“You aren’t going to be able to stop me.” Mitch smiled and lifted the phone to his ear. He hummed then, a light tune . . .

A tune that Jax had heard Sarah hum, when they’d been in that little motel near the prison.

“Hello, Sarah . . .” Mitch murmured into the phone as he kept his eyes on Jax. “Are you ready to come and find your lover?”

“I’M READY,” SARAH said. She was more than ready. Gabe could track the phone, just like he’d done before, and they’d have—

“You’re not tracing the call this time. I learn from my mistakes.”

She wasn’t so sure he did. “Proof of life,” Sarah demanded.

He laughed. “Screw that. You know you want him either way.”

“Sarah!”

She tensed. She’d heard Jax’s shout. Heard it so clearly.

“Stay away, Sarah! He wasn’t dead! Stay—”

“Come find him,” the bastard taunted. The line went dead.

Sarah looked up. Emma was on the phone with Gabe. They’d been waiting for this, hoping to get the lock when the call came through.

Emma shook her head.

No.

“Where is he?” Carlos asked as he paced in that narrow room. “Where is he?”

VICTORIA STARED DOWN at the bulletin she’d just gotten. Well, it was a bulletin that the desk sergeant had received, but since her current job was to monitor the intel that came through the police station and report back to Gabe, she’d made a point of snagging that bulletin.

She read it three times to make sure there wasn’t a mistake.

Four.

Then she ran toward Wade and Gabe.

“We didn’t get him,” she heard Gabe snap to Wade. They were behind a group of cops, all leaning over a computer. “The techs didn’t have time to locate the phone—”

Victoria cleared her throat. “Gabe.”

He glanced over at her.

“We need to talk. Now.” Her hand fisted on the paper. “Come on.” Because the cops hadn’t made the connection with the bulletin, not yet. After all, why pay that much attention to a bulletin that had come in from so far away?

She hurried toward the first empty office she could spot. Gabe and Wade followed her inside.

“Viki, what is it?” Wade said. “We need to be out with—”

She lifted the paper. “Murphy Jacobs escaped from prison.”

“Fucking, no,” Gabe said, his eyes widening as he snatched that paper from her.

“He was in the infirmary because of—of some accident that had happened . . .” An accident that seemed to have occurred when Sarah was visiting with him. Only Sarah hadn’t mentioned an accident to Viki. “He was cuffed, the guard had just cuffed him—but Murphy had a key. He got free and he killed the guard on his way out.”

“Sonofabitch.” Wade looked shell-shocked. Victoria felt the same way.

“He’s been missing since then. The cops are searching everywhere, but if anyone can vanish . . .”

“It will be Murphy,” Gabe finished.

She nodded.

Wade took the paper from Gabe. “He’s not vanishing.”

He already had vanished! Slipped out of a maximum security prison and gone—

“He stayed in jail for eleven years.” Wade’s eyes burned with gold fire. “He got out now for one reason.”

Gabe’s brow furrowed. “Sarah went up there because she wanted him to tell her who the perp is. Sarah thought Murphy knew the guy’s identity.”

“And the bastard did know,” Wade said. “But he wasn’t going to let Sarah be threatened. The perp had gone after the one person Murphy cares about. So now Murphy is out—”

Victoria backed up a step. Murphy Jacobs terrified her. “You think he’s coming here?” No, that wasn’t possible. New Orleans was too far away from his prison. He’d have to get transportation. Not a plane, no way would he risk that kind of exposure. But he could hitchhike. And, hell, so many big rigs traveled down to the Crescent City. If he’d gotten a ride from one of those drivers . . .

He could already be in the city.

“I think he’s coming to protect Sarah. I think he’s going to kill whoever tried to hurt her. Because that’s what Murphy does best . . .”

Kill.

Gabe already had his phone out. “We have to call Sarah. Now.”

“HE’S NOT DEAD,” Sarah repeated. Jax’s words kept replaying in her head. He’d told her those words for a reason.

Eddie Guthrie was dead. She knew that. Victoria had gone down to the police station and confirmed the guy’s cause of death. The three cops were dead—they’d been loaded into the body bags and driven away from Jax’s burning house.

Brent West was still in the hospital.

Who isn’t dead?

“How many people has Jax killed?” It was a question that she had to ask.

Emma’s mouth dropped open in shock. “What? Look, right now isn’t the time—”

“Jax isn’t a murderer,” Carlos said, throwing back his shoulders “No matter what you might think. Why the guy was so crazy about you I don’t—”

“Mitch Fontaine.”

Carlos clamped his lips together.

“You knew about him, didn’t you, Carlos?”

Carlos looked away.

Emma was staring at Sarah in confusion. “He . . . he killed—?”

“He’s not dead,” Sarah repeated Jax’s words. Jax wouldn’t have said that unless he thought she’d make the connection to the killer. But there was only one man Jax had confessed to killing. The man who’d beat him and Charlene. She lunged for Carlos and grabbed him again.

“Stop doing that!” he snapped.

“What did Mitch look like?”

Carlos glared.

“Do not push me!” Sarah yelled at him. “I don’t have time for that crap. Jax needs me, and I’ll be damned if I let him down.” She shook the guy. So what if he was a foot taller and probably seventy pounds heavier? She was going to make him talk. “Did you ever see a picture of Mitch? Did you—”

“Blond, like Jax. About his size.” His words were grudging. “Darker eyes . . . saw a picture just once. Jax burned that shit after that.”

“Mitch Fontaine,” Sarah whispered. She fumbled and had her phone out again. She—

The phone rang. She nearly dropped it. Her fingers swiped across the screen. “Hello?” Sarah answered, voice scared and tense.

“Sarah!” Gabe’s voice was just as tense. “You need to come into the station. Right now. Come in.”

“No, no, Gabe, listen.” She started walking around that little room. “I’ve got a lead that I need you to follow. A guy named Mitch Fontaine. He was Jax’s—” Hell, she didn’t know how to explain this. “Stepfather. He disappeared years ago, but I think . . . I think he’s in New Orleans. I think he has Jax and—”

“And I think your father is in town, Sarah!”

Once again, the phone nearly slipped from her fingers.

“He busted out after you left. The guards took him to the infirmary . . .”

Because he’d pushed Jax into attacking him. Choking him.

“He was cuffed, but he managed to get a key from the guards . . .”

When they’d swarmed him and pulled Jax away. It had just been a pile of bodies for a moment. They’d all been so close. It would have been incredibly easy to take the key from a guard then.

“He killed a guard and vanished. Murphy is out, Sarah. You need to get back here. We need—”

“I need to find Jax.” He was the only thing that could matter right then. “Please, Gabe, just send me everything the cops have on Mitch Fontaine. Send me everything that LOST has. I need it now.”

“Sarah . . .”

“My father isn’t going to hurt me.”

“You put a gun to his head,” he reminded her.

She didn’t need the reminder. “I need to know about Mitch Fontaine.”

A pause, then . . . “Give me five minutes.”

She hung up the phone. Emma and Carlos were both watching her. Sarah put her hand to her temple. Rubbed. Tried to figure out just what this perp would do. “You wouldn’t go back to the riverfront . . . you already had a victim there. This is your endgame, so you’d want to go to a place where you felt like you had the most control. A place that you’d been using . . . this whole time.”