“Okay, one more time, Mel. I need you to tell me what happened, and slowly.” Patrick’s voice was the only calm within the storm.
Melody took in a shaky breath while Patrick’s demeanour was nothing but encouraging. I was grateful for my best friend’s ability to work under pressure, because right now, I was breaking. I couldn’t stop pacing the small space inside Cupid’s Cup and if it weren’t for it being my sister’s pride and joy, I might have snapped and tossed something.
“Stella was supposed to meet me here almost an hour ago now,” she said as she looked at the clock. “When she didn’t show, I called Grandma to see if she was still kicking around the bed and breakfast. Grandma figured Stella probably just lost track of time working at the rail house, so she took a quad over the check. Grandma called me back in a panic ten minutes ago and said Stella wasn’t there, but bear spray had been set off in the building.”
I couldn’t take in a full breath. Stella had to be in serious danger to set off the bear spray, and it was unlikely it was for an actual bear, seeing as we were in the middle of winter. Today was Sunday so the crew was off, and no one would have been around to have seen anything happen to her.
“The cameras, we have to go check the cameras,” I said, running out of Cupid’s Cup toward my truck. “The feeds are set up at my house.”
“Get in my SUV,” Patrick demanded, knowing I was in no state to drive and he could use the advantage of his lights to move us faster.
As I burst through my front door and ran toward my office, my hands started shaking too much to even press a computer key as the adrenaline and fear coursed through my veins.
Mel pushed me to the side and took over, pulling up the video footage finding far too many of them blacked out.
“They shouldn’t be like that.” The fear only intensified.
Mel rewound the footage back at a speed I could barely comprehend.
“There,” she said, pointing at the screen just as a can of spraypaint came into the corner of the frame, and an instant later the screen went black.
“FUCK!” I yelled, turning around and slamming my hand against a shelf, toppling it over, sending everything flying.
“Calvin, stop!” Melody yelled, and was suddenly so close to my face I watched her pupils narrow at me. She gritted her teeth so hard I thought they’d break. “Pull yourself the fuck together. You know as damn well as I do that thisversion of you isnotwhat Stella needs when we find her—and wearegoing to find her.”
I may be a stupid man, but I knew better than to argue with my sister.
My eyes filled with tears, and she slammed herself into me, pulling me into a hard hug that I didn’t realize how badly I needed until that very moment.
“Let’s go get your girl.” Patrick’s voice interrupted us.
“We don’t even know where to look.” I felt defeated.
“We do.” He was determined, pulling my and Melody’s attention back to the computer screen. Slowing it down frame-by-frame, we were able to see the hand of the person who was holding the can of spray paint. That’s a hand I would recognize anywhere. One I had taken note of time and time again. “We at least know who to ask.”
Darkness. That was all that surrounded me as I slowly opened my eyes.
My head was pounding, and even though there was a loud ringing in my ears, I was pretty sure the room was dead silent. I tried and failed to sit up, the room was spinning too furiously. I felt sick but I forced myself not to vomit as I rubbed a sore spot on my head and tried to recount the last thing I could remember.
Think, Stella, think, I demanded.
Everything was coming up blank.
The most recent memory coming to me was that I had been in the rail house checking out the progress from the last week. Had I fallen off a ladder? I couldn’t have.
Although I couldn’t see much, I knew this space wasn’t the rail house. I could tell that just by the smell. It was stuffy and dusty, nothing like the cool crisp breeze that came through the rail house paired with the smell of fresh lumber.
As my eyes started to adjust to the dark, I was sure I saw the silhouette of a person in the far corner of the warehouse-type room, but there was nothing but boxes in front of me as I laid on the cold floor.
“Help!” I tried to call but the words didn’t come and the intense burning in my throat sent me into a rage of coughing fits. Anyone in the building would have heard me sputtering, but the person in the corner still didn’t move.
Maybe I couldn’t remember what I had been doing, but I did remember where I had planned to go.
Mel’s.
I just left Trixie’s to head to Cupid’s Cup. It was freezing out, so instead of walking, I took the farm’s old pickup truck. While I drove past the rail house, I noticed the new door Calvin had installed was slightly open, which was odd. We didn’t have any crews working today, and I knew Calvin was already gone to town ahead of me to talk with Patrick about the note.
I didn’t want to be there for the conversation. Since the note was destroyed in the fire, I just wanted to move forward from it, but he was insistent we should tell Patrick. I agreed that he could, but I was keeping my plans with Mel.
