CASSIE
Two daysafter I lost my virginity to Hawk, I sat at my favorite table at the coffee shop with my open laptop and a vanilla latte.
The lunch rush had been wild — the town was increasingly overrun with tourists, something that would continue until after apple-picking season — but now the shop was almost empty, Drew wiping down the counters and restocking everything during the lull.
I was grateful for the chance to get off my feet and sit at the little corner table I occupied when the shop was slow, and I took a sip of my coffee and sighed with something I was pretty sure was happiness.
It wasn’t a feeling that made sense. I’d been with the Hawks for almost a month and Bram was still far from happy about the whole thing. Someone had clearly killed my parents, hurt Bram, and now that same someone (I assumed) had hacked into the shared network for the coffee shop and my apartment.
But I couldn’t help it. I was happy.
It wasn’t just losing my virginity, although I admit to being relieved that was done and dusted.
It was the new warmth between Hawk and me, the way I caught him looking at me when he thought I wouldn’t notice, the way he quietly reached for my hand or kissed me on the lips when we passed each other in the house.
And miraculously, my relationship with Jagger and Vigo was as good as it had ben before I slept with Hawk. Any jealousy seemed light-hearted, although Hawk definitely seemed to have a possessive streak.
Ilikedliving at the Hawks’ house. And even though I’d been perfectly content with the solitary life I’d lived in my apartment, it seemed small in hindsight compared to life with the Hawks.
They filled every room, not just with their giant bodies and big voices but with their presence.
I looked at my phone as it pinged with a text from Daisy.
Hey! Miss you. Want to catch up at my place tomorrow? I can invite Sarai.
Sure! What can I bring?I was suddenly eager to fill my two best friends in on the fact that I’d officially joined Club Non-Virgin.
Just your adorable self. We’ll order food in! How about 1pm? The baby will be down for a nap.
Sounds good! See you then.
I put my phone down and turned my attention to my laptop where I had pulled up tabs with articles about missing girls in Blackwell Falls over the past fifteen years. I had no idea if I’d found all of them — even some of the ones I found had been described as possible runways — but there were enough of them to make me realize there was a serious problem in Blackwell Falls.
Girls went missing here. A lot of them.
And there was something else: they were mostly black and brown girls or sex workers or dancers at local strip clubs.
That part made me feel a little sick. I knew that statistically black and brown girlsdidgo missing at a much higher rate than white girls — not just in Blackwell Falls but everywhere — but seeing it in one area in such a high concentration brought me to an unpleasant conclusion.
Whatever had been happening here had been orchestrated.
Intentional.
There was something rotten at the core of the town I called home, and it was hard to imagine my activists parents hadn’t at least been asking questions.
I looked at the pictures on my computer of the girls whose flyers were still pinned to the bulletin board: Rain, Jasmine, Nia.
Rain had disappeared after leaving Pink, the club where she had worked as a dancer. Jasmine had been labeled “troubled.” Nia had been a student at Bellepoint Academy, the all-girls college a few miles from Aventine.
There was no obvious connection between the money transferred from Kensington to Aventine and the missing girls, but it was hard to imagine it was a coincidence, especially when I thought about the sex trafficking scandal that had erupted at Aventine.
Their alumni had trafficked girls to rich men. Put that together with the money transfers and the fact that my parents had obviously been digging into it and it was more likely than not that it was all connected.
Figure out who was behind the money transfers and learn who was behind the missing girls. Or figure out who was behind the missing girls and learn who was behind the money transfers.
Figure out either and learn who had ordered the deaths of my parents.
Maybe.
