AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So she’s either going to my place or to her apartment. Those feel like the most obvious places, unless she suddenly decided to go somewhere brand new.” Hunter pulled out his phone again. “I’ll get a notification if she gets through my house’s security. We should head to her apartment and see if she’s there.”
We went to Hunter’s Bentley and piled inside. He drove like a maniac on the best days, but today was a new level. He weaved in and out of lanes, honking and swearing.
Part of me wondered if we were overreacting, but as I called her over and over again, the doubt disappeared. Brooke might have been hurt by what Chase said, but she wasn’t the type to ignoreallof our calls and texts.
Our fears were confirmed when we pulled up to her apartment complex and a cop car with its lights on was sitting out front. Hunter had barely parked the car when I stumbled out, rushing upstairs two steps at a time.
The door was open to her apartment, and a few cops were standing around in the hallway. A petite woman who I recognized from some of Brooke’s photos on her phone was in the middle of it all, her skin pale as a sheet.
“Jamie?” I said, coming up to the door so quickly that one cop held his hand up to stop me.
“It’s fine. He’s Brooke’s boyfriend.” She managed to keep the question out of her voice, even though her face told me she was unsure. “Brooke showed me pictures of you,” she explained. “Have you been able to contact her?”
“No, have you? We’ve called her a bunch of times, and she didn’t answer,” I said.
“No. Well, she called me after she called the police, so I know she has her phone,” Jamie said, tucking a blonde curl behind her ear. “She didn’t say anything about it almost dying, either. So when I called her back to ask her a question, and she didn’t answer, I got nervous. Then I got home, and she was gone, even though she was supposed to be here for the police.”
“Shit.” My heart was racing so fast, it felt like it would burst open at any moment. Adrenaline was keeping me wide awake, even though I hadn’t been sleeping well without Brooke in my bed.
“Sir, can we ask you some questions?” the police officer who had tried to stop me said.
“Of course.” I had nothing to hide, of course.
He took me aside and asked me a lot of questions about my relationship with Brooke and who might have done this. I told them everything—the incident at the casino, her ex, Trevor. The cop took a few notes, his recording device taking care of the rest.
“Thank you for all of this,” he said. “We have a lot to go off of. I’m familiar with the case that you’re referring to with the possible money laundering schemes, so we’ll put our heads together to try to find Brooke as soon as possible.”
“Thank you,” I said, holding back the urge to shake some more urgency into him. He knew just how dangerous these people were. Brooke didn’t just walk out the door without picking up the phone. Yes, they were going to investigate, but what if they were already too late?
We had to do something on our own. We couldn’t trust them to keep Brooke safe. Some of them might have been involved, for all we knew.
“Sorry, you can’t be over here,” another cop said to Hunter and Chase, who had pushed through the thin crowd of curious onlookers.
“I’m staying here. She’s my girlfriend,” Hunter said, his annoyance barely capped. He looked like he was ready to spring into action any second.
“No, he is.” The cop pointed her thumb at me.
“She’s with all of us,” I said.
“It’s fine. They’re telling the truth,” Jamie said.
“Oh.” The cop blinked, then stepped back to let them closer to the apartment. He saw my rage, and I knew he wasn’t going to try to stop me again. “Okay. I guess you can come through.”
“We don’t need to see her place, anyway,” Chase said. “Come on, Lucas.”
I quickly exchanged numbers with Jamie and followed Chase and Hunter back to the car.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. “The cops have the information, but they have a bunch of bureaucracy to deal with. I know they’re working on it, but we can do something, too.”
“Mac found two guys who knew the guy he… took care of. And he’s trying to track them down to see if they know anything about where Brooke could have gone.”
“Good. What else?” I asked.
Chase sighed through his nose and scratched at his beard for the tenth time this past hour. “I don’t know. We know that this is the last place that she was seen in, and that they took her from here. But the security cameras don’t cover all the area we need to see, so getting information from there will be useless.”
“There has to be something.” I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. A dull ache was setting up camp behind my right eye.
We sat in silence until a phone call broke it. It was on Hunter’s phone, so he answered it.
