“Oh, boy,” I said breathlessly as I sat the food and drink on the dresser beside the bed.
“Naomi?” I asked. “You in here?”
I didn’t want to say her name too loudly because I knew what would happen if Ranger found this room empty. He’d kill her. Despite all of the rules we followed and the code we pledged ourselves to, Ranger was a fucking monster in the mornings without his caffeine.
He’d kill her if I didn’t find her.
“Naomi,” I said curtly, “this isn’t funny. You’re gambling with your life. Now, come out and have breakfast. I know you didn’t eat last night, so you’ve gotta be hungry.”
When her voice didn’t echo back at me, I rushed over to the closet. I threw the door open and checked every single corner before lunging toward the shower. I threw the curtain back, ashamed to admit that she wasn’t there. And after getting down onto my hands and knees to check beneath the bed, I sprinted back up the steps.
“Everything okay?” Dutch called out.
“Yep!” I exclaimed.
I skipped the main floor. If she had been there, we would have already found her. Heard her, or smelled her, or generally come across her. So, I bolted up the steps to the second floor. Door after door I threw open, checking closets and underneath beds.
She had to be somewhere.
We were screwed if she wasn’t.
“Naomi,” I hissed, “where the fuck are you? This isn’t funny any longer.”
I knew there was no reason for her to be on the third floor. After all, the only thing that was up there—other than a bathroom—was the conference room and the--.
“The balcony,” I murmured.
Fucking hell, she was going to jump.
I’d never moved so quickly in all my life. Panic gripped my throat in ways I simply couldn’t explain as I hoofed it up the steps. I crashed through the door into the conference room, finding the chairs cockeyed from the last church meeting Ranger had called.
And there, out on the third-floor balcony, overlooking the cliffside that fell straight into the ocean, was Naomi.
With her legs dangling off the ocean side.
“It’s a long way down if you jump,” I said as I held my hand out in front of me.
She shrugged. “Pretty much the point, don’t you think?”
Her words hit a bit too close to home, and I knew I had to find a way to talk her out of it. “Any reason why you want to jump?”
Her gaze slowly pivoted over her shoulder, and the shocked stare that dripped over her features made me regret my question.
“You honestly can’t figure out one single reason just by looking around you?”
I slowly held out my other hand, but didn’t dare approach her without warning. “I know an unhappy soul when I see it, Naomi. And you were far from happy when we found you in that house.”
She turned her gaze back toward the unending horizon and my soul sympathized with her. Had my heart been able to reach out and comfort her, it would have. I knew how she felt, not being happy with her life but not seeing a way out of that unhappiness. It was a dark place. A place of hopelessness and failure. Like you tried your best, over and over again, yet nothing ever comes of it except more darkness.
More hopelessness.
More failure.
“You know,” I said as I slowly lowered my hands, “my father loved snorting lines off the scars he gave Mom during his drunken fits of rage.”
Her head tilted to the side, but she didn’t speak. So, I continued.
“He sold everything he could get his hands on for his next high. And when we had nothing else to sell, he sold Mom.”
