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As soon as I’m back out of the building, I call Finn. He’s on backup duty today; maybe Ari was feeling sick and called him to pick her up.
He picks up right away. “Cash. What’s going on? You need something?”
I get right to the point. “Did you pick up Ari from school today?”
There’s a pause, and my stomach lurches. I already know before he answers, “No, Cash. I thought you were picking her up.”
I breathe in through my nose, blowing a slow breath through my mouth. “Could anyone else have picked her up? Cole? Leo?”
“I don’t think so, but let me check.” As he goes silent for a moment, my pulse thunders in my ears. When he speaks again, his tone is grim. “No one has talked to Ari today.”
My legs go weak. “Her school said she left a couple of hours ago.”
“And she’s not home? Maybe a friend from school brought her. If she was feeling ill, maybe she didn’t want to wait.”
An icy chill is seeping through my body. “No. My security system would have notified me if she went home.”
His voice lowers, all business now. “Okay. I’m going to get Cole and Leo on this. We’ll pull up her tracker, find out where she is.”
I jog to my car while I wait for Finn, jumping in and jabbing at the ignition. But I don’t know where to go, so I just sit there, waiting and hoping this isn’t as bad as I fear.
The wait feels like an eternity. I keep trying to think of possible explanations, but none of them make sense. Ari wouldn’t just leave without calling me, or at least sending a message. Would she?
Finn’s voice actually makes me jump. “We found her tracker. She’s about thirty miles north of here, a rural area outside Peekskill.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, Cash. We’ll figure it out.” Finn speaks to someone on his end of the call. “We’re going to head there right now. Leo will do as much research on the way, try to figure out how she got there.”
“I’m coming with you.” I punch the gas pedal, the tires squealing.
“I figured that,” Finn says. “We’re heading out in five. Since we’ll be taking Route 9 north, meet us at the parking lot by the soccer fields. You can leave your car there and ride with us.”
“Okay. I’m going to hang up and try calling Ari again. Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for all of this.” But I don’t believe it. Ari is too responsible to just take off without telling me. And she knows how much I would worry.
I call and call, but there’s no answer.
Nausea keeps breaking over me in waves, my gut clenching and bile burning the back of my throat. That feelinghas its claws in me and won’t let go—the feeling that says something isterriblywrong.
I get to the parking lot ahead of the Blade and Arrow guys, and I practically leap into their SUV the second it stops. The second the door shuts behind me, I’m firing questions. “Is she still there? What do you know? Did you see how she left the school?”
Cole is driving, and Leo is in the passenger seat, a laptop on his knees. Finn is in the backseat and he meets my gaze calmly. “We’re going to get her, Cash. It’s going to be okay.”
Leo turns to look back at me. “She’s still there. It’s a rental house, but no lease on record. I pulled the security footage from outside the school; it looks like Ari left at one-fifteen this afternoon and got into a gray Elantra, also a rental car.”
“Did someone force her into it?”Fuck.Was it Kyle?
A horrifying thought occurs to me. “I met with Lucas Morgan today. What if he took Ari as payback? Or Kyle did?”
It’s hard to breathe past the panic taking over me.
“She got into the car willingly,” Leo says, shocking me into silence. “We can’t see who was driving. All I can see from the footage is Ari leaning over to look in the passenger window, like she was checking the identity of the driver, and then she gets into the car.”
“There’s no way she would just leave school, get into a rental car and go to some house outside town without telling me,” I snap. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Unless. What if she decided to make good on her suggestion about leaving? Could Ari really have left, thinking it would keep me safe?
“We’re going to get there, assess the situation, and go from there,” Cole says, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Let’s not assume the worst.”
