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She looked back at me, eyes narrowed. “You’re both brutish jerks then.”
“Look, you were dancing at the club, right?” I glanced at Dante for confirmation and he nodded. “In her cage,” I said, clenching my jaw.
Of all the nights for Carly to play games…assuming she had. But Jenna had been dancing for her, and it made sense that it had happened on Carly’s say so.
If anything made sense anymore.
“She asked me to, because she wanted to go to your fight.”
I spun away to grip the desk. “It’s my fault. I should’ve given you a picture,” I said to Dante. “It never even occurred to me someone else might be dancing in her cage. Stupid. So fucking stupid.”
“You can’t find her? She didn’t show up at the fight?”
Eyes closed, I shook my head. “I didn’t see her.”
But maybe someone else had. Like Marco or Lorenzo. Or my father.
“Her family hasn’t heard from her?” Dante asked.
“No. She’s not answering her phone and never texted last night.” I pulled out my phone as it went off, hoping against hope it was Carly.
It was Fox. Jesus, what was I going to say to him?
For now, I let the call go to voicemail.
“I’ll put Luke on it.” Dante gripped Jenna’s shoulder and pushed her back in the chair. “He can do a sweep for her. Give me a picture of Carly. A current one,” he added. “I accessed her culinary school I.D., but she sure didn’t look like a girl who’d be dancing in a club like that. In the dark, this one fit the profile better, so I figured the I.D. was a pic without makeup and an old hair color.”
“Excuse me?” Jenna jerked to her feet. “You saying I look like a stripper?”
“They wear wigs,” I said tiredly, gesturing for her to sit again. She ignored me. “Jenna’s a blond.”
“You know, the perfect stripper shade,” she snapped. “I’ll remember that when I get my theology degree.”
“Basta! I’ve had just about enough of your mouth,” Dante growled.
I ignored them both. “Jenna, I’m going to need the names and numbers of her friends. Any you can give me.”
Dante got on the phone, presumably with Luke.
“You really think something happened to her?” She sank back into the chair. “Maybe she’s just sleeping over at Kirk’s. You know, you lose track of time…”
Kirk must be the salad shop boyfriend. Judging from the way she said it, she wasn’t trying to twist the knife with me. She must not know about me and Carly. Which meant Carly had kept the secret from one of her closest friends.
There wasn’t room in the pit of worry and terror deep inside me for sadness. Not much, anyway.
“I need his number too.”
I didn’t think it was possible she’d been with him, but I would check every avenue. I would force myself not to panic and move through the steps, slowly and methodically.
She was okay. She had to be. No other possibility could compute.
“They’re all in my phone.” She glared at Dante. “He has it.”
Within a few minutes, the search part was sorted out. Dante set Luke on the
case, texting him a photo from Jenna’s phone of Carly looking so heartbreakingly gorgeous and carefree that it took everything I possessed not to punch a hole in the wall. Dante said he’d take Jenna home, so that meant it was time for me to call Fox.
He’d left a voicemail that Carly had contacted him, which sent relief coursing through me until I heard it was a letter mailed yesterday that had just arrived in today’s mail. In it, she said she was going away for a while.
