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Frowning, I marched over and snatched the object up. For a second, I just stared at it.
It was one of the cheap plastic sports bottles the owners of Hobb Creek’s arena gave out as a promotional item. Lou must have nabbed one during our training there, months ago.
The arena’s mascot peered back at me. I had no idea what the artist who’d designed it had been going for—the thing looked like a mix between a walrus and a penguin. Somehow I suspected the arena owners hadn’t broken the bank commissioning that illustration.
An ache spread through my torso as I took it in. Lou hadn’t had any reason to hold on to this thing other than for the memories. Memories of the place where she’d first met Niko and me. Where she’d discovered that her dreams of making her mark on the ice could be more than just dreams.
I ran my fingers across the smooth plastic, my own memories playing like a film reel in my head: Lou, on the first day we’d met her, her eyes widening at the sight of us while she’d tried to play it cool. Lou, damp with sweat but still resolute during her training. Lou, grinning away, tears stinging her eyes during the announcement that we’d smashed the rest of the competition.
And now she was gone.
She’d cared enough to keep some tacky souvenir of our early training. She couldn’t have caredthatmuch and left anyway, without saying a word.
Right?
An impulse guided me to her equipment bag by the front door. I unzipped the side pocket she’d shown me once before, when we’d first been getting to know each other. The one that held the little scrap of fabric from her first childhood skates.
The fragile, grayed lace caught on my fingers. I lifted it up, rubbing the fabric gently between my fingers. My throat closed up.
“Guys!” I said, my voice coming out strained.
Whatever Rafael thought of my previous sniping, he hustled over in an instant, Niko beside him. My coach cocked his head. “What’s that?”
“Her lucky lace.” I tucked it back into the pocket for safe-keeping. When we got her back, it’d be right here waiting for her where she’d left it.
Straightening up, I turned toward the other two men. “There’s no way she’d have left purposefully without taking that with her. She’s held on to that thing since she was five years old. Somethingmusthave happened to her—something that forced her to leave.”
Rafael sighed. “That’s what I already thought. I don’t suppose you’ve found anything that would give us some idea what or where.”
My head drooped. “No. There’s nothing in here.” I paused. “We don’t know why she left the apartment, but that might not have had anything to do with how she got taken anyway. What if shedidsimply go out to get breakfast or something, and got caught up in trouble along the way? There might be evidence out there.”
“This isn’t a crime show,” Rafael muttered, but he reached for the door. “I already did a brief sweep of the area, but it couldn’t hurt to look again.”
Somehow Rafael ended up taking the lead, even though checking outside had been my idea. Niko and I trailed behind him like stray dogs.
There wasn’t a whole lot to inspect on our way out of the building. The lobby looked the same as always. So did the sidewalk beyond. I poked around in a hedge that lined a nearby parking lot and only spotted a few random pieces of litter.
Lou would have left a real message if she could have, wouldn’t she?
What the hell were we going to do if she hadn’t been able to? If all we had to go by was that final, vague text?
More irritation jittered through my veins. I couldn’t help picturing how she’d looked after those assholes with Sheeran had pummeled her, how stormy black the bruises on her ribs had become.
Someone even worse might have her now. And we were doing shit-all about it. My hands curled into fists.
Then a figure stepped into view at the far end of the parking lot. A figure that was tall, blond, and guaranteed to piss me off even more in five seconds flat.
My stance tensed automatically. “What the hell are you doing here, Wolfe?”
Quentin had stiffened too. My rival studied me with the piercing blue eyes that always seemed to pick out the flaws I was most self-conscious of. But today his demeanor was unusually uncertain.
“I wasn’t aware that you owned the city, St. Pierre,” he retorted with only a trace of his usual snark. “A guy can go for a walk.”
That might be true, but everything about his sudden appearance here—on this morning of all mornings—felt wrong.
I marched up to him. “Tell me why the fuck you’re here or I’ll give you a matching scar on the other side of that jaw.”
Quentin’s mouth tightened, making the pale line that cut through his lip stand out more starkly. “And of course you’d come at me like a goddamn caveman. It’s amazing you can manage to stand up on the ice.”
