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“I know,” I said. “But you didn’t see the photos that psycho left on her bed. Or the handwriting. He was serious, man. I’m worried about her.”
“So am I,” Xavier said. He pulled out his phone and loaded an app that I recognized. It was the one we used to track each other’s phones. When Emma first moved in with us, when we showed her how to change her security settings so Nathan couldn’t track her, we’d installed the app and added her to our account. As far as I knew, none of us had used it to check on her so far. But he did now, and frowned.
“Jesus, she’s on the other side of the city.”
“What?” I asked.
“Moving fast,” he said. “She must be driving.”
I took the phone from him and used two fingers to zoom in on her location.
“We should check on her,” I said. “Make sure she’s alright.”
“I’m not sure we should,” Jackson said. “You taught her self-defense techniques. This guy can’t track her phone anymore, and it’s not like we’vekidnappedher. If we track her down, are we any better than that guy?”
I couldn’t explain why, but I had a bad feeling. It was the same kind of anxiety I had when I was escorted into the courthouse two years earlier, and the judge looked down his hooked nose before reading my sentence.
Even though I was innocent, I knew exactly what he was going to say.
“She’s in trouble,” I insisted. “I can just feel it.”
Xavier looked at me, his eyes thoughtful.
“It wouldn’t hurt to be in the area,” he said. “She wouldn’t even have to know we were there.”
I could tell that Jackson was still against the idea, but it was two against one.
“Okay,” he said, and put his drink on the coffee table. “But if she’s not in trouble, she never finds out we were there.”
“Agreed,” I said, while Xavier said, “Fine.”
Our van was parked next to the vacant space where Emma’s car had been, but with our logo emblazoned on the side, it was anything other than discreet. We decided to use Xavier’s car instead, and the radio started automatically as he switched the engine on. I was in the passenger seat, keeping an eye on Emma’s location, while Jackson sat in the middle seat behind us.
“Where is she now?” Xavier asked.
“Near the beach,” I said. “That’s weird, at this time of year.”
Even in the middle of the day, the ocean would be icy. Now that the sun had set, it would be absolutely frigid.
Xavier drove above the speed limit wherever he could, swearing under his breath every time he had to slow down for traffic.
The third time he slammed on the brakes, sending Jackson and I lurching forward, I glanced at the car behind us, which had stopped worryingly close.
“Cool it, dude,” I said. “We can’t help her if we’re dead.”
Xavier shot me a glare, but when the lights turned green and he accelerated, he did so in a more controlled way.
“You both want to fuck her,” Jackson said out of nowhere. “Don’t you?”
“What?” I asked, surprised. Even though the guys knew I’d slept with Emma and loved it, I’d kept the fact that I desperately wanted to do it again to myself, or so I’d thought.
As for Xavier… I’d wondered if that’s what he’d been hinting at the other day over dinner, buthewas the one who’d told us to stay away from her. Looking at him now, I wondered if that was partly motivated by a desire to keep her all to himself?
His face was mostly covered by his beard, but the part of his cheeks that I could see turned red.
“Dude!” I said, feeling both impressed and betrayed.
“Shut up,” Xavier said. “I’m not some lovesick teenager. She kissed me, and I had a physical reaction. It’s normal.”
