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What had he been looking at?
Chapter 10
Day 7 with Blackbird
Lucas
I stared at the screen of my computer as minutes came and went, unable to make myself do what I wanted—and knew I shouldn’t.
She’s just getting into your head. They probably all will. They’ll all lie.
I thought about the paper with the notes on it about Atlanta, and tried to tell myself that that was the truth. That everything Briar had said about parents and a fiancé had been a lie.
But I had seen the grief when she’d said his name. I had seen the faint tan line on her finger from a ring. And now I was about to break the rules and destroy myself to find out the truth about her when it was the last thing I should ever know.
I pulled up a news page and went to the list of breaking news links. My eyes darted down to the second one, and my hand tightened on the cursor.
Missing Georgia woman, ‘Briar Chapman’, details.
Just below that, another.
Georgia Governor, Judy Armstrong, speaks out about missing future daughter-in-law.
Forcing myself to breathe, I clicked on the top link and dropped my head to stare at the desk.
I was fucking shaking.
I tried to talk myself out of looking at the news story, but before I could click out of the web browser, I caught sight of the picture of a smiling blonde and felt the same pull I had every time I had looked at her this week.
Dread deepened as I read every word of the article. Certain parts stood out: hard worker, loved by all, weeks away from wedding, graduated summa cum laude from University of Georgia.
“Christ,” I hissed as I continued on, and found where they had interviewed Georgia Governor’s son, Kyle Armstrong . . . her fiancé.
Everyone was sure she wasn’t a runaway. Her fiancé explained that they’d been headed out to brunch with his parents when a friend had come asking for help, and Briar had gone into work at the last minute for said friend.
. . . never worked a Sunday . . . Armstrong thinks friend might be in danger, too . . . friend’s father brought in for questioning.
Friend’s father.
Her father.
Shit.
I shoved away from my desk and gripped at my hair. My breaths came out in hard rushes and sounded like I was in pain. I wanted to be. I wanted to be in the worst kind of pain, only to find something that hurt more.
They had grabbed the wrong girl.
Briar hadn’t been lying. She’d been taken by mistake.
Her words and her life triggered something I’d locked deep inside me, and I was quick to force it back before it could overwhelm me, like I knew it so easily would . . .
Not the same, I told myself.
“Why do you want to . . . to keep someone locked in a room whose life and body mean nothing to you? Because they mean something to me.”
Her broken voice floated through my mind, making me want to tear at my heart all over again.
A dozen responses to her question had crossed my mind then, and were flooding it now. If I voiced any of them, it would be dangerous on too many levels.
