reaper. Everyone who doesn’t really know him feels that darkness inside him. She doesn’t realize that he’d protect her with his life because he knows she means something to me. I don’t even have to tell him. He just knows, the same way I know how he’s feeling. We’re connected in a way I can’t fathom. It has something to do with surviving hell together. Beyond that, I can’t explain it.

“We’ve got to be smart about this,” I say. “We can’t just call it in. We can’t be the guys who found her body. That would make us the prime suspects. Sheriff Curtis would pin the whole thing on us. We can’t take that kind of heat. The suspicion needs to be directed at one man and one man only—the sheriff. That’s the only way this can go down.”

“Call the FBI hotline. Leave an anonymous tip,” Talon says.