"We'll find her," I promise, and at least that much isn't a lie. "Whatever it takes."
The morning drags on with more of the same—fruitless searches and dead-end leads, all of which I know are meaningless. Ronan tries calling one of Annie’s friends, a girl named Mara, but she doesn’t pick up. I check my watch obsessively, calculating how long it's been since I left Annie alone. She should be awake by now, probably wondering where I am, maybe even starting to panic.
The thought of her scared and alone makes my chest tight. She came to me for help, trusted me with her safety, and I left her to deal with her trauma while I played games with her brother. What kind of man does that make me?
I left her alone, and I’m lying to Ronan. I can’t do the right thing by either of the people I care about, it seems, and it’s fucking killing me.
And I can’t give in and tell Ronan the truth, because I’d do anything for Annie, even if it killed me.
Even if it feels like it’s killing me right now.
"I need some air," I tell Ronan. He glances up from the map he’s studying.
"Yeah, fine. Just… don't go far."
I head down the hall to a side entrance, stepping out into the brisk January cold, sucking in lungfuls of air. I felt like I was fucking suffocating in there. I lean back against the wall of the mansion, closing my eyes and fighting the urge to get in my car and go straight back to Annie. I’m going to have to find an excuse to leave soon.
My chest feels tight, my breathing strangled. Loyalty. Guilt. Desire. Fear. They're all tangled together into a knot I can't seem to untie. I’m digging myself my own grave here, and I can’t seem to stop.
I don’t know what the right thing to do is. Only that she begged me, and I couldn’t say no, because…
Because I love her.
The thought startles me. I haven’t let myself think it in a long time, but it’s still true—as true as it was back then.
But I can’t allow myself to dwell on it. It won’t help anything. And it’s a pointless feeling. It always has been.
Still, as I try to take deep breaths and calm myself, I can’t help a memory that floods back from twelve—no, thirteen years ago, when Annie and I were both sixteen.
We’d just gone back to school, the private Catholic school where I was lucky enough to be able to be educated along with the O’Malley siblings and the other wealthy students. I don’t remember exactly what happened—a boy threw a ball at Annie in gym class, I think—and she’d fled out to behind the building, white sneakers loudly slapping the echoing floor as she dashed out.
I followed her. I didn’t know what it was that I felt for her then, but I knew it was something more than just a crush. I had started to want her in a way that I didn’t understand then, that felt too visceral for my age, and that I knew was dangerous.
When I found her crying behind the gym building, I wanted to go back in and break every finger on that boy’s hands for making her shed a single tear.
A lot of the memory is fuzzy, as memories tend to become over time, but there are parts of it that I remember with vivid clarity. My hand reaching out to thumb away a tear as it slid down Annie’s cheek. Her luminescent blue eyes meeting mine. And the urge to kiss her that I was too young and too reckless to ignore.
It had been a chaste kiss. A soft, gentle meeting of lips. But I’d felt as if I were on fire. Like my nerves were hot and cold at the same time, like I’d wanted to shout that I’d kissed Annie O’Malley from the top of my lungs and be sick from fear at the same time, because I knew I’d done something that was utterly, completely forbidden.
I didn’t do it again for another year.
Fuck. I let out a heavy breath, clenching and unclenching my fists. I open my eyes when I hear the sound of a car in the courtyard, and I step around the corner to see a sleek Aston Martin pulling in. The driver’s side door opens, and I see Desmond fucking Connelly step out, all polished and slick in his neatly pressed suit and swept-back hair. Except his face…
I frown. Even from this distance, I can see that something’s wrong with his face. Like he’s been injured.
My phone buzzes with a text from one of our contacts, making me jump and slide back around the side of the mansion before Desmond can see me. Nothing new, just another dead end to add to the pile. I delete it and head back inside, where Ronan is still hunched over the map on the table.
"Any luck?" he asks when he sees me.
"Not yet. But we'll keep looking,” I say firmly, glancing at the map of the city streets. The lie tastes like ash in my mouth.
Not a minute later, there’s a heavy knock on the door, and two of Ronan’s men show Desmond in.
It takes me a moment to register his appearance. I was right about him having been hurt—his face is a mess. Cuts and scratches all over his cheeks and jaw, a couple on his neck, and some, I see as I look him over on his hands. They all look fairly shallow, but he looks as if something clawed him.
Something… or someone? Annie?My stomach clenches, and I have to force myself to stay still, to not go at him and add a shiner to the mess of his face. We don’t know that he had anything to do with Annie’s disappearance, and his injuries aren’t enough for me to attack him over, no matter how much I dislike him. But it’s awfully fucking coincidental.
Ronan’s face, when I look back at him, is thunderous. “Desmond.” His voice is harsh and flat, and I can tell that he’s thinking the same thing I am—or in the same ballpark, anyway. Desmond, as far as we know, was the last person to see Annie before she disappeared. Ronan might not know what I do about the state she was in when she showed up at my apartment, but it’s still awfully fucking suspicious that he was the last one to see her, combined with the injuries on his face.
