“Are you okay?” Benning closed the door, his focus on Ana, and her entire body heated as though he’d physically trailed a path down across her clavicle bone. He closed the small distance between them, reaching out, but she dodged his attempt to touch her. His expression fell, his hand falling to his side. “I thought you’d been hit.”
“I’m fine.” Lie. The pain crushed the air from her lungs. She’d most likely need stitches—maybe a surgeon—but she couldn’t worry about that right now. They were vulnerable out here in the open. Targets. Blood trickled into the waistband of her slacks, the ache the only thing keeping her in the moment. He had every reason to hate her for what she’d done, but right now the way he looked at her, as though she were the only woman in the entire world, weighed heavy on her chest.
It’d be so easy to fall back into old habits with him, to remember the way his entire face lit up when she walked into a room, the promises of forever he’d whispered into her ear from between the sheets, how happy they’d been simply curled up in front of the fireplace. It’d be easy to become attached to the man she’d walked away from, but she’d come back to Sevierville for one thing: to find Owen Reeves.
She couldn’t do that without the truth.
Ana clamped her hand to her side, awakening her pain receptors all over again, and wrenched open the driver-side door. Every minute they wasted out here was another minute Owen was in the hands of his kidnapper. She wanted to bring him home. Needed to. “Get in.”
Benning rounded the back of the SUV as she settled into the front and pushed the ignition button to start the engine. The interior filled with his wild, pine-and-dirt scent as he climbed inside, and she breathed a bit deeper, held on to it as much as she could in an attempt to dull the pain in her side. She’d missed that smell, a combination of soap and outdoors. Missed him.
“You can’t go back to your house. The shooter could be waiting for you there.” She maneuvered the SUV out of the hospital parking lot as sirens echoed down the street. The officers who’d been stationed to watch Olivia had called in backup, and while Owen Reeves’s kidnapping fell under federal jurisdiction, they’d need all the help they could get. Ana hit the call button on the steering wheel, the line connecting almost instantly.
“Calling for help already?” JC asked. “This wouldn’t be about Sevierville PD reporting shots fired at LeConte Medical Center, would it?”
“You read my mind. We’ve got an unknown shooter in a black SUV, no plates and local PD closing in on the scene.” She pressed her foot against the accelerator, the weight of Benning’s attention increasing as they sped from the hospital. “Think you could take care of that for me?”
“I live to serve.” JC’s laugh fought to lighten the tension tightening down her back, but Ana had a feeling that as long as Benning was involved, nothing would help. “I checked the traffic cams around the time of the kidnapping. There’s no sign of the getaway vehicle. I’ve got IT working their magic, but someone brought down the cameras beforehand or knew where they were positioned so they could stay clear. We’ve got nothing.”
Which meant the kidnapping had been premeditated. This was the work of a professional.
Benning ran one hand through his hair, leveraging his elbow on the passenger-side door. Frustration played clearly across his expression, and in that moment her instincts said there was more to this investigation than a simple kidnapping.
“Thanks, JC. Sevierville PD is about to bag a listening device I found attached to the back of the girl’s hospital bed. I need you to see if you can trace it back to its owner. Call me if you find something.” She ended the call, checked the rearview mirror for any vehicles behind them, then slammed her foot against the brakes. The seat belt pressed into her chest as her body weight shifted forward from momentum.
“What are you doing?” Benning straightened, braced against the dashboard. Pushing his dark, shoulder-length hair behind one ear, he turned on her. “The shooter could be following us.”
“You brought me into this investigation by requesting me specifically, but I can’t do my job if you’re keeping information from me. I think now’s a good time to tell me who took your son, don’t you?” Heated rubber filled her lungs, clearing his scent from her system. She faced him. “The kidnapper contacted you before that call in the hospital, didn’t he? He warned you not to involve the police, so you thought if you reached out to a former acquaintance who happened to be an FBI agent, he wouldn’t know. The listening device, the rifle shot through the window... This guy is a professional, Benning, and he has targeted you. What does he want?”
He stared out the windshield. Seconds ticked by, a minute. Pressure built behind her sternum the longer he took to answer, but when he turned that bright blue gaze to hers, her gut said she wasn’t going to like the next words out of his mouth. “He wants the skull I found.”
“A HUMAN SKULL?” she asked.
Snowflakes
