“We have three dead bodies.” Kyle slapped the pictures of Chloe, John Doe and Nolan down on the interrogation table in front of Dylan. “Why these three? What do they have in common?”
It had been almost two hours since Rocky had led Kyle to Nolan’s body. Nolan, like John Doe and Chloe before him, had taken a single gunshot wound to the chest. The time after that had passed in a blur as he coordinated with the police, crime scene techs and paramedics who’d retrieved the body and documented how it had been found. Once again, Ophelia had slipped off and headed back to town while he was busy doing his job and managing the scene. This time he’d caught her wave goodbye. But there’d been no time alone for a conversation, let alone a hug goodbye.
For all he knew, they’d never be alone like that again.
He’d returned to the same Santa Fe PD station where he’d interviewed Nolan just a few hours earlier. And since then, he’d been sitting in an interrogation room across from Dylan, locked in the same frustrating conversation as it went around in circles.
“I’m not telling you nothing!” Dylan said. Thankfully, both of his injuries had been minor and easy for paramedics to patch up.
Kyle looked down at Nolan’s picture. The same man had sat in that very room a few hours earlier, after warning Kyle that someone had placed an explosive in his SUV. Not only had Dylan’s fingerprints confirmed his identity, they’d also been found, along with explosive residue, on a bag found where Kyle’s vehicle had been parked when the bomb had been planted, confirming Dylan was indeed the man Nolan had seen.
Nolan might’ve saved Kyle’s life. But Kyle had been unable to save his.
“My colleague emailed me your rap sheet,” Kyle said and opened the email from Isla on his phone. “You’re right, you’re Dylan Brown. No known aliases. And you’ve got a long record for theft, burglary and assault. But no murder, until these three. I’ll ask you again, why them?”
Dylan crossed his arms leaned back in the chair. “I’m not a killer.”
“Look, you’re a muscle for hire,” Kyle said. “You do jobs and favors for people. So, my theory is someone asked you to murder these three people, tamper with the gas tank of my vehicle and terrorize both Gabrielle Martinez and Ophelia Clarke. I think that if I hadn’t stopped you, you would’ve killed both Gabrielle and Ophelia. Why? Who has a vendetta against all these people?”
Dylan cursed under his breath and didn’t answer.
Lord, how can I be so close to getting an answer and still have nothing?
There was a knock on the door. Rocky’s head rose. The K-9’s tail started to thump on the floor, letting Kyle know that whoever was on the other side of the door was a friend.
Kyle stood. “I’ll give you a moment to think.”
Dylan only grunted in response. Kyle and Rocky stepped out into the hallway, where he found Meadow and her K-9 partner, Grace, waiting for him.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” she said. “I was told you got your man.”
Kyle glanced back through the small, reinforced window at where Dylan still sat at the table. “I know I should feel more relieved. I am certain he’s the man behind every violent crime related to this case and yet I’d just feel better if I knew what his motive was.”
“And you don’t think it’s related to the RMK?” Meadow asked.
“No.” Kyle shook his head. He knew he should be relieved that the criminal he’d been chasing was finally off the street. But still it felt like something was missing. He quickly ran Meadow through all of the details of the case as he knew them so far, starting with the moment Ophelia heard gunshots.
“What if Dylan is in love with Gabrielle?” Meadow asked. “Wasn’t that your original theory? So it turns out his name is Dylan and not Bobby, but it could be that simple. He came to the wedding looking to kill Jared but shot John Doe by mistake. He killed Chloe for trying to warn Ophelia that he was coming to stop the wedding and attacked you and Ophelia for trying to investigate the case. Finally, he killed Nolan in revenge for telling you about the fact that he tampered with the SUV. It all fits.”
“It’s too simple.” Ophelia’s words from earlier brushed the back of my mind. “And in my experience most things are more complicated than that.”
“Except who’s Bobby?” Kyle said, “And why did an unidentified blond man who looked like the groom get lured to the barn where the reception was taking place on the day before the wedding?”
It was like a sweater that only looked neat and tidy until someone pulled on one the loose threads and then the whole thing unraveled.
“I don’t know,” Meadow admitted. “By the way, I ran into Ophelia in the waiting room. She was just dropping by on the way to the wedding, and she asked me to give you this.”
She picked up something soft and white off a chair and handed it to him. It was his short-sleeved shirt that Ophelia had borrowed. Without even thinking, he held it close to his face and smelled in the scent of her.
The fact that she’d chosen to drop it off at the police station where he was working instead of his home told him everything he needed to know—their time working closely together was well and truly over. They wouldn’t be going for long nighttime walks or sharing coffee together in the morning. There’d never again be a reason for them to suddenly throw their arms around each other, or for their lips to unexpectedly meet in a kiss. And that was how he wanted it, right? Because he’d decided he wasn’t looking for a relationship and obviously neither was she.
Meadow looked at him curiously and he wondered if she’d caught him cradling the shirt.
“I found out why your mother has been going to the pharmacy so often,” she said. “Turns out she has a crush on the pharmacist. I met him earlier today when we popped in to buy a few overnight things, when we were still thinking that we’d have to go to the safe house. He’s a nice guy. He’s a widower her age, and a man of faith. I think she wants to date him but is worried about how you’ll react.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Kyle crossed his arms.
“Is it?” Meadow said. “Sorry if this is too personal, but your mom also mentioned that your father was bad news. She told me about the whole dating site debacle, and my impression was that she thought that maybe if you started dating you’d be okay with her starting a new relationship, too.”
Really? Was his mother holding herself back because of him?
“I don’t have a problem with my mom starting a new life,” Kyle said. “I’m not going to start dating, because I’m worried for Brody and need to focus on being his father. I can’t risk starting a relationship that might fail or getting Brody attached to someone who might leave our lives. What if I fall in love and marry someone, and then it doesn’t work out?”
And what about his own heart? All this time Kyle had kept telling himself he was choosing to be single for fear of hurting Brody or putting him through the turmoil that Kyle had grown up in. But the way his heart beat painfully even now at the memory of just how terrified he’d been when Ophelia was in danger made him realize that maybe Brody wasn’t the only who he was trying to save from pain.
“I guess that’s a choice you need to make,” Meadow said. “I had to walk away from someone I loved once. I didn’t have a choice and it broke my heart.” She glanced down at the shirt Kyle was still holding in his hands. “Look, I only just met Ophelia today and already it’s clear to me how much you two care about each other. And that’s rare. So you’re just going to have to decide if that’s a risk you’re willing to take.”
The sun dipped low in the New Mexico sky, sending pink and gold streaks across the horizon. As Ophelia walked down the path to Cherish Ranch’s outdoor wedding chapel, dark purple shadows spread out beneath her feet. Truth was, she wasn’t sure what to think about the fact that Jared and Gabrielle were still getting married, although with a much smaller celebration than originally planned.
Then again, if she had the opportunity to marry a man whom she loved with her whole heart, would she let anything stand in her way?
The outdoor chapel itself was simple and beautiful, with rows of chairs overlooking the glorious vista and a simple archway of wooden branches stretching up to the sky.
She sat in the back row, in her favorite turquoise dress and sandals. Ophelia couldn’t remember ever seeing a more romantic scene or feeling such a depth of sadness inside her own heart. She closed her eyes and tried to settle her thoughts, only to find Kyle’s handsome face fill her mind.
Lord, I’ve never liked a man as much as I like Kyle. He’s not just handsome, funny, kind and brave. He likes the things about me that I like about myself. I want a man like him by my side. And yet, I looked him in the eyes and told him I could never let it happen. Have I been so convinced that Your plan for me doesn’t include that kind of happiness that I closed my heart?
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here, dear,” Great-Aunt Evelyn’s voice cut through her prayers. Ophelia opened her eyes as her aunt slid into the chair beside her, in a resplendent yellow dress that somehow reminded her of baby ducks without looking the slightest bit cutesy.
“I think you’re meant to sit in the front row,” Ophelia said.
“I know, I just wanted to sit with you.” Evelyn’s delicate hand patted Ophelia’s affectionately, and Ophelia realized for the first time just how frail her great-aunt had gotten. “This whole wedding thing doesn’t feel right and it never really has. You know I don’t like being negative and I promised my grandson I wouldn’t question his decisions, but maybe I was wrong to support this wedding. What do you think?”
She fixed her eyes on Ophelia’s face. They were the same shade of blue as hers. And Ophelia realized this might actually be the first time her great-aunt had asked her opinion about something significant.
“I think Jared really loves Gabrielle and will stop at nothing to marry her,” Ophelia said.
“I can understand loving someone so much you want to marry them immediately,” Evelyn said, “even in the face of tragedy. I remember when I was a little girl hearing stories about people lining up at the church to get married days before their fella shipped off to the war. My mama said when you loved somebody you don’t let the bad things in life stop you from the good ones.”
Maybe like eating scrambled eggs in the morning, Ophelia thought, and playing trucks with Brody in the sandbox.
“I never had a wedding,” Evelyn added, almost wistfully. “I always wanted one, but we didn’t have the money. The business was struggling and it was either pay the rent or get married. So we just eloped one night and then my mom made us chicken dinner. I didn’t even have a dress.”
Ophelia’s eyes widened. “But what about all those beautiful wedding pictures you have up on the wall?”
“Oh, we just took those in the park behind the church three years later, because we’d never gotten pictures and we’d been given this beautiful set of frames. I was actually four months’ pregnant with Jared’s dad by then. I just hid the little bump behind my bouquet.”
“You never told me any of that,” Ophelia said.
Ophelia searched her seventy-four-year-old great-aunt’s face and realized that she’d never heard a story about a time they hadn’t been well off.
“That sounds really lovely,” Ophelia said. “I thought if I ever got married you’d be disappointed if I didn’t do a big wedding like Jared.”
“Oh, you do what’s right for you.” Evelyn patted her hand. “It’s not for me to tell you what to do. Or judge. I just give you my best advice and leave it up to you.”
Ophelia hid a smile. She couldn’t imagine her great-aunt was about to start keeping her opinions to herself, especially if Ophelia ever did end up having the unexpected blessing of finding a man to marry her. But it was kind of nice to know that was the kind of person Evelyn wanted to be.
“I mean, I did my best to keep my mouth shut about this whole wedding mess and keep writing checks every time Jared said he needed me to.” Evelyn waved her hands in the air. “But now I’m beginning to think I should’ve pushed back instead of just going ahead and paying for all this.”
“What do you mean you paid for all this?” Ophelia asked. “You paid for the wedding? I thought the bride’s family pays for the wedding. Or the couple themselves.”
And wasn’t Gabrielle’s family supposed to be unbelievably wealthy?
“Oh, there as some problem with the international payments,” Evelyn said, “and they said they were going to go to my bank with me and sort it all out when they got here.” But then Gabrielle’s parents had never showed up. Ophelia thought back to how stressed her great-aunt had been about everything when she’d asked Ophelia to step in as a bridesmaid. “Jared just kept calling me up and saying that Gabrielle was upset, and they needed money for this and money for that. The wedding venue. Dresses. Catering. A private jet to whisk them off to Mexico for their honeymoon. I don’t even know where it all went.”
Ophelia’s mouth went dry.
“Auntie.” Ophelia gently reached for Evelyn’s and took it in both of hers. “How much money have you given Jared and Gabrielle?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Evelyn didn’t meet her eyes and shrugged. “Jared would just give me these different bank accounts to wire money to. Gabrielle always said her parents would pay me back.”
But Gabrielle’s parents were conveniently overseas and had never materialized. For all she knew, Gabrielle had been lying about her parents the whole time and they never intended to pay Evelyn back a single cent. The taste in Ophelia’s mouth turned bitter. “It was a lot of money, wasn’t it? More than you could afford to give.”
Now she could actually see tears building in the corner of her great-aunt’s eyes. Ophelia’s heart ached. She enveloped her great-aunt in her arms and hugged her.
“You know I love you, right?” Ophelia asked. “I know we don’t always agree on everything. And we don’t always like the words each other says. But I love you, you matter to me, and I’m sorry that Jared and Gabrielle were taking advantage of you.”
For a long moment her great-aunt hugged her back and didn’t say anything. Then she pulled away and stood.
“I’m fine.” Evelyn patted Ophelia on the shoulder. “You are sweet and I am so thankful to have a great-niece like you. Now I’m just going to go check in and see what’s keeping Jared and Gabrielle so long. They left the hotel before I did and I can’t believe they haven’t arrived yet.”
Evelyn started down the path toward the main lodge. The toes of Ophelia’s sandals tapped against the ground as she fought the urge to rush to the lodge, look for Jared herself and ask him how he could possibly be so selfish as to take advantage of his grandmother like that. She had half a mind to take her great-aunt to the bank and see what she could do to help her get her money back. Not to mention asking the ranch for receipts to see just how much of her money really went to the wedding.
Without even pausing to think about why, she pulled out her phone and called Kyle.
The phone rang twice, then clicked.
“Hey, Kyle, it’s Ophelia. I don’t know if this has anything to do with anything but I just found out that Gabrielle and Jared have been taking advantage of my great-aunt and getting her to pay for everything—”
“Hello, you’ve reached Agent Kyle West of the Mountain Country K-9 Task Force.” His voice came down the line crisp, professional and slightly tinny. “Please leave your message at the tone.”
She hung up. What had she been thinking? The masked man had been arrested. The case was over. She couldn’t just call Kyle on a whim anymore to offload about what her family was doing and how she felt about it. Somehow in just twenty-four hours they’d gone from being colleagues who’d barely spoken, to a professional pair that worked together, to friends, and then what? To something else entirely that she didn’t yet have the courage to try to put into words.
It was only then that she noticed a red dot on the corner of the screen telling her that she’d missed a call. She clicked on it hoping it was Kyle.
It was Isla.
Ophelia looked around. It didn’t look like the wedding was about to start anytime soon. She stood up, walked down the path toward the parking lot and dialed Isla’s number. She answered before it had even rung once. “Hey, Ophelia! Aren’t you supposed to be at a wedding right now?”
“I am, but the bride and groom are running late,” she said. “I missed a call from you?”
“You did!” She could hear Isla smiling down the phone. “I tracked down the cuff link to the jewelry store where it was bought and I think I found our John Doe.”
“Really?” Now, that was good news. “Who is he?”
“Robert Wesley Norrs, professional gambler and online investor, last seen in Las Vegas a week ago,” Isla said. “And yes, I was able to get a visual match to our John Doe from the jewelry store surveillance cameras.”
“Robert as in Bobby,” Ophelia said.
“I’ve got a picture,” Isla said. “Want me to send it through?”
“Absolutely.” A second later her phone dinged and Ophelia looked down to see a handsome blond man with arrogant eyes. “That’s our John Doe. He’s the man who was shot in the barn yesterday. Have you shown this to Kyle yet?”
“I left a message on his phone,” Isla said, “but he didn’t call me back. But get this, last year Robert came into the Las Vegas jewelry store with his fiancée, Lisette Austin. He bought her a huge diamond ring as well as the pair of cuff links for him. She said it was to celebrate their engagement. From what I could glean from his social media, Lisette dumped Robert and left town after a gambling loss.”
“Who’s Lisette Austin, though?” Ophelia said. “I’ve never heard of her.”
“That’s because she doesn’t exist,” Isla said. “At least not under that name. A woman matching her description is suspected of romancing and even marrying men under fake identities and robbing them blind in Connecticut, Texas, Florida and Vermont. Sometimes she’s even suspected of killing them. But they’ve never managed to track down who she really is or pin down her identity. It’s all conjecture. No proof.”
Ophelia’s phone pinged. Then a black-and-white picture appeared on the screen of a woman with long blond hair. Ophelia’s mouth gaped. Despite the different hair color, the face was clear. “That’s my cousin’s fiancée, Gabrielle.”
Isla gasped. “Are you sure?”
“Definitely.” And now she was pretty certain wherever Jared and “Gabrielle” were now, they weren’t about to show up here to get married. No wonder “Gabrielle” hadn’t wanted police poking around and had been in such a hurry to marry Jared.
“According to the files I can read on her, she’s a pretty talented manipulator,” Isla said. “She zeroes in on wealthy and lonely men, convinces them that she’s in love with them and then bleeds them dry. Sometimes she even cons their family members out of money.”
Like Evelyn. Ophelia thought back to all their interactions with Gabrielle in the past twenty-four hours. The way Gabrielle would cling to Ophelia like they were best buddies, or smile one moment and cry theatrically. “It was like she was always trying to figure out what button to push to make me like her and could never quite find the right one. How many ex-husbands is she suspected of killing?”
“Four,” Isla said. “Plus, quite a few she just robbed.”
“Then either way my cousin is in trouble,” Ophelia said.
“Again, I’ve got to stress that police have never successfully pegged anything on this woman,” Isla said. “There’s not even a single warrant out anywhere for her arrest. She’s too slippery to be charged with anything, and all we have are theories.”
And Ophelia didn’t peddle in theories. Only facts. And the fact was there wasn’t a single scrap of DNA, fingerprint evidence or anything else sitting back at the forensic laboratory that pointed to Gabrielle committing a crime, let alone killing anyone.
Lord, please help me find the facts I need to protect my cousin and stop her from hurting anyone else.
“My great-aunt said they were taking a private jet to Mexico for their honeymoon,” she said. “If they disappear into Mexico, there’s any number of ways she could kill my cousin and vanish.”
She heard the sound of Isla typing quickly. Ophelia could feel all the evidence she’d gathered in the past twenty-four hours finally clicking together in her mind.
So Gabrielle was a con artist who romanced men for their money. She got engaged to Robert Willian Norrs, aka RWN, aka Bobby. Then she moved on to Jared. But then Bobby wasn’t about to let her go so easily. He started stalking her and came to Santa Fe to stop the wedding. And then what? Bobby was murdered. How did she prove Gabrielle had anything to do with Bobby’s, Chloe’s and Nolan’s deaths?
Bobby could’ve exposed Gabrielle as a con artist. Chloe had talked to Bobby and tried to share her concerns with Ophelia. Nolan had given Gabrielle an alibi for the time of Bobby’s murder and then warned Kyle of the bomb Dylan had planted in his car.
So they were all liabilities. But it was still all circumstantial.
And how did Dylan fit into this? He definitely didn’t fit the type Gabrielle would pursue romantically.
“Okay, I’ve found them,” Isla said. “Gabrielle and Jared are at the Santa Fe Airport now, scheduled to fly to Tijuana. I’m going to alert officials not to let them on the plane. But they’ll only be able to delay them. They won’t be able to stop them from just walking out of the airport and vanishing.”
“I’m heading there now,” Ophelia said. She climbed into her car and plugged her phone into the vehicle’s hands-free speaker. “Hopefully, they can delay Jared long enough for me to get there and try to talk to him. My cousin is so blindly in love he’s not going to believe anything they tell him. But maybe if I can get him alone, I can talk some sense into him.”
“Tell him he’s not the first person she’s fooled,” Isla said.
“I don’t think that’s going to help,” Ophelia said. The problem with being the kind of man who just arrogantly assumed everyone was going to do what he wanted was he wouldn’t accept he’d been duped by a con woman. “I’m going to hang up and try Kyle again. In the meantime, send me everything you can on Gabrielle for now.”
“Will do,” Isla said. “Police still don’t know her real identity, but there are a lot of photos of her with different hair and eye colors.”
They ended the call and the technical analyst’s final two words continued to ring in Ophelia’s mind. Eye color. Eye color. What was her mind trying to tell her or remind her of?
Ophelia pulled out of the parking lot and drove down the twisting mountain road. The Santa Fe Airport was on the outskirts of town. If she stuck to back roads she could be there in fifteen minutes, give or take. She dialed Kyle’s number. But again, it went through to voice mail. All right, so he must still be in interrogation.
Now what? Just how brave could she be? Just how certain was she that she was right? She gritted her teeth and dialed Detective Patricia Gonzales directly.
“Gonzales.” The detective’s voice was on the line in a moment.
“Hi, it’s CSI Ophelia Clarke,” she said. “I’m so sorry to do this, but I know Kyle West is in the police station right now and I have urgent information for the case and need to talk to him immediately.”
“Understood,” she said.
The phone went silent as Ophelia was put on hold. She drove and prayed. Then she heard a new call beginning to ring on her phone. It was Kyle.
Thank You, God.
She ended the call with Patricia and answered.
“Ophelia, hi!” Kyle sounded flustered. “Someone just knocked on the door of my interrogation room and said it was an emergency. I’ve been going around in circles with Dylan for hours. Whatever he’s hiding, he’s not about to crack.”
“Isla has identified our John Doe as a gambler from Las Vegas called Robert Wesley Norrs,” she said quickly. The sky was growing darker around her. “So that’s our Bobby. He was engaged to marry Gabrielle, who at the time was going by the name Lisette. Gabrielle was there when he bought the cuff links to celebrate their engagement. Maybe he brought them to return to her—”
“Or maybe she demanded them back,” Kyle said. She could practically hear the wheels in his head turning.
“Gabrielle is a con woman with a history of crossing the country, changing her name and look, romancing men and robbing them,” Ophelia said. “She’s even suspected of killing a few.”
Kyle sucked a breath.
“Turns out she got Jared to milk my great-aunt for a whole lot of money,” she went on. “She and Jared are supposed to hop a plane to Tijuana, and Isla’s asked police to delay them.”
She quickly outlined her theory from how Gabrielle had conned multiple men under various identities, set her sights on Jared in the hotel, convinced him to marry her and take advantage of Evelyn’s generous nature to weasel her out of money. But then her last target, Bobby, hadn’t wanted to give up on her easily and tracked her down. Maybe she’d even led him on romantically while being engaged to Jared, in order to con more money of out him. Bobby had said something to Chloe, which made Gabrielle’s roommate a liability. Nolan was Gabrielle’s alibi for the time of Bobby’s murder.
Bobby, Chloe and Nolan had all been liabilities, who knew something about Gabrielle that could’ve thwarted her scheme.
She switched her headlights on as the last sliver of the sun vanished beyond the horizon.
“But I don’t have evidence,” she said, “and we need evidence. Otherwise, I won’t be able to convince Jared not to trust her. He’ll never believe me. Police have no reason to detain them indefinitely. And sooner or later he’ll just take off with Gabrielle, she’ll kill him and I’ll never see him alive again.”
She could hear Kyle praying quietly down the line. She joined in his prayers.
Lord, help me trust in the work I do and the skills I’ve honed that You’ve given me. I’m used to noticing the little things. Sometimes the smallest thing is the key to catching a serial killer.
“Gabrielle was only wearing one contact yesterday,” Ophelia said suddenly. “What if she doesn’t need them for her eyesight but only to disguise her eye color. And if she was only wearing one—”
“She might have the same DNA condition as Dylan,” Kyle said.
“Heterochromia,” Ophelia said. “Which means he might not only be her accomplice, but also her brother.”
“Which might explain why he won’t turn on her,” Kyle said, “and also what I need to get him to crack.” He whistled. “You’re incredible, Ophelia? You know that?”
Then before she could reply she heard the sound of a door opening and closing again, a chair scraping and Kyle setting the phone down on the table, without ending the call.
“I’m still not talking,” Dylan said.
“It doesn’t matter if you talk or not,” Kyle said. “Because we know that Gabrielle is your sister. She’s been conning men into marrying her, robbing them and even killing a few. And I expect she’s going to pin it all on you, cut a sweet little deal with prosecutors and tell them that you’re the one who’s been making her do it. Who do you think a jury’s going to believe? Your sister or you?”
Silence crackled on the line. Ophelia held her breath and prayed that Kyle’s bluff would work. She could see the airport in the distance now, the beautiful adobe orange rectangles and squares, looking like something built from children’s blocks.
Lord, please help me get through to Jared. Protect my heart and mind.
“My sister’s a liar!” Dylan’s voice shouted down the phone. “Her name isn’t even Gabrielle. It’s Dorothy Brown. I had nothing to do with all her nonsense and scams. She just called me because she needed help with this Bobby person. She wanted me to meet him in the barn, rough him up a bit and convince him to leave her alone. But apparently she got there first, they started fighting and he threw a pair of cuff links at her. Anyway, she lost it. So, when I got there turns out she’s already killed him and begs me to make it look like she didn’t do it. I’ve been cleaning up her mess ever since. Take care of this person, take care of that or that person, I’ve had enough of her. Now get me a lawyer! I want to cut a deal!”
Prayers of thanksgiving filled Ophelia’s heart. Now police had enough to arrest Gabrielle, or Dorothy or whatever her name was, and protect her from hurting Jared or anyone else ever again. It would still be a matter of whom a jury believed and a testimony wasn’t the same as DNA evidence, but it was a good start and she was confident they’d get what they needed to put her away for good.
She heard Kyle stepping out of the interrogation room and informing someone that Dylan had requested a lawyer and that a warrant needed to be issued for Dorothy Brown aka Gabrielle Martinez.
The airport grew closer. A construction vehicle with reflective triangular stickers was parked at the side of the road. A woman with long blond and curly hair, reflective sunglasses and bright orange vest stepped in front of Ophelia’s vehicle and held up a stop sign.
Ophelia slowed to a stop and rolled the window down.
“You gotta turn back!” The woman strode over to Ophelia’s car. “We’ve got a downed power line ahead.”
Ophelia glanced at the road ahead. She didn’t see any downed power lines.
Then she felt something sharp jab into her side. A quick and painful blast of electricity shot through her limbs. She cried out in pain.
“Ophelia!” Kyle’s voice yelled down the phone line and filled the car.
Ophelia whimpered from the lingering pain and she glanced in disbelief at the woman who’d just jabbed a stun gun into her side.
It was Gabrielle.
“Can you hear me, Agent West?” Gabrielle leaned into the car. Her voice was cold, calculating and stripped of all the fake sweetness that had once dripped from it like honey. “Nice try getting someone to delay my flight and separate me and Jared. You think I didn’t know how to slip out a window? But now I have Ophelia and you tell Evelyn that if she ever wants to see her again, she’s got twenty-four hours to wire me three million dollars. I’m getting out of this state, one way or another, and if I so much as see a police car or helicopter, Ophelia dies.”