My hair first blew into my face, then suddenly flew back away as Fiona passed low over my head.
“Yoo, hoo,” she called down, taunting. “Olly, olly, oxen free.”
I neared the parking lot. Putting on more speed, I passed others also running, fleeing toward the questionable safety of their cars. Just as I hoped to reach mine, despite the knowledge that a car was no match for dragon fire.
“Gotcha.”
Talons closed over my shoulders.
Chapter Eighteen
Alaric
“She stole my truck.”
I raged over my cell phone from the rear seat of a taxi. True, I felt anger that Hayley had taken off with my pickup. I also felt a terrible fear. Why had she gone? Where was she? Most of all, the question of whether Damon and Fiona had anything to do with her disappearance sent me into a panic.
“Your truck is here,” Willow said calmly. “In the parking lot.”
Her words failed to allay my frustrations and worries. “At the office? Is Hayley there?”
“No, she isn’t.”
Willow’s voice spoke to me of her own worry. “She didn’t call, and if she’s not with you, then where can she be? What happened?”
I dragged my free hand down my face. “We had a fight. A bad one.”
Conscious of the driver’s ability to listen in, I simply said, “She left sometime last night. She doesn’t have a car. So if she left the truck in the lot, where’d she go from there?”
“Anywhere by cab.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Look, just get here. We’ll talk then.”
Willow clicked off without saying goodbye, and I shoved my cell into my pocket. I bit my thumbnail as I stared out the window, mentally kicking myself for not paying enough attention to Hayley’s emotional needs. We fought. We had sex, but angry sex. That’s not to be confused with make up sex.
And now she’s gone.
I don’t know where, nor do I have any way of finding her. She has no cell phone for me to call, no place she’d call home.Wait. Maybe she went back to Roxanne’s house. A glimmer of hope trickled into my heart. That’s the only place Hayley could go.
Home is where your family has to take you in. Right?
Yet, knowing Roxanne, she’d turn Hayley away.
I bit my thumbnail harder, unable to speculate where Hayley may have gone.
I jumped from the cab before the driver halted it completely. I tossed him some cash, not knowing exactly how much. But since he didn’t yell after me as I trotted across the parking lot, I guessed it was enough.
My pickup did indeed sit in my usual spot. I opened the driver’s door and found my smart key in the cupholder. I supposed I could yell at her later about that, but I’d need to find her first. With my key safely in my pocket, I locked the truck and headed inside the building.
“She could have easily stayed at a hotel,” Willow said when I explained my theory of Hayley returning to Roxanne’s.
“But without a car?” I demanded, pacing my office. “Should I start canvassing taxi cabs to find out who might have taken her somewhere?”
“No.” Willow gave me that look that said she thought I was acting stupidly but that she would tolerate it. For now. “You need to give her some space. I know you. You treated her like shit last night. Didn’t you?”
I stopped pacing and drooped into my desk’s chair. “Yeah. I guess I did.”
