Eva stamped her foot like a toddler and swore like the pissed-off woman she was. She couldn’t believe she’d fallen for Maggie’s pretend tears, for the bathroom fake-out. She’d practically invented those tricks — she wasn’t supposed to get taken by them.
She yanked her phone from her back pocket and hit Maggie’s contact info. The phone rang and rang — no voicemail. She swore again. She called again, but once more, the phone just rang. She disconnected.
Now what was she supposed to do? She was stranded without a car and she couldn’t exactly get an Uber out here in Greenhollow. She looked back at the bar. She only had one option.
Squaring her shoulders, she headed back inside. Dylan and Joey were still sitting at the booth where she’d left them. She slunk back into her seat.
“Consider this a mea culpa,” she said.
Dylan raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
Eva pursed her lips. She hated apologizing, and she especially hated apologizing to people who didn’t deserve it. But she was stuck.
“I’m sorry for threatening you. But I really do need your help. Maggie’s gone — I think she went to Dan’s house. We need to do something.”
“We don’t need to do anything,” Dylan said. “I already told you we’re not getting involved.”
“But she’s in danger,” Eva said. Her stomach was doing somersaults. She turned her pleading eyes to Joey, thinking he might be the softer touch. “Please. You know what he does to women. What he’s capable of.”
Joey glanced at Dylan. A wordless exchange took place between them, but it ended with Dylan giving a slight shake of his head. Joey turned back to her and shrugged.
“It’s not our business,” he said. “You’re on your own.”
They slid out of the booth, leaving her alone.
Eva wanted to cry. Maggie was probably almost at Dan’s by now — how much of a head start had she had? Ten minutes? And another five since Eva realized she hadn’t gone to the bathroom? Yes, she could be almost a third of the way back to Goody Point by now.
Eva would have to call the police. She could tell them that she wanted to talk to someone other than Detective Laurence. Maybe say that he was biased because her boyfriend had punched him earlier that day. Maybe she could…
Her eyes caught sight of something on the table. A set of keys. Next to Joey’s empty pint glass. She glanced up toward the bar but found Dylan and Joey deep in conversation with Sasha. Neither of them was paying any attention to her. She swiped the keys off the table and clutched them in her fist, hidden in her lap. She snuck a glance down.
Yes, there was definitely a car key. To the Mustang? It had to be.
She couldn’t believe Joey would be careless enough to leave his keys behind. But that meant… had he left them on purpose? An effort to help her, maybe, without outwardly defying Dylan’s orders?
She was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. She stuffed the keys in her pocket and raced outside.
She spotted the Mustang parked on the far side of the parking lot. Casting a glance over her shoulder, sure that at any moment Joey or Dylan would burst out of the bar and accost her, she hurried over to the car. Since the car was old, it had no automatic door locks, so she inserted the key and turned. The door unlocked. She almost cried with relief. She had wheels. She would be able to get to Maggie.
She glanced down at the gear shaft, relieved to see that it was an automatic. Lars drove a stick, and he’d tried to teach her once, before they both quickly realized that it was far better for their relationship if they never spoke of that day again. She put the car in drive and peeled out of the parking lot.
She had saved the location for Dan McReady’s house on her phone, so she thought she could find it fairly easily. The bigger problem was that she needed a way to get him out of the house. She had no weapon and knew that it was unlikely that she’d be able to take him down on her own, or even with Maggie’s help. There was every chance he owned a gun and he had extensive experience in subduing women. She couldn’t chance it.
But she thought there might be a way she could get him out of the house. She sped toward Goody Point.
* * *
Once she was far enough away from the bar, she pulled over at a gas station. The sign out front said Fuel Mart, and she realized with a shiver that this must be where Maggie had been found on that fateful night six years ago.
She grabbed her phone. On a whim, she tried Maggie again, but there was no answer. She disconnected and went online, entering her credit card into a sketchy-looking site that promised to give her any cell phone number she needed. She wasn’t sure it would work, but sure enough, eighty dollars later and she was presented with a number.
Would it be right? Only one way to find out.
She used star-six-seven to mask her number, since she knew he would find it suspicious to get a call from an out-of-state number, then dialed the phone number she’d been given. She held her breath as it rang.
He answered. “McReady.”
She let out a grateful breath of air. “Is this Dan McReady?”
“Speaking.”
“Hi, Mr. McReady. This is Deputy Ruby Betts with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department.”
“What can I do for you, Deputy Betts?”
Eva would give him credit for how cool he was. He didn’t seem even a little fazed to be getting a call from law enforcement at ten o’clock at night. She cleared her throat. “I’m afraid we’ve had a report that there’s a fire at the McReady’s grocery store. The fire department has been dispatched, but the sheriff asked me to call you and let you know. I’m afraid I don’t know how bad it is.”
She heard him swear. Not quite so cool anymore, then.
“Mr. McReady?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m on my way. Thanks.”
Eva hung up the phone, elated. It had actually worked. She supposed there was a possibility that Dan McReady had known it was a ruse, but she didn’t think so. He’d sounded genuinely put out.
She breathed deeply. Now all she had to do was find his house, find Maggie, find Summer, get them all out safely… and then figure out how to stop Dan McReady from ever hurting another woman.