“He texted me to say ‘I found you.’” She shrugged like the answer should have been obvious to him. Her fingers twisted the zipper tab on her hoodie, spinning it round and round. “Before, when that’s happened, Pete has gotten me a new number.”
How the hell many times had it happened? Tension knotted his shoulders and pulled taut while he listened with one ear to his phone dialing Gabriella’s number.
“What makes you think he only discovered your phone number? How do you know this guy didn’t find out where you’re living, too?” His pulse pounded hard behind his eyes, the thump, thumping about three times as fast as the flashing heartbeat on Pete’s monitor.
Hell. What if this guy was on his way to Heartache right now to find Mia? Gabriella was all alone in that house.
His call to her rang. And rang.
The tension in his shoulders twisted. Sank. Drained down into his gut in a pool of dread.
“He’s never traced me before. Just found the number.” Mia chewed on her lip. “If you keep your phone turned off, it doesn’t show your location or anything.”
Clay closed his eyes for a second. Just long enough to try and scavenge some more patience.
“As a private investigator, I know about a million ways to find people who don’t want to be found—some of whom are experts at going into hiding.” Why the hell hadn’t she confided in him sooner? The answer blasted through his head with the volume of a foghorn.
Maybe because he hadn’t given her enough reason to trust him.
The dread in his gut roiled. “I don’t want to frighten you, but you have to understand you can’t tackle this alone. I guarantee that a teenage girl would be an easy mark for someone with a little motivation and half a brain.”
His call to Gabby kicked over to her voice mail when she didn’t pick up. Very, very unlike her.
Fear squeezed him in an icy grip.
“I didn’t know.” Mia shook her head, tears letting loose to stream down her face.
Another punch to the gut.
He rounded the bed to hug her, wishing he knew what to do. His father could die any minute. His sister needed him. But Gabriella might be all alone in a house with some kind of stalker intent on finding Mia.
“I’m going to call my friend, the sheriff, to meet me at the house to make sure Gabby’s safe.” He withdrew his phone, already dialing Sam. “I’ll ask him if Heather can sit with you, or maybe she can call her sister—Erin, the woman who owns the vintage store. You know them, right? Feel safe with them?”
He had seen Mia with Erin at the reunion.
She nodded, her face pale and frightened. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“I’ve made bigger mistakes, believe me.” He regretted all the time he’d wasted blaming his father for Eddy’s death instead of finding out about Mia and getting to know her. He’d learned too damn well from this day with his father that time was short. He couldn’t let anything hold him back when it came to the people he cared about, like Mia.
Gabriella.
Clay placed a hand on Mia’s shoulder. “But going forward, we need to start trusting each other more. Okay?”
Soon they would be making some hard decisions about her future and he needed her to be honest with him about what she wanted.
His sister nodded tearfully while Sam picked up the call.
Clay dropped a kiss on Mia’s head and turned his attention to finding Gabriella.
He pressed his Bluetooth more securely to his ear. “Sam, it’s Clay.” He didn’t think twice about bothering Sam during the reunion. This was too important. Gabriella was too important. “I need someone out at the Chance house to find Gabby. Fast.”
Chapter Seventeen
Gabriella stepped deeperinto her childhood bedroom, unspeakably grateful that Zach had remodeled it since the day she’d tried to end her unhappiness by swallowing as many pills as possible.
Clutching her cell phone in her hand that contained all the security codes for the house, Gabby tried to tell herself that this was just a room like any other. A harmless physical space with new bamboo blinds and a pretty seagrass wall covering that was nothing like the flocked florals she’d chosen as a child.
The only ghost here now was in her head and inside her heart. Although when a breeze blew through the house and banged a door shut somewhere within, the unexpected noise made her jump.
