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22
Bobby
What Do I Do?
Twenty-seven missed calls.
Kit called me twenty-seven fucking times.
She needed me, she reached out for help, and I wasn’t there for her. I redial her number with shaking hands, but just like the two dozen times I’ve already tried, the call goes straight to voicemail.
She first called me hours ago and left a sweet little message. She wasn’t hurt yet, but she was scared. She wanted a hug. Of all the things any woman could ask of me, she was scared, and her first thought was me and a fucking hug.
If I’d just had my phone on me, if I’d just taken that one call, nothing bad would’ve happened. I’d have gone to her, I’d have hugged her just like she asked, and she wouldn’t be missing right now.
Where the fuck is she?
One simple, sweet, message from hours ago. Then twenty-six calls in the space of a single hour. The last call was forty-five minutes ago, and now, nothing. With Jack racing behind me through hospital corridors, we sprinted to the parking lot and dove into my Rav. Within minutes, I had the car skidding into the gym parking lot and we were through the doors.
It was just minutes from hospital to gym, and yet, I still missed her last call. I was defending our innocence to those incompetent cops when my phone was last ringing.
And now the line is cold.
I don’t know where she is, I don’t know who has her, I don’t know if she’s hurt, and I have no way of finding her.
I’m on the edge. I want to tear this town apart brick by fucking brick until I find her, but I don’t know what to do, I don’t know where to start.
“Who has a problem with her?” Jack paces the room and pulls his hair painfully. “Who would take her?”
He’s asking me, but I don’t know the answers.
With agony in his eyes that translates to rage, he storms forward until his face is an inch from mine. “You were supposed to protect her, you piece of shit! You promised me. You promised!” His voice breaks as he shoves me. I don’t push him back. I don’t say anything, because he’s right. I promised. I swore I’d marry her, that I’d look after her for the rest of our lives. I made promises that I intended to keep forever.
I already failed.
Thundering footsteps in the hall has us spinning as one. Hands up. Defensive stance.
Stopping on a dime when they enter the room, Aiden and Jon lift their hands in surrender. “Woah, relax. It’s just us.”
“Why aren’t you with Iz?”
“Jim stayed with her,” Jon answers. “We’re here to help. What do we know?”
“We don’t know shit!” Jack roars. “We know nothing except she called a hundred times and they all went unanswered.”
Jon turns back toward the door. “Have you checked her car? It’s still outside.”
I sprint past my brothers and come to a skidding stop beside her small car. The street light above is out, the glass bulb shattered.
That can’t be a coincidence.
Jack wrenches the car door open and dives in. “Her keys are on the floor.” He pulls them out to study as Aiden cups his hands and looks in the back windows.
“And there are groceries in the back seat,” he adds. “She went to Jonah’s. And her laptop is in the back.”
“It’s always password locked,” Jack says. “We won’t get into it.”
I step back and think.Think!Where is she? Who took her? Why? I stop at the crunching beneath my now shoed feet, and bending low, bile rises in my throat when I pick up the gold chain. The clasp is snapped open, the gold crushed and flat in spots, and diamonds fall from the little fingers holding them in. Spinning on the spot, I find the drag marks in the snow. Then the blood.
