Huh. What an interesting man, I think to myself, easing Meg’s door closed with a gentle click of the latch, as to not raise any suspicion. However, as soon as the bolt slides into place, I’m flying across the room and throwing myself into the wheeledchair. It travels into the wall, which I push off and plant myself in front of the computer screen.
“Okay, asshole-next-door. Let’s see what you’re hiding.” My fingers crack as I shove the game window aside, the bright colors disappearing in favor of a black-screened server. Pulling up a clean interface and routing through a secondary server, I tap into the local network, skimming for active devices and filtering out the garbage until I find what I’m looking for. A phone pings intermittently, its signal bouncing just strong enough through the wall to latch onto. Reid isn’t broadcasting his secrets, but he’s not invisible either. No one ever is.
“Come on. Come on,” I mutter, fingers moving faster now as I pull up metadata and connection logs. Finally, after what feels like forever but is only a few minutes in reality, I locate the recent outgoing call. There’s no name attached, just a number. My grin sharpens. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Isolating the number and running it through a quick sweep, I realize it’s not local but bounced through various towers. The kind of number that someone wanted to hide in plain sight. Unfortunately for Reid, nothing is ever hidden if you know where to look. A few more keystrokes and I’m piggybacking off the connection Reid just used, ready to tap in as a ghost listener. Now all I have to do is wait for a call to come through.
Slipping the headset back on, I snuggle into the blanket and stare at the screen, waiting not-so-patiently. “Come on, call him back,” I whisper expectantly, my gaze drifting toward the wall that separates us. Luckily, I don’t have to wait long. The line flickers to life with a soft crackle, the audio stabilizing as I hover a hand near the keyboard in case I need to adjust anything mid-stream. Thankfully, the connection is clean and crisp, possibly better than whatever service Reid is actually paying for.
“Finally,” Reid breathes, and I can practically hear the uneven thuds of his pacing. “Where the hell have you been?” There’s a pause on the other end before a woman responds.
“I was in the pool, making the best of my life now,remember?” I take note of the edge in her tone and the insinuation being made.
“This is urgent,” Reid snaps, whatever composure he usually clings to completely gone now. “They’re looking for you.” There’s another pause, and I sit forward to watch the line on the screen pulse.
“Looking for me…where?” the woman asks. My eye twitches for the second time. Interestingly, she doesn’t ask who is looking for her. Reid groans, audibly running a hand over his face.
“Where they think you are, I presume. With Harrison.” The blood in my veins goes cold, the dots starting to connect. I shudder within the blanket, no longer able to feel my limbs. If Reid is speaking to the person who is supposed to be with Harrison, then that means he’s speaking to… “Laura, I need you to come back.”
“Are you insane? You can’t keep uprooting my life whenever you feel like it. I did what you paid me for. I got invited to the party, I let you drug her and I vanished with those fake documents. Just because your masterplan didn’t work out, doesn’t mean I’m going to pop back up and play the broke student again. I…I just got a puppy,” Laura whines, no doubt pouting. Said puppy starts to whimper and I’m treated to a round of Laura pacifying it with a baby voice.
Although, I’m barely listening anymore. The blanket slips from my shoulders as my entire body remains locked in place, that wariness alarm in my head currently screaming. My fingers hover uselessly above the keyboard, unable to rectify a whole shit show of problems. I did a deep dive search for Harrison, presuming Laura was with him. I didn’t even consider runningher name through the program as well. I didn’t think to look for her individually, and I’ve sent Meg to the home of an ex-con with no one to actually save.
Reid is apparently feeling the same sense of disbelief, his voice now hollow and pained.
“She was meant to go back to rehab. Not go on a suicide mission.” My eyes cut to the wall again. That fucking asshole. That’s what this was about? But…why?
“Boo fucking hoo. Not my problem anymore,” Laura cuts in, her voice sharp enough to slice straight through the panic both Reid and I are spiraling into. “It’s about time you learned you can’t play people like puppets. And it’s good to know not everyone yields to your plans.”
“You were quick enough to take my money,” he’s quick to respond, as if he’s trying to force control back into a situation that’s already slipped too far from his grasp. There’s a bark of laughter on the other end of the phone, the waveform on the screen pulsing steadily.
“It’s a bit late for a conscience. You handed me a script, some fake documents, and a paycheck that meant I never have to work again. Don’t pin this on me because your neighbor turned out to be more unhinged than you realized.”
Unhinged? I’ll show you unhinged. My jaw tightens, my mouth opening to interject into the call and blow my cover. Luckily, the line goes dead, and on the screen, the connection flatlines. Silence presses in around me as if it’s trying to suffocate the thought forming in my head, until suddenly, the blaring racket of rock music slams against the walls. Beneath it, there’s a roar and a shattering of glass. I pay Reid’s tantrum no mind, unable to confront him without giving myself away.
So I just sit there, dragging a hand down my face as everything clicks into place. Harrison didn’t kidnap Laura. Reid staged all of it, because for some reason, he wants Meg gone.This has been one huge power play when we didn’t know who was controlling the board. And now, Meg is out there, walking straight into the fallout of it.
“Maldito inferno,” I breathe, pushing back from the desk hard enough that the chair rolls a few inches across the floor. My body trembles with nervous energy, the need to call off this whole thing colliding with the fact that it’s far too late. They’ll have already been there, already discovered what I just have.
I grab at my phone out of instinct, thumb hovering uselessly over a dead screen that won’t connect, won’t do a damn thing except remind me that I’m sitting here while they’re out there. My chest tightens, a sharp pain building behind my ribs as every possible outcome crashes through my head at once. None of them are good, none of them are fixable.
I was supposed to be one step ahead, the safety net she didn’t even know she needed. Instead I handed her over to a situation I didn’t fully understand, trusted a plan that wasn’t mine, and let someone else pull the strings. I choke on my own breath, dragging both hands through my hair as I pace the room like a caged animal, the thumping against the walls closing in.
For the first time since I met her, I don’t know where she is. I don’t know if she’s safe. I don’t know how to fix it, and that takes me straight back to the night my mom died. Straight back to the worst feeling I’ve ever had.
Chapter Forty Six
The campus looks exactly the same. Painfully the same.
Everest pulls the car into a quiet stretch of road just outside the dorms, the engine idling as we simply sit there. Students pass by, dragging their backpacks at the end of a long day, sleepy groans filtering through the air with only a few conscious and curious enough to glance our way. With a flick of his fingers, Everest sends them on with their day, his influential aura settling back in as if we never left. As if the last few days didn’t tear something open inside of me that I’m not sure will ever close.
I don’t move at first. My hand is braced on the handle, my body angled toward the escape, but there’s a weight pressingdown on my chest that makes leaving feel impossible. Everest doesn’t mention it, but I know he senses my thoughts. Once we get out of this car, we have to start living a new life. Living a lie that we’ve promised will never be spoken about, not to anyone. Not that I could voice it anyway.
The mud under my knees, the metallic tang of blood thick in the back of my throat, the crack of the gunshot echoing somewhere deep within my skull. My fingers twitch as they remember the resistance of the trigger, the recoil of the gun, the moment I sealed my fate. Every time they’ve twitched over the past three days, I’ve sought to keep them busy, to forget the reality crashing down on me. Evidently, Everest has been an ideal distraction.
After burying Harrison along with the deer’s corpse that he’d dutifully wrapped in tarp, we checked his house for any sign of Laura. Coming up empty and running out of time, we then ran back to the barn, changed into our clean clothes and made it a whole twenty miles down the road before Everest slammed his foot on the brake. One look at the wild, panicked glint in his eye, at the last thread of his control finally snapping, and I reacted, dragging him into the back seat with the only solution my body knew.
And so it went on. Hands clawing, teeth scraping, punishing thrusting rhythms in laybys, diner restrooms, seedy motels with flickering lights and thin walls. I needed his hands and mouth on me. I needed something louder than the silence in my head. I needed to forget.
