That didn’t mean Bram would allow it even if she wanted to make it happen.
“It’s late though.” It was easier to focus on the here and now. Thinking about the future made me feel all prickly and hot. I thought the feeling might be nervousness but couldn’t be sure.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been nervous. Couldn’t remember the last time I’d cared enough about anything to be nervous.
“Anything?” Jagger asked, stalking into the room.
He was nervous too. Not that he’d admit it.
I shook my head.
Jagger looked at his phone. “It’s almost ten.”
Hawk’s phone rang on the coffee table, and for a split second we looked at each other, a thread of fear bonding us together.
It wasn’t the first time we’d been bonded by emotion, but that emotion was usually excitement, and it usually happened when we had our masks on, when we were on our way into a bank or in the tunnels waiting for a Hunt to start.
Hawk reached for the phone and I saw a local number without a name on the screen before he held the phone to his ear.
“Yeah?”
He went quiet, and I heard the rumble of a man’s voice on the other end of the line.
Jace.
“Thanks for calling,” Hawk said. “I’ll get back to you.”
He ended the call.
I sat up straighter. “Is Cassie there?”
Jace had been behind me by a couple years in school. Other than the fact that he’d done time for murdering Daisy’s brother — a crime he’d committed with Wolf and Otis — the only thing I knew about Jace Kane was that, in some bizarre twist of fate, he was with Daisy now.
They all were.
“That’s the thing,” Hawk said. “She never showed.”
“What the fuck…?” Jagger said. “And they’re just callingnow?”
“Daisy thought maybe something had come up,” Hawk said, “but she’s been calling Cassie to check in and she hasn’t returned any of Daisy’s calls or texts.”
I felt frozen, stiff with dread.
Then it shook loose and I was on my feet, Jagger and Hawk on my heels as we headed for the door.
3
CASSIE
I couldn’t tellwhat time it was. Couldn’t even tell whether it was day or night.
I could hardly think beyond the panic filling my mind.
I’d been driven off the road, was blind and trapped in my car at the bottom of some cliff or ravine on the mountain.
And no one — not a single soul — knew where I was.
I thought about Daisy and Sarai, wondered how long it would take them to realize something was wrong. Daisy would call or text when I didn’t show for lunch, but how long would it take her to think I might be missing rather than caught up in something at the coffee shop or with the Hawks?
