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I loved him so much, but GOD, he could be a handful.
Thirty minutes later, I realized I'd been walking without any sense of direction. Parts of the town were still desolate and ravaged in the wake of the hurricane, and I'd landed in a strangely empty space.
The houses had been evacuated.
There was no one around the street. It looked like an entirely different place, which was saying something because Oakmont was usually so lively.
I looked around me uneasily. Time to call a Lyft.
Suddenly, I heard a vehicle stop within a hand's reach. I turned around, but whoever got out was quicker.
My hand was still on my phone, and in that last semi-second, I pressed the call button on the last number I'd dialed.
"Hello?" Reed answered immediately. "Juniper, where did you go? Please—"
"Help—" I cried out before a sickeningly sweet napkin wrapped around my mouth and nostrils.
The last thing I remembered was slipping behind a veil of moving darkness.
40
Reed
The reason I'd been so shocked after I saw Juniper's report had nothing to do with my not wanting to be a father again. In fact, that moment was a singularly joyful one.
But an hour before that, I'd been on another mission, this time one of my own, albeit supported by my boys.
I'd dropped Leia off at her friend's place for the day, and then the three of us had embarked on a very important hunt.
And when I found out about her pregnancy, I'd just... I'd been caught like a fish out of water, and when that happened, my face did all kinds of comic things that became the very antithesis of my feelings.
And I said the stupidest stuff.
So, I had to find Juniper and make things right. This brought me to the moment when she called, and the last thing I heard her saying was, "Help!"
And I knew then and there. Hunter. Hunter had done something.
My heart pounded in my chest as I stared at the empty space where Juniper had stood just moments before.
The realization hit me like a tidal wave—Juniper, kidnapped. We had no time to waste. I turned to Asher and Miguel, their eyes mirroring my urgency.
"Juniper's been taken," I blurted out, my voice taut with emotion. "We need to find her, and we need to do it now!"
Understanding the gravity of the situation, Asher and Miguel nodded in unison, their faces etched with determination.
We sprinted toward Asher's recently recovered Honda, fueled by the burning need to rescue our friend from the clutches of darkness.
We piled into the car, slamming the doors shut. The engine roared to life, the vibrations matching the intensity of our collective purpose.
The tires screeched as we sped through the dimly lit city streets, urgency coursing through our veins, propelling us toward our goal.
Fingers trembling, I accessed the cell phone triangulation software on my device. Time was of the essence. Every second counted.
The screen before me displayed a complex web of signals, a maze waiting to be unraveled.
I initiated the algorithm, harnessing the power of multiple cell towers to pinpoint the potential location where Juniper could be.
Everything pointed toward the warehouse we'd visited on the day of Pandora's landfall. What the hell was Hunter thinking? How did he become this sloppy?
