I amble through the living room to the kitchen and snatch up a cool bottle of water from the fridge, when my phone starts to vibrate against my leg. Slipping it out of my pocket, I stare at the screen as I move through the large glass doors toward the pool. My subtle pulse picks up pace as I see a missed call and text message from Rusty staring back at me in the darkness.
Rusty
Call me, son.
I fall into one of the pool chairs that lines the painted gray wall at the edge of the water, and quickly look over my shoulder to make sure I’m still alone. Pressing on his name, I grasp the phone in a tight grip as I hold it tight to my ear.
It rings twice before I hear rustling and the clearing of a throat. “Took you long enough.” Rusty’s voice is quiet, yet gruff.
“Yeah, I was in the studio. How’s she doing today? The news reporters didn’t pick it up?” I ask, and there is a short pause when Rusty exhales heavily.
The silence that descends is too thick.
No.
After what feels like five minutes—which could have only been five seconds—Rusty says, “She’s gone, Harlen.”
My entire body turns rigid, the hand around my phone squeezing as the pulse in my carotid artery doesn’t turn erratic, it simply…dissipates.
“What do you mean ‘gone?’” I croak out slowly.
“Fuck, not like that, son. Sorry. I left her two nights ago, told her I’d be back after lunch the next day. I wanted to make sure I could pull some strings and stop what happened to her from making the local news.” He clears his throat. “Which I did, thank fuck. But I got held up and couldn’t get back until today. When I got there, she was gone.”
I thread my hand through my hair, knee bouncing up and down nervously. “What did the nurses say? Maybe she just needed to get out? I can’t blame her; it’s stale as fuck up there.”
He snorts, and I have no idea what the fuck is so funny.
“Well, one of them had a nice black ring blossoming around his eye.”
“Of course he did.”Why am I not surprised?“Can you swing by her dance studio? It’s on–”
My father cuts me off. “Already did. There was a black tarp thrown up over the glass. I couldn’t see in, and there was a chain over the door handles with a–”
My next question silences him, my desperation escalating. “How about the bar she works at, Wes’s Bar? Maybe he knows something?”
“Well, that’s why I called you,” he begins, and my spine straightens as I check back over my shoulder when I hear shuffling. Chase is walking across the artificial turf. He takes a seat in the pool chair across from me and rests his elbows on his knees as I continue to listen to Rusty.
“She left a note, son.”
I run the back of my hand across my forehead as a line of perspiration trickles down my skin. “What did it say?” I ask nervously.
Rusty clears his throat, then answers, “She thanked me, but she also left a message for you.” He pauses in time with my breath.
“Stop fucking stalling and get to the point, old man.” I’m agitated now, quite simply shitting bricks. I can feel hope crawling through my veins, and fuck me, do I hate it.
The sound of a door closing sounds on the line, then I hear the roar of his pipes rumble at my ears.
“She saw you,” he says simply.
My stomach drops to my feet. “What do you mean, she saw me? She was fucking out.” I squeeze my eyes closed, and when I open them, I see Chase’s dark gaze is zeroed in on mine.
“She must have come to for a short moment, son. It’s not unheard of.”
“What the fuck did the note say?” With my patience wearing thin, my emotions have heightened to frightening levels. Probably shouldn’t have had that coke. Now I feel like I’ve just stepped into the face of a tornado.
Rusty coughs, then begins to read it aloud. “I saw you. And you did exactly what I knew you would…” He pauses, exhaling deeply. It’s guttural, and I know there’s more. I know for a fucking fact that it doesn’t finish there.
“What else?” I growl, guilt like shards of glass in my chest making prominent, subtle little cuts.
