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“Whatisgone?” I asked. “Did she take anything with her, or is it like she was grabbed out of the blue?”
Rafael spun toward me with a glower. “No one could have kidnapped her right from under my nose. She’d have put up a fight.”
Jasper held up his hands. “We know. We’re just trying to figure this out.”
Rafael dragged in a deep breath. It was unsettling, seeing the man who was normally so intense and focused falling apart in a panic.
He seemed to gather himself and marched in another circuit of the apartment, taking stock. “I haven’t been able to find her phone, and I didn’t hear the alert when I texted her. So she went somewhere with that. I haven’t found her keys either.”
I forced my mind to think through the logic of the scenario. “Then she must have left the apartment on purpose. She stepped out but didn’t expect to be gone for long enough to need anything else.”
And then… someone had grabbed her beyond these walls? Had the Boston gang come after her again despite our truce with Sheeran—or was it some new enemy we hadn’t been prepared for?
My hands opened and closed at my sides. I’d never felt so useless in my life.
Jasper picked up his own phone off the coffee table and flicked the screen on. He inhaled sharply. “She texted me.”
“What?” Rafael was at his side in an instant. I hurried over to peer over Jasper’s shoulder.
Jasper frowned. “It must have come in while I was still asleep. It was sent around six thirty. But—this doesn’t make any sense.”
I could read the message for myself.I’m so sorry. I can’t do this anymore.
That was it. No explanation, no indication of what “this” even was.
Rafael rubbed his mouth. “No. She wouldn’t have ended things this way. Even if she decided it was too dangerous for her to keep skating, which I can’t picture happening in the first place, she wouldn’t have leftme.”
I wanted to protest, but I knew he had a point. Lou had tried to protect Jasper and me from the darker side of her past again and again. There was a slight possibility that she might have decided she couldn’t risk dragging us into more danger.
But Rafael had been with her for most of her past. She knew he could handle it. It didn’t make sense for her to run off on him without a word.
Rafael raked his hand through the short black coils of his hair. “It isn’t her. Not really. She wouldn’t have left on purpose, and she wouldn’t have sent you that text as the only sign of it. Someone has her—someone who made her write that message hoping it’d convince you that she’s okay, just gone.”
We stared at each other, a sense of doom descending over the room. I could barely breathe.
“Who?” I forced myself to ask. “Who would have taken her?”
Rafael let out a growl of frustration. “I don’t have a fucking clue—and I have no idea how we’re going to find out.”
THREE
Luciana
With other company,I might have enjoyed the flight. Mom’s private jet boasted buttery leather seats with ample leg room and a wide variety of refreshments served by one of her employees. The small craft soared smoothly through the air with just a faint rumble of the engine.
All the turbulence was going on inside me.
Mom lounged in the seat across from me, sipping a Cosmo from the glass she periodically set on the burnished imitation-wood table between us. She gave every appearance of being relaxed, but I knew her too well to believe it.
Every time she gripped the glass’s stem, her knuckles paled with unspoken tension. The perfect ovals of her maroon fingernails tapped an intermittent rhythm on the tabletop.
I yanked my gaze away from her, but the view outside the window didn’t comfort me at all. With every passing minute, we left the gritty streets of Boston behind.
I’d liked living in Austin, even if I hadn’t enjoyed the overall lifestyle I’d been forced into under my mother’s roof. It was a vibrant city with a quirky atmosphere I’d have been able to enjoy even more if I hadn’t needed to worry about keeping up appearances for Mom’s crew.
But now it was the last place I wanted to be. Every mile closer we got was a mile farther from my dreams of the National Championships. From the men who’d helped me reach for that dream.
What would they have made of my disappearance? They must have noticed by now.
