Free Fatal Intent (Desert Heat Book 3) by Jamie Jeffries

even, if she wanted. He needed to make Alex see that it was too dangerous to print one word about the Patriots, though. He had to convince her.
    ~~~
    By the time Alex and Jesse got back to Casa Grande, the Student Union building was closed, but some of the group were milling around outside. After a little debate and a check with her housemates to see if it was okay, Alex invited them over to her house so they’d all be in one place when the police came to interview them about Dawn being missing. It didn’t take long.
    While officers were talking to anyone who had any ideas, especially Jesse, who’d apparently heard from her last, she got Dylan’s text that he was on the way. Now she was anxious to get these people cleared out of the house. As soon as Dylan got here, she wanted to join the search effort.
    Authorities had already established that Dawn had left her parents’ house at about the same time she texted Jesse. The text didn’t mention she was out of town, or when she’d see him, only that she had some plans she’d be presenting at Thursday’s meeting.
    Alex thought it a little curious that Jesse hadn’t raised the alarm sooner, but the police seemed satisfied that he’d had no reason to. He willingly turned over his cell phone and when he was through with the interrogation, told Alex he only heard from Dawn rarely anymore. Dawn got annoyed when he just called to say hi, as if she had no time for anything that wasn’t school or her group.
    Alex believed it. It was the way she’d been with Dylan for a while, after the kidnapping and before the murder in the park. She dropped her eyes when Jesse revealed his hurt at Dawn’s treatment of him. Had Dylan been that hurt? She had to make it up to him, somehow.
    Now, she was elated he was on his way. It had only been four days since she’d seen him, about the same time since Jesse heard from Dawn, she realized. She couldn’t wait to see him again. In a gesture of solidarity with the sad boy in front of her, she patted his shoulder. “It will be okay, Jesse. We’ll find her.” It was a foolish promise to make, but it cheered him up.
    At last, the police had finished their interviews, and everyone was leaving. Jesse asked Alex if she would join the search and she told him her boyfriend was on the way to do exactly that, and they’d see him later. Alex wasn’t sure if Dylan would want to rest first and search in the morning, or get started with the earliest responders. She would wait for him, either way.
    The search area was a nightmare. Twenty-one miles was nothing in a car, on a highway. Searching along the route, which included farmland, rough desert terrain and the outskirts of the city, was something else again. They were going to need a massive amount of manpower.
    There was no guarantee Dawn hadn’t been abducted along the way, the most likely scenario, since her car hadn’t been found abandoned in the time she’d been missing. Alex knew better than almost anyone how easy it was to make someone disappear like that.
    Her housemates had gone to bed despite the crowd in the living room, so as she waited alone after everyone else left, Alex had nothing to do except think of Dawn. Was she afraid? Desperately thirsty? Injured or dead? Did someone have her, doing unspeakable things to her? Alex worked herself into quite a state before Dylan arrived. When she heard his vehicle stop at the curb and the door slam, she flew out of the house and into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably.
    “Hey,” he soothed, wrapping himself around her like a shield. “Tell me. Did they find her? Is she…?”
    “No,” she managed to say against his chest. “I’m just… I know what she’s going through.”
    Dylan held her even closer. “Let’s go in the house,” he said. “We can join the search tomorrow. Right now, I need to hold you.”
    Alex didn’t intend to be a baby. The panic attacks came rarely now, and she knew what would trigger them and what would help. She