Lainey glanced at me. “What?”
“It might matter. You can’t know for certain it doesn’t.”
Her lips compressed into a thin line. “Yes, I can. The woman had a ‘nervous’ breakdown from the stress of Emersyn ‘going missing.’” The stress she put on some of the words suggested she didn’t believe them. “In all likelihood, she’s floating on a cloud of vodka and valium.”
Freddie frowned. “Emersyn doesn’t know that.”
“Did she say why she was coming home?” She tucked her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Why she’d go back when she was out? I didn’t think she wanted to go back at all.”
“You sent her the fake IDs.”
“That’s not important.”
It might be.
“You keep doing that,” Freddie accused. “You sent her the IDs, she trusted you—but she didn’t call you before she went back?”
“No,” Lainey snapped. “She didn’t. I would have told her not to do it.”
I believed her. “Who would threaten her to force her to come home?”
“Her uncle.” She didn’t even hesitate with that answer. “I’ve tried to see her all week, that’s why I answered your message.”
“You haven’t been able to see her?”
“No.” She frowned, the struggle playing out on her face was obvious even to me. But Freddie got a little closer. The nearness bothered her because she took a couple of steps away. “She doesn’t want me contacting her through their houses and she doesn’t appear to have her phone. I can’t leave a message in case…”
“In case someone else hears it.” Freddie pivoted and stared at me. “We have to go and get her.”
I wasn’t arguing.
“Wait—you’re going to get her?” Lainey glanced from one of us to the other.
“Yes.” It wasn’t a matter of if.
“Count me in.”
“No.”
“What?” Lainey charged toward me. “I’m her friend. I came here to help and I know things that can be useful.”
“Like what?”
She opened her mouth, then snapped it closed again. Freddie glanced at me over her head, his eyes held a question. I didn’t know what the question was though, because the woman radiated impatience.
“No, if I tell you, you’ll just leave me here.”
“I’ll just leave you here if you don’t tell me.” She wasn’t the important one. “We know where their houses are…”
“So you go after them one place at a time? The Sharpes own over half a dozen residences, easy, and have access to more than a dozen more.”
“Then tell us where you think they are.”
“I don’t know.” The stress she put on the last word said she was telling the truth.
“Then where have you been trying to reach her?” Freddie demanded. “If you don’t know where she is, you have to have a way of getting in touch with her.”
“I do,” Lainey admitted. “But it’s been completely quiet since the conversation we had last week.” She shook her head. “This is my fault.”
“How?”
“Because we added to the rewards—my grandfather did and…and a friend of ours did. I promised her it was only because we wanted to get any news before they did, so I could warn her, but…”
“But?” Freddie demanded.
“But it didn’t work if she chose to go back to them.” She paced away and Freddie shot me a look. I shook my head.
“If you can’t help, then we need to go.” We’d already spent all these hours, only to find out she didn’t know any more than we did.
Maybe.
“I didn’t say I couldn’t help.” Chin lifting, she gave me a long look. “I said I wanted to help.”
“No.”
“Fine,” Freddie said. “Don’t listen to him. Help us. Tell us where he would take her. Tell us why she didn’t want to go back in the first place. Tell us why she would listen to him if he threatened us.”
“He threatened you?”
“Yes,” Freddie answered without a second glance at me. “He sent photographs of all of us—with crosshairs on them. It was definitely a threat.”
“She went back to protect you,” she said more to herself than to us. “She never wants me around him. He definitely didn’t want us to be friends, but then…ugh.” The sound she released bordered on painful.
Yeah, I was done. “I’m going.” The last was a warning to Freddie and I pivoted on my heel. Seeing Lainey was supposed to help. But if she wouldn’t part with her secrets, we would have to find Emersyn a different way.
“Wait!”
I paused, but I didn’t turn around. The door to the car slammed and then the trunk opened. Glancing back, I frowned as she pulled a bag out and dropped a couple of things into the trunk before closing it.
“I’m coming.”
Freddie stared at her. “Why did you get rid of your phone?”
“Because she isn’t the only one who knows how to avoid being caught if she doesn’t want to be. Now, I probably have another half hour before we really need to get out of here. If I’m lucky. So can we go?”
Taking her was a bad idea. She was Starling’s friend. I couldn’t let anything happen to her. “I don’t want to be responsible for your safety.”
She pulled out a taser from her pocket and pressed the button on the side. It crackled and sparked. “I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.” After putting it back in her pocket, she headed to the hill I’d walked down while carrying her bag. “Is that your car?”
Not waiting for us, she lugged the suitcase all the way to the car then reached for the backdoor handle.
I’d locked it, so it didn’t move.
Setting the bag down, she turned and looked at us.
“If she wants to help,” Freddie said. “We let her help.”
“But is she going to help?”
“I’ll tell you what I can on the way to wherever you’re going,” Lainey called down to us.
“But why would she trust us?” That bothered me. “She doesn’t know us.”
“No,” Freddie said. “But she knows Boo-Boo. Didn’t you see the look on her face when I played the message?”
I shrugged.
“Do you trust me?”
Frowning at Freddie’s question, I glanced at him. “Yes.”
“Then trust me right now. She’s trusting us because Boo-Boo does. I don’t know what her beef is or why, and right now I don’t care. I just want to find Boo-Boo.”
“Milo and Liam won’t like this.” Not that their dislike of a choice had ever stopped me before.
“I don’t care,” Freddie said.
Agreed.
I climbed the hill with Freddie. He grabbed her suitcase when I unlocked the car, and stowed it in the back of the SUV we’d taken. She climbed into the back seat without waiting for either of us and then settled in.
“Faster would be better,” she told me as I got behind the wheel and I glanced at her in the rearview mirror.