Page 20 of Once Vanished

His voice trailed off, the horror of the experience still evident in his expression.Riley didn’t push him further on that point.She knew all too well what it was like to wake up in captivity, to feel the rising panic as you realized your life was in someone else’s hand.

“Leo Dillard,” she said quietly.“That’s who took you.He’s a former student of mine at the FBI Academy, now a fugitive.He’s obsessed with me, and he’s using people I’ve encountered in my work to get to me.”

Pope’s eyes widened with understanding.“That’s why he chose me?Because of what happened with you and Agent Jeffreys at Fort Nash Mowat?”

“Yes,” Riley confirmed.“Leo studies the people around me.He knows about that case, about how it affected Bill.”She paused, choosing her words carefully.“Bill took what happened very hard.He struggled with severe PTSD afterward.”

“I had no idea it was that bad,” Pope said, looking genuinely distressed.“After I recovered from the gunshot, I got shipped out to a different base.Never had a chance to talk to him.”

Outside, the distant wail of an ambulance siren pierced the stillness.Relief washed through Riley—help was coming sooner than expected.Pope needed medical attention, and she needed to move on to the next step in tracking Leo.

“They’re almost here,” she told Pope, squeezing his arm reassuringly.“You’re going to be okay.”

But even as she offered comfort, her mind was working through the implications of what had happened.Leo had planned this with his usual skill.He had researched Pope, found his current location and job, obtained his personal phone number, and set up an elaborate trap.All to create this moment—to force Riley to confront this specific reminder of Lucy’s death and Bill’s breakdown.

And it wasn’t just about psychological torture.It was a deliberate distraction.While she was here saving Pope, Leo was somewhere else with Jilly.Using Pope as bait had bought him valuable time.

The ambulance’s siren grew louder, and through the cabin’s grimy windows, Riley caught the flash of emergency lights painting the trees blue and red.She needed to step outside, guide them in.She also needed to call Hogue, update him on this development.The team needed to know that Leo was escalating, becoming more elaborate in his tactics.

But first, she needed to call Bill.

She hesitated over her phone.What should she tell him?The full truth would risk reopening wounds that had taken years to heal.Bill had clawed his way back from the abyss after Fort Nash Mowat, but the scars remained.Hearing that Pope had been targeted specifically because of their shared history could potentially send Bill spiraling back into that dark place—exactly when Riley needed him most.

Yet keeping this from him felt like a betrayal.They were partners.They had promised each other honesty, especially in their work.Bill deserved to know what they were up against.

The ambulance pulled into the clearing, its headlights cutting through the gathering dusk.Riley stepped onto the cabin’s porch, raising a hand to guide the EMTs inside.As they rushed past her with a stretcher and equipment, her phone felt heavy in her palm, Bill’s contact information still displayed on the screen.

Tell him everything?Tell him only what he needed to know right now?Both options carried risks she wasn’t sure she could afford to take.

The clock was ticking.Leo was out there with Jilly.And Riley stood frozen in indecision, caught between protecting her partner and telling him the truth.

CHAPTER NINE

As Riley drove home, she felt conflicted.She had saved a man’s life but was no closer to finding Jilly.After everything, her conversation with Stanley Pope at the hospital had yielded nothing new—just the same fragments he’d shared during his rescue, details too vague to point her toward Leo.

But it was the memory of Bill’s voice on the phone—tight with a fury she rarely heard from him—that troubled her now.“What were you thinking, going there alone?Not even calling for backup,” he’d demanded.“Why didn’t you let me know?Riley, you used to do that kind of thing—go it alone all the time.I thought that since we’re together you’d consider … well, you’d know what it would do to me to lose you.”

She’d tried to explain, but they hadn’t settled that question by phone and she wasn’t looking forward to going through it again.Surely he could understand that she’d been thinking about Jilly, about time slipping away, about the desperation that led her to act as fast as she possibly could.That rational thought had become a luxury she could no longer afford?

Riley checked her rearview mirror, a habit ingrained after decades in law enforcement.The road behind her was empty except for a single pair of headlights several blocks back.Not following her—just another traveler heading home at the end of a long day.She envied them their ordinary concerns, their normal lives untouched by evil.

Her mind returned to the part she hadn’t told Bill about yet—the scenario that Leo had orchestrated precisely to wound them both where they were most vulnerable.She’d explained to Bill that Leo had recreated the old Pine Box case, but she’d only told him that she had rescued a uniformed policeman from near death.She hadn’t told Bill that Leo’s intended victim at the cabin was Stanley Pope—the very man Bill had accidentally shot eight years ago at Fort Nash Mowat.That connection was too specific and too cruel to be any kind of coincidence.

Riley’s memory of those terrible days after the Fort Nash Mowat incident came back with full force.Bill, hollow-eyed and barely speaking, drowning in guilt.He’d been unable to forgive himself for either failure—for shooting the wrong man and Lucy Vargas’s death in the final confrontation with the shooter.How would he handle knowing that Leo had recreated that trauma, using Pope as a sick prop in his twisted game?

But she couldn’t keep all that from him.She had to tell him.Tonight.Before another day passed.

As Riley turned onto her street, her tension eased slightly at the sight of the unmarked police car there in the parking lot in front of her townhouse.Another would be stationed in back, she knew, watching the rear entrance.Hogue had been furious that she’d gone to the cabin alone, but he hadn’t skimped on protection for her family in the aftermath.At least April was safe.At least Gabriela was safe.

At least two of the three people she was responsible for protecting were still beyond Leo’s reach.

But Jilly...

Riley pulled into her parking spot and cut the engine, sitting for a moment in the darkness.Where was her daughter right now?Was she frightened?Hurt?Was she even still...?

No.

Riley wouldn’t allow that thought to form completely.Jilly was alive.She had to be.Leo wanted to torment Riley, and keeping Jilly alive extended his power over her.Knowing that brought little comfort, but it was something to cling to.