AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Grant’s in Wayward, and I have no way to contact him. Errol confiscated my phone after leaving the other night.”
Flynn lifted his device. “The very reason I added my new employer’s contacts into my phone after a careful purview of my job description.” He tilted his head. “I’m nothing if not thorough.”
Then, a vibrating sound erupted with what Birdie could only describe as timely spiritual intervention as the sound came from Flynn’s phone.
With the name Grant Mason glowing across the screen, as if an angelic response.
Flynn pressed speakerphone as he and Birdie hovered over the device expectantly. “Flynn Shepherd.”
“Flynn, this is Grant Mason, Lucas’s brother.”
Birdie nodded vigorously in confirmation that the voice on the phone was indeed Lucas’s brother.
“Good evening, Mr. Mason. I happen to be standing with Mrs. Birdie Wellborn-Shepherd. Your call couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m afraid there’s been an altercation at the house and Lucas has been taken to a similar type of room Tati was taken to…where she was medicated and forced into a coma. Dr. Hillsboro, a rather unscrupulous doctor, is on his way. We’re fearful he and my brother’s intentions are the same as they were with Tati.”
“Or worse,” Birdie interjected, thinking of Marshall.
“Hey, Birdie,” Grant said. “Good to hear your voice. It would be nice of you’d answer your phone.”
“It would be nice if I had one,” she countered. “We need you to detain Hillsboro, get to him before he gets to Lucas.”
“Any chance you know his home address and make and model of his car?”
Flynn easily rattled it off.
“Got it. We’ll take care of Hillsboro and then come straight to the house.”
“There’s more,” Birdie said. Once being a person who instinctively hoarded information, she was surprised how eagerly she spit it out.
She regurgitated everything she and Flynn knew, and then Grant reciprocated with his own breaking news. Shocking the hell out of her when he shared that the thumb drive they’d all been looking for could potentially have been hanging around Mia’s neck this entire time.
And that Mia was on her way to Cambridge with Mary-Lou. Of all people. Grant mentioned he assumed they were staying at a hotel with their phones turned off. Because, like every person he had tried to call over a twenty-four-hour period, neither Mary-Lou nor Mia had bothered to answer their phones or return his urgent voicemails.
“Why haven’t you called the police?” Birdie asked Grant. And then realized the answer.
Flynn verbalized her thoughts. “Because a select, influential few are pretty much in Errol’s back pocket. He’s invested years of bribes and endless pandering to accomplish that. I’m not saying they’re all on the take, but there’s enough to sound the alert.”
“So, we’re on our own?” she asked. A place and situation she knew all too well.
“It’s going to be okay, Birdie,” Grant said over the phone. “We’ve got this. We just need to play it smart and collaborate. Which means, everyone is to answer their goddamned phones,” he added, but this time with a tempered voice. “I’ll keep trying Mary-Lou and Mia. They’ll likely have plans to go to the estate in the morning, unaware of the potential danger.”
Birdie now had Lucas and Mia to worry about.
“When you talk to Mia, please tell her not to leave the hotel, or wherever she’s staying. Under any circumstance. And then, call Flynn and let him know when you’ve gotten ahold of her.” And then, to stress her point, Birdie said, “Mia can be…wily. The quicker you have her in your sights, maybe even handcuffed to something bolted to the ground or steel impediment, the better.”
* * *
The Uber driverdropped Mia off by the front gates of her old house.
It was past midnight, and she was sure everyone was asleep, but that wasn’t going to stop her.
She dressed for the occasion in black sweat pants, matching hoodie, and a black beanie, while Mary-Lou was sleeping soundly in the hotel room five miles away.
Mia wasn’t stupid. She couldn’t take the chance of Mary-Lou discovering her lie(s) and returning her to Wayward before seeing her mother.
There was no way she was going to risk not seeing her mom. Apologize. Grovel even. And then once forgiven, because that’s what moms do, celebrate the best birthdayever.
Also, she couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. Bad wrong. She couldn’t get ahold ofanyone. Her dad, mom, or any of the Pinkie Posse, who had promised to help her.
