She’s lying about her cameras not working. Even if the one she pointed to is out, I’ve clocked two others—one hidden in the plant over the mail cubbies, the other pointed down the hall over the elevator. Something tells me there are more, and I don’t like that she’s making a point to lie to me.
I glance around the space one more time, leaning my palms on the lip of the desk. “Thanks for the info, Claudia,” I say, pushing off. “Hopefully I won’t see you again.”
“Hope not,” she says.
I’m definitely seeing her again.
I make my way out of the apartment building then, pulling my phone from my pocket when I do. I need to punch something, need to work this restless energy out of my bones before it becomes toxic. Yet, I don’t have time to go to the gym.
A little extra recklessness on the bike today will have to do.
“Great, you’re alive,” Kade says when he answers my phone call.
“I need you at my apartment in thirty,” I tell him.
I hang up without waiting for an answer and begin my jog back to my bike parked in a garage a few blocks away.
I have to figure this out.
I can’t let her down.
Not again.
I’m drying off from a five-minute shower when Kade comes through my door later. My mind won’t stop running. Every possible scenario for where Lance and Trevor have disappeared to is spinning me around and around. I can’t get a grip on my own reality, and it takes Kade knocking on the wall for me to even notice that he’s come inside.
He’s in joggers and a t-shirt, a baseball cap backward on his head, and he’s wearing a very tired expression on his flushed face.
“You could have gone running with me this morning,” I say, assuming the reason for his pink cheeks. “Saved us both the added stress.”
Kade pushes off his shoes and slaps a paper bag on the counter. “I was up at four. I don’t sleep as well when Liam is gone.”
“Everything good with that?” I ask, pulling on a t-shirt.
He nods. “All good. Reed was up about the same time as me, playing around in the studio. When I left the gym, he was passed out on the couch with the dog, though.” His gaze snags on the burner phone on the counter. “This it?”
“Yeah. Thank fuck I got there before the garbage truck,” I say as I grab sweatpants from the dresser.
Kade leans over the kitchen island and begins to go through the phone.
My own phone buzzes the moment I step into the kitchen, and my stomach drops at Bonnie’s name on the screen.
BONNIE
After our hike, Darcy is going to meet us.
If that’s okay with you.
I stare at the screen. Two days in a row.Fuck.
I shouldn’t have left her last night.
“Hey.”
Kade’s voice makes me look up from the spot I was just staring at. A sadness pierces his eyes that makes me shift.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I blink as I contemplate the question, as I go through my motions the last twenty-four hours, feeling dissociated for most of it.
