Never Let Her Go

NEVER LET HER GO A.M. STRONGSONYA SARGENT West Street Publishing This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to events or places, or real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Copyright © 2023 by A. M. Strong & Sonya Sargent All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Cover art and interior design by Bad Dog Media, LLC. For the real Bill Newport… Keep on reading! CONTENTS PrologueChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31Chapter 32Chapter 33Chapter 34Chapter 35Chapter 36Chapter 37Chapter 38Chapter 39Chapter 40Chapter 41Chapter 42Chapter 43Chapter 44Chapter 45Chapter 46Chapter 47Chapter 48Chapter 49Chapter 50Chapter 51Chapter 52Chapter 53Chapter 54Chapter 55Chapter 56Chapter 57Chapter 58Chapter 59Chapter 60Chapter 61Chapter 62Chapter 63Chapter 64Chapter 65Chapter 66Chapter 67Chapter 68Chapter 69Chapter 70Chapter 71Chapter 72Chapter 73Chapter 74Chapter 75Chapter 76Chapter 77Chapter 78Chapter 79Chapter 80Chapter 81Chapter 82Chapter 83Ready for more Patterson Blake?Get the Patterson Blake Prequel for freeAlso by A.M. Strong & Sonya SargentAbout the Authors PROLOGUE Lexie hurried through the midnight darkness. Behind her, the lights of Mackey’s Discount Mart, the twenty-four-hour convenience store where she worked the evening shift, receded into the gloom. Further away, a faint rumble of cars carried on the stirring breeze—a constant soundtrack courtesy of Interstates 40 and 27 that pinned downtown Amarillo in their crosshairs. Pulling her coat closed and zipping it up, she pressed on. The day had been hot—ninety degrees—but an unseasonable cold front was moving through, and the overnight temperature was forecast to dip into the mid-fifties. Not exactly Arctic conditions but nippy enough for residents of the Texas Panhandle, especially in August. Not for the first time, Lexie wished she had a car. The walk to her accommodation from the convenience store was twelve blocks and took twenty minutes. That was too long for a twenty-six-year-old woman to be walking alone at this time of night when the streets were empty. But she had no choice, at least right now. Maybe when her situation improved, something she expected to happen soon, Lexie would buy a car. She might even quit the convenience store and find an apartment in a safer part of the city. For now, though, her options were limited. She reached an intersection, glanced around, stepped off the curb, and hurried across. As she reached the opposite side, a movement caught her eye. A man appeared. He stumbled out of an office building doorway, clearly homeless. A shopping cart was pushed against the wall, it’s wire framed interior loaded with bulging plastic bags and dirty clothing. She saw bedding arranged inside the doorway and suddenly felt lucky. Her situation might not be great, but at least she wasn’t sleeping rough on the streets. The homeless man moved into a pool of light under a streetlamp, and she got a better look at him. Wild and tangled hair. Ragged clothing. Ratty beard. A piece of nylon rope wound through the belt loops of his pants. He carried a liquor bottle in a brown paper bag. Two more bottles sat by his makeshift bed, both of them empty. When he noticed Lexie coming toward him, the man took a swig from the bottle and shuffled forward. His intent was clear. She changed course and crossed the road, then picked up the pace, eager to get past before she was forced to engage with him. He stopped at the curb and watched her as if the road were a boundary beyond which he could not venture. His meager possessions, the tattered bedding, and assorted junk stashed in his shopping cart were too valuable to leave unattended, even for the few moments it would take to hassle her for a dollar or two. A car sped past, briefly catching her in the glare of its headlights before darkness swallowed the vehicle up to leave nothing but a pair of twin red pinpricks, swiftly fading, to mark its passage. With the homeless man behind her, Lexie crossed back over and continued her journey. Nine blocks to go. She passed a vacant lot ringed by chain link. Until a few months ago, it had been an abandoned discount beverage store with empty apartments above, their windows broken out, but now it was slated for redevelopment. A sign on the fence announced new luxury condos coming soon. The sidewalls of the buildings on both sides still bore ghostly impressions of the demolished structure in a patchwork of faded brick and plaster squares separated by the skeletal imprints of walls and a roof that no longer existed. As she reached the corner of the lot, another set of headlamps flared ahead of her, turning out of a side street. The car crawled along at several miles under the speed limit. It was an older model sedan that sent the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. Was it the same one that had driven past a few minutes ago, moving in the other direction? She couldn’t be sure. Lexie watched warily as it approached, the driver nothing but a black shape sitting behind the wheel. She was relieved when it passed her by without slowing further. Lexie glanced over her shoulder. The car was eighty feet away and making another turn onto a side street. She watched it disappear from view, then looked forward again, hurrying down the block. At the next road, Lexie stopped to catch her breath, then pressed on. Six blocks to go now. She didn’t see the shape separate itself from the shadows of an alley running next to a shuttered grocery store until it was too late. Unlike the homeless man a couple of blocks to her rear,