Page 136 of Capturing You

Amile from downtown, Forbes could breathe again.

Thank You.

There was no way they would’ve gotten out of that without God’s help. But they weren’t safe yet.

He glanced at Brooklynn in the passenger seat. She was on the phone with the 911 operator, explaining what happened. “I texted Nathan Church, asking for help, but none ever came.”

The 911 operator must’ve said something because Brooklynn snapped, “I was hiding. I had to be quiet.” She glanced his way, then put the call on speaker.

“You’re safe now?” the operator asked.

“No thanks to the police, yeah. A man must’ve heard my shouts. He fought a couple of the guys, giving me time to get away.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m safe, and I’m getting out of town.”

When she ended the call, Forbes said, “Thank you for keeping me out of it.”

Brooklynn’s only response was a nod. She had one hand curled around the edge of the console in a white-knuckled grip. The other was pressed against her stomach. Her eyes were wide, her gaze fixed on the side mirror, clearly afraid an enemy would find them here.

But nobody had followed.

“Are you hurt?” He’d seen her stumble, and she’d been limping.

She reached toward her foot but stopped before she touched it, turning to him. “How did you find me?”

“When you texted, I guessed you were at the library. The lights went out as I was walking up. I assumed it was closed—and you had left—until I saw men circling the building.”

Again, he breathed a prayer of thanksgiving.

After his confrontation with Lenny in town, Forbes had headed back to the house.

By the time he’d gotten there, he’d decided he wasn’t giving up on finding Brooklynn. Until she told him she’d left Shadow Cove, he was going to do everything in his power to keep her safe, even if it meant behaving as badly as—or worse than—her stalker.

Thanks to Lenny’s spotting of the pickup, Forbes had switched to Grandmother’s car.

This time, before he drove back to town, he remembered to search both cars for trackers, thinking perhaps that was why the men had broken in the night of the storm.

He’d almost given up when he finally found a small, black apparatus attached to the underside of his pickup. It took a flathead screwdriver to pry the magnet from the metal.

Once he knew where to look, it took much less time to find the tracking device on the Cadillac. He left that one on a workbench in the garage and pocketed the one from the pickup before climbing behind the wheel of the luxury car.

He turned north and stopped at a service station a few miles up the road, where he filled the tank and grabbed a cup of coffee.

A minivan drove up, headed away from Shadow Cove. It stopped at one of the pumps, and a woman and two little kids came in. She ushered them to the bathrooms in the back.

Outside, a man pumped gas into the minivan.

The stop at the bathroom told him they weren’t close to home. Tourists, he hoped, headed farther up the coast.

Coffee in one hand, Forbes headed back to the Caddy, nodding a greeting to the driver of the van.

When he turned to hang up the nozzle, Forbes pressed the magnetic tracker to the inside of his wheel well.

Then, he tossed his coffee into a trash can, muttering, “I’d rather fall asleep driving than drink that.”

The father chuckled, heading for the door.