Still, I’ve started filling out my life—signing up for several online classes, helping Chrissy and Rory with some administration work for their charities, trying and failing at several new hobbies.
Turns out I’m hopeless when it comes to quilting.
And crocheting. And embroidery.
Maybe I’ll try out scrapbooking next.
Afterwe get my friend back.
My phone buzzes and my heart lurches, thinking it might bethem.
But it’s just Brooks.
I swipe. “You find her?”
The pause before he replies tells me enough. No, they haven’t found her.
“Never mind,” I murmur. “What do you need?”
Another pause before his tone goes deliberately gentle. “Are you okay to look at a photograph?” he asks. My brows drag together but before I can sayof course, he adds, “River’s in it, Raindrop. And it’s not going to be easy to look at.”
I inhale.
Fuck.Fuck.
Then I shove that all down. “Send me the picture.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” I take a breath. “Let me help.”
A blip of quiet. “Okay, baby. Hang on, I’m sending it over.”
There’s a rustling, the whoosh of the text being sent, and a moment later, my cell buzzes. I put him on speaker, bring up the message, and the image slams into me, nearly sending me to my knees. I inhale sharply, vision going black at the edges.
“Briar?” Brooks’s voice is worried, like he’s called my name more than once.
“I’m okay,” I whisper. “They took me there. When I…” Memories cascade through my brain and I have to breathe through them. “When I wouldn’t do what they wanted, that’s where they would hurt me.”
Someone curses and before I can place the voice, there’s a crash that has me jumping.
“Brooks?” I ask.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Thorn is here, he’s the one who got the letter, and”—he hesitates—“and he’s not taking it well.”
“Oh.”
“Can you tell us where the location is?” Pascal asks.
I close my eyes, shake my head. Then realize they can’t see me through the phone. “No,” I say. “They always took me in the middle of the night and blindfolded me during the drive.”
“So it was within driving distance?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, forcing myself to think beyond the fear and painful memories, trying to ferret out any details that might help them. “It wasn’t a long drive. Maybe an hour and—” I stop, think,breathe. “It was definitely near the ocean. I could smell the salt in the air, hear the crash of the waves when they brought me inside.”
“And what didinsidelook like?”
I tell them about the bodies bumping into mine as they led me down a narrow staircase, the echo of voices when I was brought into a large open room. A warehouse that would sometimes be empty, sometimes full of boxes on pallets.
