Page 157 of Fire Fight

“Grandma McAllister, right?”

“Yes,” Wyatt said. “Susan McAllister.”

A few more keystrokes then: “Bingo.”

Lane approached his older brother and the wall of screens. “You got something?”

“I checked through county records,” Trey said, speaking quickly. “The last deed of record is old as shit. There haven’t been any changes since 1985, when Susan added Kelly to the title.”

“Mom couldn’t have been more than eighteen,” Wyatt said.

Trey hummed in agreement. “And your grandma died in…”

Wyatt screwed her face up, thinking. “It had to have been the early nineties. I remember her, but not well.”

“Where the hell is this place?” West piped up.

“Moss Township,” Trey said.

“Northwest corner of the county,” Finn supplied before Trey could pull up a map. “There’s nothing out there as far as I know.”

“Good,” West grinned. “That’ll make it easy for us to sneak in and get Crew back.”

My own smile unfurled, matching the energy of his.

Nearly three months ago, Crew Lawless had saved my life and turned it upside in the best way possible.

Now, it was my turn to save his.

forty-one

. . .

CREW

The impactof my body on a hard surface jolted me to consciousness and knocked the air from my lungs. While I struggled to regain my breath, I took a beat to take stock of myself. A sack of some sort had been placed over my head, though the material was thin enough to tell the sky was still light. I hadn’t been out long then. My wrists were bound together in front of me, but my ankles were free.

A strike to my side had me groaning in pain.

“Get up and walk.”

The voice was no longer distorted, and I should’ve been ready for it. After all the information Wyatt had spilled at the sheriff’s department, I should’ve been prepared for the voice of my abductor to be a woman—to be Mrs. Saunders.

I wasn’t. If I hadn’t already been prone on the ground, the sound would’ve taken me out at the knees.

That boot found my ribs again, and with a grunt and some careful maneuvering, I heaved to standing, breathing hard and squeezing my eyes shut as my head spun.

Some blunt instrument—likely that fucking gun again—pressed into my spine, urging me on, so I tentatively shuffledforward. I strained my ears for an auditory indication of where we were. The only thing I heard was the soft swish of grass beneath my feet and crickets chirping, which led me to believe we were likely far from town. I continued moving forward, and without warning, my boots collided with some uneven surface, sending me sprawling. Unable to break my fall with my hands, I twisted to the side. My shoulder to take the brunt of the impact, and I hissed as I felt the joint pop out of place.

Shifting my knees under myself without further aggravating my shoulder wasn’t an easy task, but I managed. Once I sank back on my haunches, I tried to get my bearings. The air around me had shifted, becoming overly warm and stale, like I’d entered some sort of building. It didn’t feel like a wide open space like a warehouse would, though, so I guessed we were somewhere smaller, like a home or a cabin.

“Where am I?” I asked. “What do you plan to do with me?”

“You don’t get to ask questions,” the woman snarled.

Once again, a sharp sting in my neck accompanied a sizzle through my body, and the world blacked out.

When I came to again,the sack had been removed from my head, but my arms were still bound.