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“Wait!” I grab him by the arm. “We need to call Suzanne…Maybe, she went back. Maybe...”
“No. She would have called. Even if she had changed her mind…She would have called. I knew it. Fuck.” He paces to the door. Stops. Shouts, “Fuuuuck!”
When he turns, he looked crazed. I can see his mind working a mile a minute as he tries to put the pieces together.
He’s right. Catherine is many things, but she is not callous. Something has to have happened.
My heart is racing in my chest now, forcing all of the unhelpful emotions—fear, stress, panic—to the surface. My mind is reeling…Where would she have gone? Who… “Do you think it’s him…The man who killed Lizzie?”
Aiden doesn’t reply. He moves back towards the door, moving away from me the entire time.
“What the fuck is going on?” Lyla asks, her voice spear-tipped. She is standing on the landing in her pajamas, looking down at us.
“Catherine’s missing,” I say. The words don’t sound real. They are muted under the sound of my heartbeat in my ears.
“What?”
“Cat’s gone,” I repeat, stunned by my inability to form a coherent explanation.
“Call Suzanne,” Aiden barks suddenly, shattering time. He spins around to face us. “Check she’s not there. Have one of the girls keep trying Catherine’s number.” He yanks open the door. “Come down to the Rampart Station as soon as you’re able.” And then he’s gone, jogging across the lawn towards his SUV as if he doesn’t have a minute to spare.
“Oh, fuck. Toni…”
“No.” I point at Lyla, demanding that she stop. “No. Until we find her, we are not even considering the possibility that they’re related-” I choke, unable to finish the thought.
“I’ll get Jules.” Lyla takes over. Running down the stairs, she heads for the back door. “Get changed. Let’s go. We can call Suzanne on the way.”
I hurry up the stairs to my bedroom and throw on a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, not even pausing to throw on a bra. I slide into a pair of flip flops and am waiting at the door five minutes before Jules and Lyla meet me there, both looking pale and frightened.
“Lyla, you drive. Jules and I will start calling.”
We hurry out the door together. The moment we’re in the car and on the road, I start delegating. “Drop us at Rampart Station and then head to the beach house and check there. Maybe her phone died or…” It’s such a stupid thought. Catherine has never—not once in the time she’s been with us—failed to check in. If her phone had died, she would have found a charger or a phone to use, even if she had to steal them.
But Lyla just says, “Okay.”
“Jules, call Suzanne.”
As Juliette filters through her phone contacts, I dial Drakos. It rings twice before he answers, his deep voice intense. “Antoinette?”
I close my eyes and tense against his biting tone. “Drakos…”
“Toni?” His voice deepens in question.
“I need your help. I-”
He doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if we’re too far gone for him to care. “Catherine’s been taken.”
Silence descends in the car, trapping us all together as the words resound. For a long moment, none of us says anything. We just sit there, our combined dread building to something insurmountable.
“Are you sure?”
I look at Jules. “She’s not at Suzanne’s,” she says, loud enough for him to hear over the phone.
“She left Suzy’s yesterday afternoon to go to her…Boyfriend’shouse. But he just showed up wanting tospeak to her. She…” I grit my jaw as my tears threaten. “She never arrived at his place yesterday. She won’t answer her phone.”
“And her car?” he asks.
“Her car?” Confused, I look at Jules.
