He squeezes my shoulder when I turn my attention back to my screen. “You’ll find her, Niki. Let me know if you need anything, and eat some pizza. I know you’re not planning on sleeping and you need to keep your strength up.”
I nod, but there’s no way I can stomach food right now. My dad raises a brow when I scoot my plate away after Ev has walked off. He hardly ate the whole time my brother wasmissing, so he doesn’t bother saying anything to me. He does grab a bottle of water and slide it across the island, though.
“Non-negotiable,” is all he says when I side-eye it.
I know he’s right. Food can wait, but water is essential. I unscrew the cap and take a big drink, feeling guilty when the cool water hits the back of my throat. I can’t help but wonder if Savanna is thirsty, if she’s been given water to drink, or if she’s scared and thirsty and a million other things that I refuse to think about.
When my phone dings, I grab it, and my first thought is that it might be from Savanna, but then I remember her phone is with me. The number that pops up is one I don’t recognize, and when I see the attached link, I know it’s from Cupid.
“What is it?” my dad asks, leaning closer as I click on the link that takes me to a file host. My breath catches when I see the photo that’s waiting for me. Savanna is sitting on a filthy mattress, arms wrapped around her bent legs. She’s clutching a ratty blanket, trying to cover up, but she’s clothed at least. Her face is swollen, a bruise forming on her cheek, and the fear in her blue eyes is something I’ll be seeing in my nightmares.
“Do you recognize the room?” I hear my dad ask.
“No,” I say right as the file host auto-deletes the upload. My phone slips from my hand, clattering on the counter.
“What just happened?” I hear Luka ask.
“He sent a photo,” my dad says. “Sav was sitting on a bed in a dingy-looking room, almost like a cellar, cement walls and floor, iron bed frame. Is there any place on campus that might look like that?”
“I don’t think so,” Ev says. “Not any place I’ve ever seen or heard about at least.”
“There’s no way she’s on campus,” I say. “He would’ve taken her somewhere private.” I scrub a hand over my face, and all I can think to say is, “Van’s terrified of bugs and spiders.”
“She’s strong,” my dad reminds me, “and she looked okay. He probably smacked her when he first took her, but she’s okay.” He waits a few seconds before saying what I’d already been thinking. “She was still in her clothes, Niki. That’s good. That’s very good.”
“Yeah,” I say, but I don’t add that it might not stay that way because we’re all already thinking it, whether we want to admit it or not.
Cupid is taunting me. I knew he would. He’s fucking with me, sending me little pieces of Savanna, and then making it impossible for me to trace any of it. I keep thinking about the picture, the fear I’d seen in her eyes, the way she’d been clutching that blanket like it was a barrier between her and the monster standing in front of her.
When I hear another ding, it takes me a second to realize it’s Savanna’s phone. I see the text from her mom and hold it up so my dad can see.
“What the hell am I going to say to them?” I ask. “This is going to kill them.”
“You don’t tell them anything right now. Hopefully we can find her before they even realize she’s gone,” he says.
“And if we don’t?” I ask.
My dad holds my stare. “Then we’ll figure it out together. Right now we focus on finding her.”
By the time the reconstructed photos are done, I’m about to scream at how useless I feel. The end result is five photos showing an approximation of what a younger Cupid could’ve looked like. They’re slightly different, but overall it fits and looks like a younger version of how he looks today. With the software already scanning the archived yearbook photos, I add these images in and wait for any matches to turn up.
While I wait, I pull up a map of the city, trying to figure out realistically how far they could’ve gone. It’s a needle ina haystack, though. None of the security cameras turned up anything, and I searched his vehicle on the CCTV cameras that are pointed at all the streets surrounding the campus. He’s scrubbed all of them. There’s not a single image to even give me a small hint at what direction they might’ve gone in. Everything is a dead end. Exactly how he planned it.
By the time my brother arrives, I’ve got a deep tension headache that’s lodged itself behind my eyes and traveling along the base of my skull and across my shoulders. Every part of my body feels wound up to the breaking point. My family’s been forcing water on me, and Damien made me switch to Gatorade an hour ago since I still can’t bring myself to eat anything.
My brother takes one look at me and then wraps me in a big hug. None of the men in my family have ever been afraid of showing emotion. Max would never tell me to man the fuck up and pretend this isn’t killing me. He knows how I’m feeling. There’s no point in hiding it. It doesn’t mean I’m going to lay down and pull a blanket over my head, but lying about an obvious truth is a waste of time and energy, and I’ve got neither to spare right now.
“How are you holding up?” he asks.
“Not great, but thanks for coming.”
He smacks my back and says, “Of course I came. You traveled across the world to help bust my ass out of Colombia. You think I wouldn’t do the same for you?”
“I know you would,” I tell him, knowing it’s true. He may not have inherited a love of computers, but he’s smart, and he’s working in two Bratvas now. My brother can get shit done when he needs to.
“All right, so what do we have so far?” He ruffles my hair to remind me he’s still my older brother and then looks at our dad.
“Niki’s running a scan on Cupid’s face. We’re trying to match it to his old frat photo so we can get his real name. Ellison isa cover,” our dad says, filling him in on what we’ve got so far. “He also sent a photo of Sav. She’s okay right now. She’s being held in some kind of unfinished basement or cellar, possibly a warehouse.”
