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Isaac
“Whatarewegonnado?” Rhett asked, staring worriedly at me as we sat in my room later that night, him in the computer chair and me on my bed.
After Phantom left to go fraternize with Samara, Rhett and I disappeared to the dorm so we could talk privately. Funnily enough, there hadn’t been much talking. It turned out Phantom’s conversation with Samara was cut a lot shorter than we’d hoped. Phantom had made his grand return to the dorm before we could fully talk shit through.
We’d been hanging around the dorm minding our own business for the most part, until Phantom decided to go off campus to one of the little outer gas stations to grab some rolling papers and to stock up on some food for our dorm. It had been almost an hour since he left.
Everything was fucked. It didn’t take much booze to get the sexy redhead to open up and pour her heart out over Damien’s new side hustle and well, everything. What choked me up the most was Cindy. She was Phantom’s best friend. I’d left Ginger in a puddle of tears and had driven down to the tattoo shop, horrified by what I’d seen. The place had been ransacked. The windows were busted and there was blood splatter that had to be over a week old in Cindy’s workroom.
“I don’t know,” I finally answered, my concern focused on how fast we could hide everything that could be used as a weapon by the time Phantom got back.
Phantom was going to lose it. Shit had gone downhill. Our duties were clear. We weren’t to get involved with street-related affairs.
But this…
Father should’ve told us. Cindy was family. Phantom would never forgive him or Finn for keeping this from him. Father had told one too many lies, and Cindy’s death wasn’t something we could just disregard.
“Fuck, man.” Rhett nervously scrubbed his hands down his face and then wiped under his eyes, his frown unwavering. “It’s gotta be connected, right? Ginger, Cindy, Father ordering us to prepare for an attack that was never coming. It can’t be a coincidence.”
“It’s not.”
Rhett blinked at me, confused.
“A coincidence, I mean. I’m unsure of the timeline, but it’s all connected. I’m sure of it.”
“We have to tell him, Isaac. She was his best friend. He needs to know.”
“Needs to know what?” a voice I wasn’t expecting to hear had asked.
Rhett’s fretted eyes darted to the doorway, where I found Phantom there, at least a dozen grocery bags hung around his large arms.
He dropped each and every one of them in front of the threshold and stepped inside the room, his eyes volleying between the two of us.
“What’s going on?”
“You-uh,” Rhett stammered as he got to his feet, swallowing hard. “You might want to take a seat.”
“Why?”
“Just sit the fuck down,” I commanded.
Phantom glared at me, but he moved over to the computer chair with no retort and sat down as Rhett strayed closer to the door, as if he was plotting to guard it. I wished him the best of luck because we both knew there would be no stopping the beast once he was unleashed. What we really needed was backup and there wasn’t enough time to round anyone up.
“Okay,” Phantom snapped. “I’m sitting.”
“Uh…” Rhett started. “There’s no easy way to say this… but… it-it’s Cindy.”
“What about Cindy?” Phantom growled as he sat forward in his chair, his dark eyes halfway changed into the monster locked deep within.
“The night of the Harvest…” I spoke, internally flinching as Phantom’s mindless pupils landed on me. “Finn was supposed to contact you and have you wipe the security tapes at that airport in Clover Bay.”
Phantom rose to his feet then, his chest heaving, his face crumbling like he’d already knew what I was about to say before I could get the words out.
“There’s this crew. They’re known as the Bling Brothers. They’re Outlaws, and apparently, they’re a lot smarter than anyone anticipated.”
“Wh-what happened?” Phantom’s dark voice shook, his body, too. “What does that have to do with Cindy?”
“They tracked her down, Phantom. They found her and delivered her to Damien Reyez. I-I’m sorry, brother, but she’s gone. She’s gone.”
