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“I’m looking for Everleigh,” I said. “Have you seen her?”
“Since she forced me to hydrate this morning, you mean?” he asked.
“Yeah. Since then.”
“She… she took a call outside,” he said. “Riff said her phone was ringing. So he brought it to her. She said she had to call her mom back, then went outside.”
That made sense. She wouldn’t want her mom to hear the various racy shit that went on in the club.
“Thanks,” I said, nodding, and making my way back downstairs.
It wasn’t until I stepped around the back of the building and saw… nothing, that I felt the prickle at the back of my neck.
“Ev?” I called, startling a chicken who was near my feet enough to get an indignant balk out of her before she rushed off to find her friends. “Everleigh!” I called, panic rising through my system.
This wasn’t exactly hilly terrain, save for the Death Valley mountains in the distance. You could see all around. And I wasn’t seeing anyone.
“Everleigh!” I yelled, rushing around the house.
“Hey, you okay?” Riff asked, coming out the front door.
“I can’t find Everleigh,” I said, stomach twisting.
“She was out here taking a phone call,” Riff said. “Pacing around though. Seemed a little anxious. Could she have taken a walk?”
She could have.
But I would have seen her when I drove through town and toward the clubhouse.
“I… I don’t like this,” I said, voice tight.
I didn’t panic often. And even Riff, who wasn’t around much, understood that. He got stiffer at the sound of it in my voice, in the way it was rushing off of me in currents.
“I’ll get everyone moving,” he said. “Call her phone,” he suggested.
Right.
Yeah.
She had her phone.
Reaching for mine, I found her in my contacts and dialed as I started to walk around.
It rang once.
Twice.
Three…
To voicemail.
Wait.
I dialed again, and sure enough, faintly, a while off, I could hear something ringing.
Could she just have fallen? Gotten hurt? Was on the ground, and that was why I didn’t see her?
I took off at a dead run as I kept calling.
