“I don’t know,” he said, sagging against the bed.

“Max knows we’re here. He was supposed to wait for me on the county road, but he must have seen my abandoned car. Let’s hope Paul doesn’t catch him.” I told him about Paul pulling me over. “Why not just wait until I pulled down the drive?”

“To make sure you were really alone? To intimidate you? All of the above?”

I would have nodded, but my face throbbed too much.

“Why does he want Abby?”

“She knows the truth about Heather.” I paused, glancing at him, and added, “She accidently killed her.” I explained what I knew about Heather’s plan A (getting him arrested and blackmailing his parents) and B (setting Bart up in the hopes of a payout).

“Conrad was one of the deputies who arrested me,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was part of the initial setup.”

“He’s a cancer.”

“No argument from me,” he said. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. You know he plans to kill us. I suspect he intends to make it look like a murder suicide.”

I wasn’t surprised, but I felt a new adrenaline rush. “Then we have to get out of here before he comes back.”

I’d fought him enough that my ropes weren’t terribly tight. I just needed to figure out a way to free my hands. I lifted my butt and threaded my legs through my arms, which was difficult with my chest tied to the pole. When I finally got them free, I started tugging on the rope around my middle, trying to twist my bound hands so the knot was in front of me.

“I’m worried about, Max,” I said as I kept fidgeting.

“Max is pretty scrappy. He can take care of himself.”

“We haven’t heard any gunshots, so I’m going to take that as a good sign.” Paul had really tightened the knot, so I was struggling to loosen it. “If Marco heard me, he’ll do everything in his power to get here.”

Wyatt was silent for a moment. “You can break that zip tie, but first you have to tighten it.”

I glanced up at him. “Tighten it? Are you crazy?”

“No. It’ll make it easier to break. Tighten it, then lift your arms as high as you can and then swing them down and to the sides, as hard as you can. It should break the lock.”

I’d heard it was possible, but I wasn’t sure I could do it. I wasn’t exceptionally strong.

“You can do this, Carly,” he cajoled. “You just tried to fight off a violent man. You can definitely defeat a zip tie.”

He was right. What was more, I didn’t have much of a choice. I had to do this. I tightened the zip tie with my teeth, then lifted my arms and swung them down with all my strength. To my surprise, the lock flew off, freeing my hands.

“It would have been a hell of a lot easier to do that than untie knots in a cold shed last December,” I said as I rubbed my wrists.

“Why were your hands tied?” he asked, his voice sounding strangled.

Crap. I hadn’t meant to say that. I started picking at the knots securing me to the pole. “It was while I was looking for Lula.”

“Why were your hands tied?” he repeated.

“Do you really want to know, Wyatt?” I asked, starting to get pissed.

His tone equally irritated, he responded, “I asked, didn’t I?”

I’d kept this from him for so long. I was tired of carrying this burden. “I started out looking for Lula, but I stirred up enough shit that the people who were out to get her kidnapped Greta, thinking she knew where to find Lula. Since her disappearance had more leads, I started looking for her. Then they kidnapped me.”

“What? Who was lookin’ for Lula? Bingham?”

“No, Wyatt,” I said in disgust, finally getting the knot a little loose. “Bingham saved me, although I had no delusions that he did it to save me. He wanted Lula, especially after I told him she was pregnant.”

“So who the hell was it?”

“Are you telling me that you didn’t find it odd that the funeral home director who had ties to Carson Purdy died around the time Lula went into hiding?”

He looked shell-shocked. “I…”

“Lula was running drugs for them. That’s where she went on most of her trips when she took off. Only she didn’t return with their money on her last trip. As you can imagine, they wanted it back.”

“You’re telling me that Pete Mobley was runnin’ a drug ring? That he wasn’t used by his employees like the sheriff said?”

“I’m not sure how much authority Mobley had in the running it. He didn’t handle the pressure well, which makes me suspect Carson was in charge, but yeah, he and another guy kept it up after Carson died.” He continued to stare at me in disbelief. “They wanted their money, Wyatt, and they were willing to do whatever they needed to do to get it.”

“Which included kidnapping you out of the back of the tavern,” he said in a flat voice.

“He drugged me to get me out. The same drug that killed Hank’s daughter.”

His face lost color. “Jesus, Carly…”

“He drugged Greta too, but thankfully she didn’t react as badly as I did. I’d been talking to Bingham about my search for Lula, giving him updates, and when I was kidnapped, Marco humbled himself to ask Bingham for help. Bingham went to Mobley and found out where his partner, Shane Jones, was keeping me and Greta. Sure, he did it because he thought Lula was there too, but he saved us nonetheless.” I finally got the knot worked loose and pulled the rope free. “I would have died if not for Bingham. Twice over. Because if those drugs hadn’t killed me, Shane would have.”

I got to my feet and headed to the kitchen to look for a knife or scissors to cut his ropes, but it was the barest kitchen I’d ever seen, and I had to open multiple drawers to find a dull butcher knife. “But Bingham refused to let Marco take me to a hospital, probably because he killed Shane Jones too, and there would be too many questions. He sent a medic to stay with me at Marco’s, and they hooked me up to an IV. I was unconscious until Tuesday, and then it took me over a week to recover. So, yes, Bingham saved my life, but it had nothing to do with me being on his payroll.”

Wyatt watched me walk toward him, regret in his eyes. “Carly…I’m sorry.”

“I really don’t want to hear it, Wyatt,” I said, my voice tight. “There’s no apology that can make up for the way you treated me.” Purging that out of my system had been cathartic, but also emotional and exhausting. Plus, I was really starting to feel the places where Paul Conrad’s heavy shoe had connected with my ribs.

“Nevertheless, I’m sorry.”

Ignoring him, I sawed through the ropes on his legs. He scooted forward a bit, and I worked on his arm restraints, setting the knife on the bed. When he was free, he swung his arms a couple of times, then rubbed them. “Where’s your car?”

“Down the county road, but your truck’s out front.”

“The asshole took the keys.”

“Then let’s hope he didn’t take my keys too. He didn’t get them when he stopped me, but he likely stopped and grabbed them when he left.”