I had to admit, it felt pretty amazing to have her run straight into my arms. A guy could definitely get used to that.
But first we needed to get to the hospital. I honestly didn’t think that Lily or Bailey would be there. There didn’t appear to have been any fatalities or major injuries from tonight’s chaos, according to the news. If one of them had been hurt, the other surely would have contacted us.
I didn’t have a good feeling about this at all, but didn’t want to freak Paige out, so I didn’t say anything to her about it.
It took about twenty minutes to get from downtown La Playa to the hospital. This time of night normally doesn’t have any traffic, and I was glad that the hospital parking lot wasn’t too crowded.
I stole a glance at Paige as we were looking for a parking space. Despite the chaos of the evening, she looked gorgeous. She’d changed since dinner and her hair was up in one of those messy buns that looked sexy and casual. My body started to remember our passionate kiss from earlier, but my mind stayed focused on the task at hand. Find the girls.
“I hope they’re here, Ryder,” she said as we pulled the car into a space next to the Emergency Room. “I can’t imagine why no one has contacted us.”
I reached over to squeeze her hand, and said with more confidence than I felt, “Everything is going to be okay.” Maybe if I said it, it would be true.
* * *
The linefor the information desk wasn’t long, but the woman behind the computer must have been a hundred years old. We stood there for a good fifteen minutes while she yelled “What?” and “Could you speak up?” to the people in front of us.
Finally, it was our turn. “Hi. Our sisters were at the convention center tonight and we wondered if they had been brought here.”
“What?” she said. Her brown eyes were watery and her dark skin was so wrinkled it looked like a fabric bag that had been through the washer too many times.
“Our sisters. We need to know if they are here.” I enunciated very clearly.
She looked at Paige. “Is this your sister?”
“No. We both have sisters and we want to know if they are here,” Paige said. This would be funny if we weren’t so worried.
“Oh. Okay. What’s your sister’s name?”
“Mine is Lily Hernandez.”
The woman started to hunt and peck on the keyboard.
“And mine is Bailey Anton.”
Her head shot up. “Which is it?”
“Both,” we said in unison.
She gave us a blank look and then said, “Your sister has all those names?”
“No! There are two sisters!” I was looking around for her supervisor. This was ridiculous.
“Oh. Why didn’t you just say so? What are their names?”
Paige shot me a look and I took a deep breath. I have never wanted to punch an old woman in my life, but this one was coming close.
“Lily Hernandez. L-I-L-Y.”
“What? Can you speak up?”
* * *
It tookus almost half an hour to find out that Lily and Bailey were not at the hospital. While part of me was relieved, the bigger part of me was really worried. Where the hell could they be?
“So, tell me what happened again? From the beginning?” Paige was sitting in the front seat of my car with her knees up, hugging them.
“We left La Passarelli when you saw us. We were a few blocks from the convention center and they wanted to be let out so that they could see some t-shirts and stuff this guy was selling. We were going to meet up at the Starbucks after the concert.”
