Page 137 of Noel Secrets

Later, as they headed back to Sheraton, Darby glanced at Clay as he drove. She owed him a lot. If not for him, she would be dead, and David would be alone in the world.

This was the third time she owed him her life.

Yet she knew so little about him. “How did your meeting with Chief Dean go?”

He grimaced. It must not have gone well. “What happened? You can tell me.”

“Not much. He’s a slick control freak. I think he figured out he can’t intimidate me. Cooper’s diving deep into his past, but for now, we should be careful around him.”

“Suzanne always said she could get him to do anything.” And she’d proven it too when he’d gotten her out of trouble and helped to publicly smear Darby by proclaiming the video of Suzanne stealing as a fake. “I still don’t trust him.”

“I don’t either but there’s no proof that he’s crossed any line. Besides, we need the Sheraton PD to help keep you safe. I want to know who made that call to you, pretending to be the camp so I asked Cooper to pull your cell phone records. Hope that’s okay.”

“Glad you thought of that. I want to know too. And what about the SUV that ran me off the road?”

“Local police are looking for witnesses and trying to track down the vehicle. The lady who stopped got a better look at the suspect and the vehicle than I did. Hopefully she gave the police a good description.”

“What do we do now?”

“Go to your place so you can rest.”

“No, I’m fine. Couldn’t we do something?”

He tapped something into the GPS screen. “We’re only an hour or so from the sheriff’s office. We should stop there and see if they’ve found something.”

“Wouldn’t he have called you?”

“I’d still like to talk with him to see what they’ve discovered about the two men who abducted you.”

She hadn’t forgotten about those men or the fact that they worked for Brent. Had he also pretended to be from their child’s camp and lured her out into the open?

Clay’s phone rang and he pressed a button to answer it, put it on speaker.

“Cooper, Darby is with me.”

“Good. You both need to hear this. I just went through Darby’s cell phone records. The call came from a landline at Foster Auto Sales.”

Brent’s dealership.

Tears sprang to Darby’s eyes as the final thread snapped.

Her ex-husband was behind all of this.

She turned in her seat to face Clay. “Take me to the car dealership. I want to confront Brent.”

“Sheriff Malone’s deputies haven’t found him, so he’s probably not there.”

“Maybe his employees can hide him from the police, but not from me. If he’s there, I’ll find him.”

Chapter Eight

Clay pulled into the dealership parking lot, found a space, and threw the truck into park. “Sure you want to do this?”

“I need to.” She needed to face Brent and see the guilt in his eyes, proving to herself that the man she’d once loved was truly gone. Something dark had taken ahold of him, but she’d never expected him to fall this far.

Clay sighed and tried once more to deter her. “He might not even be here.”

Darby spotted the familiar red Dodge Charger Brent was so proud of, sitting in his usual parking space near the front of the building. “He’s here.” She opened the door and climbed out, her ankle aching. But she was determined.