JACK
I’m awake early,my mind switching on the moment I open my eyes.
Camile.
I should be thinking about my daughter, but Vani is a grown woman with her own relationships. She has a home and a marriage—of sorts—whereas Camile is all alone in the world.
I need to apologize to her for Vani’s behavior, so I head over to her house early. Maybe I can take her for breakfast. I picture us sitting across a table from one another, sipping coffee and eating pastries, or whatever the hell she might like. But then I remember I’m supposed to be keeping my distance, so I’ll just apologize on behalf of my daughter and leave again.
I knock on her door but don’t get an answer. Perhaps she’s not awake yet?
It’s a gorgeous morning, though, so maybe she’s outside on the rear porch drinking coffee. I go around the back. The rear door isopen a crack. I frown. Did she leave it open? Overnight? With a rising sense of trepidation, I enter the house.
“Camile?”
No answer.
Where the fuck is she?
Maybe she’s got company. After all, I sent Ace here yesterday. I’m kind of regretting telling him to do whatever it took to make her feel better. I know Ace well enough to understand exactly what that would mean so far as he’s concerned. Perhaps that was the reason I did it. If she becomes Ace’s ol’ lady, problem solved, right?
I won’t ever touch her, or think about touching her, again. She’s completely out of bounds.
And despite the idea of her being in bed with Ace half killing me, I want that to be the case because if she’s not there, that’s bad. Really bad.
I check the house and come up empty, so I head to her bedroom and knock, again getting no reply.
Pushing open the partially ajar door, I step inside to find her bedroom empty. My stomach drops because I’m not stupid. I know what this means. She’s gone. Maybe she ran? Why she went out the back, I don’t know, but she’s not here.
Something on the floor catches my eye.
Her phone. The phone I bought her. Had she thought to change the passcode? I open it easily. Obviously not. My chest aches a little that she trusts me enough not to have changed it.
If she’s left of her own accord, why wouldn’t she have taken her phone?
I check the messages. The last one is to her mom saying she’s going to come to the safe house.
Shit.
But something doesn’t quite add up. Why hasn’t she taken her stuff? Maybe she figured she needed to travel light. Still, with nothing? That small purse she’s always carrying around is slung over a chair and her phone is on the floor? No, this is fucked.
Real fear begins to gnaw at me. My gut tells me this is all kinds of off.
I take out my phone and call Ghost.
The minute the phone is answered I speak. “Camile’s gone.”
“What?” The sleep falls from his voice as alarm takes its place. “Give me a moment,” he says. “I’ll be over.”
I unlock the front door and head outside, where I pace up and down the front of her house, waiting impatiently.
Ghost jogs up, slightly out of breath, holding his phone. “I can take a look at the feed to see what happened. I have cameras in her house.”
“You what?”
He sighs. “I didn’t install them for her. They were already there, remember? You wanted them in for Normie.”
Fuck, yes. I’d forgotten all about them.
