She’s not in there.
She left out the back and didn’t want me to see her leave.
My chest cracks open clean down the middle, and everything inside it spills out hot and messy, and for a second, I can’t breathe. I brace both hands on my thighs, bend forward over the pavement, and try to drag air into my lungs. My brain is doing that thing it used to do in the old days when a job was about to go sideways and there was nothing left except the options in front of me.
Someone took her. That fucking ex. Daniel. He’s found her. He’s been watching.
Or…
She bolted with Clio. Something happened in that shop, and she ran away, because she turned her phone off instead of just ignoring me, because turning it off is a decision you make whenyou don’t want anyone to find you, not even the people you trust?—
Either one of those versions is going to end with me burning the entire fucking island to the ground.
I straighten up, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and start moving toward the truck. I’m running now, full sprint, and I jump into the driver’s seat, then slam the door hard enough to shake the frame. My hands are trembling so badly I have to try twice to get the key in the ignition.
I hit the button on my phone for North.
He picks up on the second ring. “Ace!”
“She’s gone.”
“Wait, what?”
“She’s fuckinggone,North. The shop’s dark, the back door is locked, her phone is off, and she’s not answering. Something happened. Someone took her, or she snuck out to avoid me seeing.”
“Breathe. Talk slower. Where are you?”
“Fuck, are you hearing me? We lost Adelaide!”
“I heard,” he states, and his voice is controlled, but only just. There’s a strain under it now, tight and dangerous, like he’s holding himself in one piece by hand. “Tell me exactly where you are.”
“Shop parking area. She went inside thirty minutes ago and said she’d text when she was ready. Instead, I got one saying she’s staying at Clio’s, and when I called to check, she rejected it and turned her phone off. And the shop’s closed. Everyone’s gone?—”
“Goddammit!” His breath comes harsh down the line, and I can hear movement on his end—drawers, footsteps, the crack of a cabinet shutting too hard.
Then my panic crashes back in. “I already weighed the options,” I explain hurriedly. “Someone took her, or she ranfrom us. Both are catastrophic. I need Luca on cameras in the shop area. Traffic. Businesses. Street feeds. Anything he can break into. I want every car that came out of that back lot in the last hour and where it went.”
“I’ll get him on it,” North says immediately.
I yank the truck out of the lot too fast, the rear tires fishtailing on gravel before they catch.
“Ace, come home,” he says. “We coordinate from here. I don’t want you tearing around the island blind while I’m trying to find her.”
“I can’t sit in that house.”
“Ace—”
“I can’t.” My hand crushes the wheel. “I’ll smell her there, North. I can’t stand in there right now and wait for bad news to walk in. I’ll go through the walls.”
His breathing deepens, because he gets it and if he were the one out here and I told him to sit still, he’d tear the truck apart with his bare hands before he listened.
“Then move,” he says. “But you stay in touch. You don’t go dark. You don’t do anything stupid just because you’re scared.”
I laugh once, sharp and ugly. “Too late. Anyway, have you heard back from your contact about that piece of shit, her ex, Daniel?”
A whisper on his end. Luca, maybe, saying something too fast for me to catch. North answers him away from the phone, clipped and immediate. “Last I heard, he was still in LA, but that was days ago. Turns out he’s a real piece of shit too, using his company to move drugs, and many have gone missing mysteriously in his circles. The guy’s the kind we’d eagerly deal with.”
I rub my chin, thinking… “What if he’s here and found Adelaide? Forced her to send me a message?” That thought nearly takes me out at the knees.
