Chapter 25: Where It Began

"Lydia, keep talking," I said. "Tell me what you see."

"Trees. A guardrail. Please, Imogen, he's looking at me."

The line went dead.

Jasper was already moving.

He had the truck keys in one hand and the gun in the other, and Nathan was on the phone with the task force before I got my coat.

"Trace the burner," Jasper said. "Now. Tell them it's a kidnapping in progress."

"They're asking if you're sure," Nathan said.

"Tell them a woman just called from his car."

I went to the hall table and opened the small velvet box.

Two cufflinks lay in it, diamonds set in a jagged line.

Preston's heartbeat, recorded on our wedding night.

I shoved the box into my pocket.

"What is that for?" Jasper asked.

"He'll know them," I said. "If he sees them, he'll stop and look."

"You are not going near that car."

"Then keep me close enough to hear it."

He looked at me for one hard second, and then he nodded.

We drove north on the Pacific Coast Highway with the sun going down on the left side of the road.

Nathan sat in the back with the phone against his ear, repeating what he heard.

"Cell tower puts the SUV south of the Bixby bridge. Northbound. Agents are scrambling a helicopter, twenty minutes at best."

"Local police?"

"Two units, but they're forty minutes out from either direction. A rockslide closed the road above him."

"So he can't go anywhere," I said.

"Neither can they," said Jasper. "That's why he picked it."

The cliff road came up in the dusk, a narrow ribbon of asphalt with a guardrail and a long drop on the ocean side.

It was the same turnout where I had driven an empty car off the edge.

It was the same stretch where Jasper had pulled me out of the water by my collar.

I did not say that out loud.

Jasper said it for me.

"He's bringing her to where it began," he said. "He thinks it ends the same way."

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