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I went back to the picture of KC and the guy. I’d never seen him in the news with her and on none of the gossip sites. Was he the father?
Despite the curiosity consuming me, I stacked the pictures together and set them carefully on her night stand. There had been a board in here with pictures pinned to it, but that was in pieces.
Leaving her room, I retreated to the sitting room and a new drink. Sliding an earbud in, I turned on a podcast and went to work sorting out the shredded pieces of music. I got most of her song back together. Four of the five pages were there, and I got them mostly intact, but I couldn’t find the fifth or it had been turned into so many little pieces it was unrecognizable.
I grabbed a soda and finished most of it as I pieced together some assignments. Some notes—they didn’t make any sense, but there were lyrics jotted down. I recognized the need.
One of the last pieces I reconstructed was a Knots and Chains challenge. I had one similar to it: the riddles and the scavenger hunt would identify the where and the when.
The riddles worked out to something happening in roughly ten days.
The night of the Fire and Ice Party.
Was that what all of this was about? An initiation gone wrong? For all that they were a secret society, I’d heard about some of the insanity to do with them and their initiations. I’d been tapped once, but it ended up going nowhere.
Then nothing for two years, until this one. Now they were after KC, too. I had a few of the invitations in my room. I hadn’t cared about it, but maybe I should.
My eyes were sore and gritty when the clock hit five and Lachlan texted me.
Lachlan
Running. Then bringing food. How is she?
I stared at the message for a long moment, then answered.
Me
Sleeping
I’d heard nothing from them all night, so I hoped that was good. It had to be—Aubrey was too protective. I stared at the stack of papers, the few I’d been able to save. Then I thought about the damage to her room and the photos in there.
If she had a baby while on tour, or even on one of their breaks, they could have hidden it. Maybe that was why she came to school? She needed time to heal?
Twice I glanced at my phone and debated hitting Gibs’ contact and calling him, but twice I put it down. Should I call him? Would she want me to call him?
I didn’t think so.
After another hour of staring, I tried her mother’s apartment in New York. The number was actually written on one of the pieces of paper.
Five minutes later, I stared at my phone. KC’s mom was in rehab.
Again.
The lady didn’t call it rehab, she said a retreat, but that was what most people called rehab.
How long had she been there? The press hadn’t said a word, so maybe they were keeping it quiet?
I was still chewing on that question when Lachlan texted that he was there.
So. Many. Questions.
I flicked my gaze to the taped-together pieces. But only one I really wanted an answer for—who hurt her. I wouldn’t leave enough of them to be put back together.
Thirty-Six
KC
“Hey,” I said as Jonas snagged my backpack before I could even stand. He’d been my self-assigned personal escort everywhere since I returned to classes. Aubrey had gone back thirty-six hours after I got out of the hospital, more because I made her than anything else.
