Page 59 of Mountain Challenge

Isla knew how dangerous this was—and how unfit she was for navigating the situation. So while her body screamed at her to get up and fight, she did the only thing she could—she lowered her forehead against the floor in a visible sign of submission, and held herself there for the longest seconds of her life.

His quiet words were her reward. “Think about what just happened, bitch. And about what you can do to make me happy the next time I open this door.”

The door closed behind him. Isla held her position for a few moments longer, then crawled to her friend.

31

Ry

“Fuck,” Alex said, slamming his fist on the desk. “This isn’t the right car.”

Ry swallowed through a growing sense of disappointment and hopelessness. He recognized the same feelings in Alex’s expression but, unlike his friend, Ry couldn’t afford to show his feelings. Because if Beau sent him home, Ry would really lose his mind.

No, he had to stay here, and he had to stay strong, for Isla and Laura, but also for his friends. Whatever happened, Alex and the rest of the team deserved his eternal gratitude.

Alex ran a hand through messy hair. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Ry.”

Ry squinted at the screen through eyes gritty from lack of sleep, knowing he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t slept a wink in the last thirty-six hours. “Take me through it.”

“A gray sedan was caught on camera at around the right time. I thought … it doesn’t matter what I thought. I made a mistake,”Alex said, his voice raw. “The owner of this car is a sixty-year-old lady who parked at Lyon airport’s long-term parking on her way to visit her daughter in California.”

Hell. Tears pricked at the back of Ry’s eyes, but he forced them back. This wasn’t the end. This was just one avenue of inquiry. But it was bad.

“So. Now that we know, we can go back and look for the right car,” Hugo said, coming up behind them. Alex and Ry stared at him, open-mouthed. Something was wrong when Hugo was the one coming up with positive thinking.

“What?” Hugo asked.

“Nothing. You’re right, of course,” Alex said quickly. “We need to go back to the beginning.” He clicked furiously on the keyboard in front of him. “I’ll go through the traffic cameras again. I’ve also downloaded a list of all speeding tickets in the valley from that evening. I need you two to go through it and highlight any dark sedans. It doesn’t matter if they’re gray or not.” The printer whirred to life, spitting out the pages.

Ry knew what Alex was doing—he was creating busywork for him. Because the chances of the kidnapper having been caught by a speed camera were slim at best. But Alex was also right in that they couldn’t leave anything unchecked. Thirty-six hours had gone by, and nobody needed to tell him that the next few hours were critical.

Ry sat at his desk and pored through his half of the print-out, stopping every so often to rub his tired eyes. Next to him, Hugo looked at his set of data.

An hour into the exercise, Hugo looked up. “I’ve got something.” Ry’s heart sped up. “A sedan, caught speeding in the new tunnels down in the valley at four forty.”

Ry knew the area. The tunnel wasn’t really new, but had been recently renovated. As part of the renovation, traffic cameras had been updated so that, rather than measure the speed of amoving vehicle at a specific point, they measured the speed of the vehicle over a period of time, in this case the entire stretch of tunnel, by tracking the time it took from entry to exit.

“Check it out.”

Ry looked for the grainy image. The carcouldbe the one Alain had seen hours earlier. Or not. But either way, they had no choice but to look for it.

32

Ry

Hugo muscled his way around two gendarmes to get to Ry’s desk. In his fist, he clutched a crumpled sheet of paper.

“It wasn’t about her,” he growled, his voice loud enough for everyone to hear.

“What do you mean?” Ry asked, listening to his own voice as if from far away. He blamed the sound effect on his jittery nerves. He’d been drinking coffee non-stop to buy himself a few extra hours, as his body reached its last reserves. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—go to sleep. If a breakthrough came—and they needed a breakthrough or a miracle at this point—he had to be there.

“Ry? Are you listening, man?” Hugo said, finally noticing Ry hadn’t heard a word he’d said. “I’m telling you, we’ve been looking at this all wrong. We thought this was about Isla and Laura, right? But we couldn’t find anything in their pasts that would motivate someone to take them.”

“Get on with it, Hugo, what did you find?” Alex asked, with uncharacteristic impatience.

We’re all exhausted.

“Right,” Hugo said quickly. “Well, it’s not about Isla. It’s about you.”