I leaned against the SUV when Sam’s voice mail picked up.
“Sam, where are you?” I squeezed my eyes shut as I ended the call and tried to think of my next move or what could’ve happened to them. They wouldn’t have left without alerting me.
Maybe Sam’s impatience prompted him to return to the ranch with Conrad. After all, I didn’t leave as quickly as I’d wanted to because my aunt and I had been talking.
The sound of an engine rumbled as a gray sedan pulled into the lot.
“Conrad,” I said as I pushed off the SUV and hurried over to him.
Before he even opened his door, he knew something was wrong. Maybe because I had panic written all over my face or maybe because I was standing there in the rain, looking like a wet dog.
He rolled down his window. “What is it?”
“Sam and Jordyn aren’t here.”
Conrad turned toward Sam’s car then back to me. “Hop in.”
Once inside, he handed me a towel he had on the floor behind the passenger seat. “Let me do a sweep of the premises.”
I caught his arm. “You won’t find them. I promise you, they’re not inside.”
He tilted his head. “Layla, you know I’m a vampire. I can compel information out of people if I have to.”
“Well, don’t put anyone in a comatose state.” Just thinking of how Sam had done that to Rianne made me shiver.
“We normal vampires can’t do the shit Sam Mason can. But we’re still effective in extracting information.” Then he left me alone.
I sat there, twisting the towel in my hands. Then I checked my phone when it rang. Rianne’s name brightened the screen.
“Hey.” My voice was strained. “Where are you? Is Jordyn with you?”
“She is,” Rianne said evenly.
I couldn’t gauge her mood. “Again, where are you? What’s going on?” Something wasn’t adding up. “Please tell me Sam isn’t with her.” Maybe Uncle Jack kidnapped Sam.
A deafening silence stretched through the line.
“Rianne,” I warned in a tone that bordered on a scream. “What did you do?” I didn’t want to assume anything, but the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that something wasn’t right. Rianne tended to act before she thought things through, a flaw of hers that had sometimes gotten us into trouble. “If this is about you telling Noah I slept with Sam, I’m not mad.” I felt more betrayed than anything. “I know you were drinking. Mistakes happen.”
She laughed in a way that raised a thousand red flags. “I’m doing this for you. Humans can’t fall in love with vamps.”
“What?” I screamed. “Who the fuck says I’m in love with him? What have you done? I want to know right now!”
“Please, Layla.” Condescension wove those words together. “You are. You just don’t want to admit it.”
I inhaled through my nose then blew it out through my mouth. Conrad’s Old Spice cologne lingered in the car and eased some of my nerves. “What happened to you? Noah brainwashed you.”
“I’m my own person, Layla. And we don’t belong with vampires.”
It was my turn to drop the bomb of the century. “Dad dated a vampire.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
I puffed out my chest as though she could see me. “Talk to Uncle Jack.”
Her heavy breathing crackled through the line and competed with theting, ting, tingof the rain pelting the roof of the car.
“Where’s Sam, Rianne?”
