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Clay held Mallory and Cobb with a gaze as cold as a headstone.

Hands still cuffed behind him, leaning against a police vehicle, his eyes were vacant, as if he’d left for another world.

The detectives had taken him aside, pressing him hard for answers. Minutes slipped away. How long had they been at this? They were losing time.

“Did you hear me?” Cobb motioned to the garage. “Why do you have confinement rooms?”

“Who was imprisoned?” Mallory said. “Where are they?”

Clay gave them a slight grin.

“Those rooms are my underground shelter. Safe space in preparation for catastrophe.”

“No!” Cobb said. “No more bullshit.”

Clay nodded slowly. “I will exercise my right to remain silent and request to have an attorney present.”

Mallory and Cobb turned to Ellerd, Vern and Luke, who were watching at a distance but close enough to hear. Clay’s response detonated Luke’s emotions. Swelling with anger, he rushed at Clay.

“Where’s Carrie?” he yelled in his face. “Where is she?”

Luke’s body arched in the grip of the others holding him back while he shouted. “Where is she? You sick—”

Clay remained silent.

Aided by deputies, Ellerd and Vern pulled Luke away, back farther than before. Luke doubled over, heaving deep, ragged breaths.

Did he kill her? How can this be real?

Looking over at law enforcement teams undertaking the investigation, he saw Stowe and Caesar continuing to work the scene. Luke knew by the dog’s reaction that Carrie had been held here.

Underground in that tomb.

His heart pounding, Luke stood straight. Pressing his clenched hands to his forehead, his thoughts were like fireworks, shooting in a million points of light.

We’re this close.

In desperation, he looked at Clay’s garage, the carport, then the garage again with the confinement cells connected to the pit.

Grease pit.

Raylin Nash had a grease pit. Luke thought harder. Nash had a tow truck. Orange. They’d seen a tow truck on their way to Clay’s. Orange. Luke looked at the carport. When Luke last visited, Clay had six cars in the carport. Now there were five. The tow truck had a car on the flatbed. Luke’s heart jumped.

Oh God! That’s it!

He flew to Ellerd, Vern, Cobb and Mallory, pulling them away.

“It’s the tow truck!”

Not understanding, puzzled, Cobb said, “The tow truck?”

Luke spoke fast and clearly. “On our way in, I glimpsed a tow truck going in the opposite direction.”

“Yeah, an orange one,” Mallory said.

“With a car on the bed, an old blue Dodge, I think,” Luke said.

“A Challenger. I saw it. Definitely a Challenger,” Mallory said. “I figured it was storm-related.”

Luke shook his head at the theory.

“No. Raylin Nash has an orange tow truck. It was his.” Luke pointed to the carport. “Clay’s missing one of his cars. Nash was hauling it. That’s where he put Carrie.”

Raising his phone, Ellerd made two calls, speaking quickly. Then, to the others, he said, “We’ve got people in the area, moving on Nash’s place for the truck. Stand by.”

His heart thudding, Luke tried to breathe evenly as he watched people working at the garage, taping it off, forensic people suiting up. Still others searched the woods while a drone flew overhead. Far down the road, blocked by patrol cars, he caught the flash of TV camera lights, where news trucks and media people had collected.

Luke’s jaw muscles tensed as he glared at Clay in the distance, thinking back to their first conversations. Clay’s fascination with killers who were never caught. Now this nightmare, this revolting reality— with Carrie’s life!

Ellerd’s phone rang, and after a short conversation, he gave everyone an update. “Nash is not on his property. No sign of the truck or the Dodge. We’ll put out an alert.”