Monster!
“Shut up!” I scream, although I don’t know if it’s to my mum or myself.
Ringo reaches for the phone, so I flail in his hold, stumbling from his grip to dart away so he can’t take it from me.
“I HATE YOU!” I scream into the phone, and my mother simply laughs.
“So dramatic, Abigail,” she tuts. “Your daughter, or your sister. You decide. The clock is ticking.”
The call ends then, the line beeping a couple of times before going dead, and I stare at it in my grip, blurred by the tears I didn’t realise were falling.
“Ringo! There you are!” JD’s panicked voice cuts through my growing meltdown, and I glance up to see JD, Vender and Mex rushing up the path.
“What is it?” Ringo barks, and JD skids to a stop before us, his eyes darting from Ringo to me.
“It’s Tahli. She’s gone.”
I’m running the next second, my heart thrashing wildly in my chest as I navigate the path in the dark, my phone still clutched tightly in my grip.
Was my mother teasing me? Does she already have Tahli? Have I been set up tonight? Whisked away for a secret meeting while really the mole was kidnapping my little sister?
“Tahli!” I scream as the house comes into view, the lights already on inside, like the whole house has been awake and searching for her. “Tahli!”
“Abbey!” Jols comes crashing through the back door. “I’ve looked everywhere. I can’t find her.”
I barely look at Jols, too scared all I’ll see is a traitor, so I bolt past her, bursting inside and charging for Tahli’s room.
My name gets called by multiple people, but I ignore all of them, needing to see for myself that my sister is really gone.
She’d chosen a room downstairs, right near Alana’s, and my feet slide on the floor as I reach it, gripping the doorjamb, and swinging myself inside to see… nothing.
Just her empty bed. Her sheets crumpled and slept in. Her clothes still hanging messily from the drawers. A half-drunk glass of water on the white bedside table.
“Tahli!” I call again, diving to the floor to look under the bed, only there’s nothing there either.
Fisting my fingers in my hair, I stand and spin on the spot, my mind racing at where she could be, because she has to be here, right? She’s not actually gone… right?
“Angel.”
The deep rasp of Ringo’s voice doesn’t calm me the way it normally does. Instead, I see the man who woke me at three in the morning and convinced me to go somewhere with him, taking the one man with us who was charged to watch over my sister.
“No.” I shake my head, backing up. “She’s here. She has to be.”
“They’ve looked everywhere. Lewy is checking the security feed now.”
I still shake my head.
“No, she’s here. It couldn’t have been that easy for my mum to get to her.” I stab an accusing finger at my husband. “You were the one who took me away.”
“You know why I took you,” he growls, his face turning red with anger, and it hurts, right in the centre of my chest, because part of me wants to accuse him of having something to do with this, but the other part of me will literally die if the one person I thought I could trust has betrayed me.
I can’t speak. Tears fall, and a war wages in my mind. I don’t know what’s right or wrong. Real or fake. I don’t know if I can trust my own thoughts right now.
“Abs, you know me. Better than anyone. I know you know I would never ever do anything to hurt you, your sister, or Bobbi. You know I love you. You know I love your sister. And you know I already love Bobbi like she is my own. Tell me you know that.”
There’s pain in his voice. Lashing pain that I know has the ability to break him completely, and that’s the very thing that breaks through my panic, reminding me of my reality.
A loud sob escapes me, and I slap my hand over my mouth, shaking my head.
