Cole: The Demons: Book 2 (A Phoenix Club Serial Thriller)

CH 5: Devil in the Details

Thirty Minutes Earlier

The car turned into the dark alley, swallowed up by night shadows. The engine cut off and went silent but for a low, monotonous tic-tic inside the motor.

Cole sat behind the wheel, hearing nothing but the thump of his pulse in his ears. He picked up his cell and looked at the text message, his insides numb with terror.

'Keep quiet or the kid dies. Go somewhere private and text me back.'

Who would do this—and why?

Cole tried desperately not to connect this with the message from a few days ago. This had nothing to do with his past. How could it? Everyone from that part of his past was dead.

Everyone.

Cole squeezed his eyes shut as tears burned behind his eyelids and he subconsciously rubbed his wrist, though the bracelet was tucked inside his wallet.

He opened his eyes and blinked, then cleared his throat. Whoever was at the other end of the text—had Maddy. And Cole had to figure out what the fuck was happening before he went back to Max and Horatio.

He was scared shitless to open this Pandora's Box, but what choice did he have? God, this can't be happening? Yet, somehow, it was. Cole gripped the phone with numb fingers and sent a text to Maddy's cell: 'I'm alone. Who are you? What have you done with Maddy?'

Minutes ticked by with no reply.

Cole opened the driver's door and climbed out when it became hard to breathe inside the car. He took deep breaths of the chilly night air but still felt like he was suffocating like the world itself was closing in around him.

The cell buzzed and Cole flinched hard. The phone slipped from his hand and struck the pavement with a hollow clack.

"Fuck." Cole scooped it up, his hands shaking as he opened the text message.

'Who am I? Here's a clue.'

The cell buzzed again, and a link popped up. Cole stared at it, afraid of where it would take him. After a moment of looking at the link, he realized it was to a TV news site. Cole continued to hesitate, then finally clicked it.

On the news site was a video of a reporter standing at the edge of a frozen lake, facing the camera. Behind him, further out, was a large hole in the ice as if something massive had broken through. The caption below the video read: Prison Bus Crash.

"The police have yet to speculate what caused the prison bus to crash into the lake," the reporter said. "It's possible the bus driver lost control on the icy roads, though the police haven't ruled it an accidental crash. Why? Sources tell us that the bus was transporting death row inmates from Washington state to a penitentiary in eastern Idaho. Because the state of Washington abolished the death penalty in 2018, the inmates of death row were being transferred to the Idaho prison where Capital Punishment has yet to be eliminated, to await their execution."

Cole leaned against the car, confused about this clue. How did this video tell him who had taken Maddy?

"We were presented with a list of the inmates on the bus," the reporter continued. "The prison bus has yet to be retrieved from the bottom of the lake, so it isn't known yet if any of the inmates or guards escaped. As a precaution, statewide alerts and checkpoints have been put in place. Blood was found on the ice at the edge of the submersion spot, so there is speculation that at least one person made it out of the bus before it went down. Whether that person was a guard or an inmate—and whether they survived—is yet to be determined."