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I’m about to ask when he says, “We found her at a party Jay was throwing.”
“She was at Jay’s?” Shit, that can’t be good.
Jay is a sketchy guy who desperately wants to be part of my dad’s inner circle and has been trying to weasel his way in for a while. With Hadley’s father being in trouble with my dad and her sister being at his party…
“What happened?” Because I can sense something did.
"Chill out. Everything's fine." He heaves a sigh. "Look, we don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to make this real quick. When Hadley and I went to Jay's, we found Payton. But she had a needle in her arm, and she was unconscious, so we brought her to the hospital. At first, she seemed okay, but then her heart stopped."
“What?” Holy fucking hell, I feel sick.
Jesus, Hadley has to be hurting so much right now… I can’t even…
I grip the wheel, my knuckles turning white.
Rhyland gives me a worried look. “What’s going on? What happened to Hadley’s sister?”
I hold up a finger and say into the phone, “Did Payton…?”
"No, she didn't die. She's fine now," he replies, and I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. "The doctors stabilized her and said she should be okay eventually, but the weird thing is the drug in her system wasn't heroin."
“Really?” That surprises me. “What the heck was it then?”
“They don’t know, but the doctors are looking into it.” He lowers his voice to a hushed whisper. “I’m not sure, but I have this suspicion that maybe Payton didn’t put the drug into herself. Well, maybe she did, but she was unaware of what she was injecting into herself.”
“You think someone tried to kill her?” I whisper, casting a glance at Rhyland who swallows hard.
I’m sure he can vaguely hear this conversation and probably has a pretty good idea of what’s going on.
“I’m not sure if they were trying to kill her or just hurt her,” Alex says. “And maybe I’m just being paranoid, but she was at Jay’s house and almost everyone there is connected to dad and dad’s not a huge fan of the Harlyton’s right now, so…”
While I’d like to be able to tell him he’s wrong, that the people in our lives aren’t that bad, I can’t get the lie to leave my mouth.
“As soon as I’m done with this job, I’ll head over to the hospital,” I tell him, thinking about all the stuff Hadley was already dealing with.
And this has probably gotten the attention of the police and social services.
She's going to need some help. The problem is I'm already juggling a lot. I should just back off and let someone else step in and help her, but I can't bring myself to do so. I'm not sure why, or maybe I do, and I just don't want to admit it to myself.
I'm getting in way over my head, about to fall off a cliff, and the terrifying part is, I'm just going to do it.
“Actually, there’s something she needs before you come here… It’s why I called you.” Alex gives a short pause. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that bandage on her wrist, right?”
I frown. “Yeah. She said she hurt herself, but I think she was lying.”
"Oh she is," he says. "I've heard some rumors floating around, and I'm pretty sure if you took off that bandage, dad's crest would be burned into her skin. I actually asked her about it, but all she'd say is that she's not supposed to tell anyone. Which, whatever, I get it, and I was going to let it go, but then she suddenly tried to leave the hospital. It didn't make sense. I mean, Payton is still in intensive care, and her sisters are being spoken to by the police, and she gets up and says she has to go because she has something to do." He raises his voice as the sirens grow louder. "After a bit of prying, I got her to confess that she's supposed to be doing a job for dad tonight. She said he told her to take some box he gave her to the docks and to take her car, but that she needed to remove the license plates, so I'm betting she's your getaway driver for the night. Which FYI, why the hell did dad tell her not to tell anyone what she's doing if you're clearly going to find out?"
I pinch the brim of my nose. This is bad. Really, really bad. Not only because Hadley has gotten herself into this world, but because I’m fairly she’s in it because she took over her dad’s debt. And I can only see her doing that if my dad threatened her with something important. And I bet I know what that is.
Her sisters.
Hadley cares about her sisters more than she cares about herself.
“Who the fuck knows why dad does what he does,” I mutter. “But I’m sure at some point we’ll find out. That’s usually how his games work.”
I massage my pounding temple. God, my dad is such a screwed up asshole, a straight up psychopath. And I can't help but think of when Hadley told me she had a memory of when she was younger, and she thought she heard my voice in it. I asked my father about it, but he denied ever knowing her. Who the hell knows if he was telling the truth, though, and honestly, I've been so distracted with other things that I completely forgot to look into it more.
I need to find time, though. Somehow.
