Game of Fear (Montgomery Justice #3)(77)

Oh God. They knew.

She blinked. She really was dead.

Niko remained stone-faced, but the red-haired man looked down at her, a strange, sick smile on his lips. The Warden looked absolutely livid.

“What did you do?” he demanded. “Justin Connell is missing. So is Dave Weaver. How did you get past the system? You and Floyd are the only ones with enough skills and guts to pull this off.”

Ashley tried to look innocent. “I . . . I don’t—”

The red-haired man bent down, close to her ear, his cologne cloying. “Please lie,” he said softly, his breath a whisper across her cheek and neck. “I want you to lie. Make the Warden mad enough to give you to me. There are so many things I want to do to you.”

He stood back, laughing.

The Warden paced, watching her, his expression chillingly familiar. A moment flashed into her mind. The moment before he’d murdered Fletcher in cold blood.

Ashley bit her lip hard enough to wince and didn’t say a word.

The Warden clutched her throat with his right hand, squeezing. “Tell me what you did.”

She tried to suck in a breath, but he pressed harder on her windpipe.

“What’s our system’s vulnerability?”

He let up for a moment, but she refused to respond. Furious, he cut off her air supply again.

Spots circled Ashley’s eyes. Oh God. She was going to die. Deb would never know this wasn’t her fault. This was Ashley’s fault. She’d hacked her way into dying.

A tear leaked out and ran down her temple.

Her vision grayed.

“Sir, are you certain you want her dead?” Niko said. “I might be able to convince her to tell us . . .” Niko’s voice faded away.

Ashley fought to stay conscious, but it was no use.

God, she hoped Justin and Dave made it to safety. Someone needed to tell the world what these people were doing.

A knock interrupted, and the pressure on her throat eased a bit.

“Warden, we may have spotted them on a traffic light surveillance camera. They hitchhiked with a trucker a few hours ago. We’re trying to locate the semi now.”

“Find them. Kill them. Kill whoever is with them. Leave no witnesses, do you understand? No more loose ends.

“Your fault,” the Warden rasped, tightening his grip on her throat even more.

Ashley’s fist clenched and she tried to buck his hands free, but there was nothing she could do. The spots faded. The gray shifted. And then her world turned to nothing.




It didn’t take Zach long to drive to the end of the valley and up into the foothills. The Jeep eked its way up the snow-packed road. Without the four-wheel-drive feature and the chains on the tires, they’d have plummeted into a ditch several times over.

When Zach stopped the vehicle, he turned in his seat. “Maybe I shouldn’t go in. Too many unknown faces might upset them too much. You and Deb should be the ones to go in. I’ll wait here.”

Gabe breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. “Good plan.” He held out his hand to Deb. “Let’s go. This is going to be hard.”

They picked their way across the rocky driveway to a multilevel log home.

Gabe knocked on the door.

An older woman answered, her face lined with sadness. Gabe couldn’t see any resemblance to Whitney Blackstone.

“Mr. Montgomery?” the woman queried, her voice a bit shaky.

“Yes, ma’am, and this is a friend of mine, Deb Lansing. We’d hoped to speak with you about your daughter.”

An older man stepped through from the kitchen. His gray hair had thinned at the top, but what he had stood on end. “Whitney says you’re related to Patrick Montgomery. The cop who tried to save our Shannon?”

Gabe bristled a bit. “Yes, Patrick Montgomery was my father.”

“We never did get a chance to thank him.”

“He passed away five years ago,” Gabe said, wanting nothing more than to shift the conversation.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Whitney walked into the room, and the resemblance she bore to the rest of the Montgomery family hit Gabe like a slug to the gut.

Shannon’s mother gestured. “This is our other daughter, Whitney. She and Shannon were best friends before she came to live with us after her mother died. She can probably tell you even more than we can. Whitney, this young man and his friend are here to talk about Shannon.”

Whitney nodded to Gabe but didn’t move near him. “Yes, Mom, Mr. Montgomery and I have met before.” Then she extended her hand to Deb. “I just learned of your travails a moment ago, Ms. Lansing. I’m sorry about your sister’s disappearance. I hope you locate her soon.”

Gabe raised his brows. Whitney Blackstone had some serious connections if she’d learned about Ashley this fast. She’d obviously checked them out since his phone call. He should have kept closer tabs on his half sister over the years. Just who was she?

Mrs. Devlin looked at everyone in the room, as if uncertain what to say. Finally, she pointed to the fireplace. “These pictures may help familiarize you with my daughter Shannon. She was an amazing girl. Brilliant. Funny. Gentle. A mother couldn’t ask for more.” Her voice broke again.

Gabe stepped closer to look at the series of photos decorating the large mantel. Half were of a smiling blonde teenager who looked amazingly like Ashley Lansing.