“No, there’s two.”
Ah shit!FifteenParker“Parker, there’s a call for you on line two,” Honey, one of the nurses, said as I walked out of the examination room.
Moving to the phone, I picked up the receiver and hit the flashing button. “Parker Knight speaking.”
“It’s Hurst. Listen, did Ari say she was going anywhere?”
“She was going to collect her gaming stuff from wherever she stashed it, but that was about it. Why?”
“We went by the office and saw Sadie’s car parked outside, but no one was inside, so we drove over to Ari’s house, and it’s all locked up.”
Frowning at the wall, I tried to remember if she’d mentioned anything, but when we’d finally gotten out of the shower this morning, she’d only spoken about the gaming stuff. “Is the alarm on?”
“Archer says the circular light thing is set to away from home, so I guess so.”
Patting my pockets, I came up blank for my cell. “Keep your phone in your hand. I’m going to find my cell, and I’ll call you back from it.”
Hearing an ‘okay’, I ran through to my office where I’d stashed my shit when I got here and hit the screen to see if she’d text or called. I had twenty missed calls and a shit ton of messages, and went through them to see if any were from her. No, but there were three texts and five calls from Dale.
Obviously, with the way texts read, the last one was visible first and had been sent an hour ago.
On my way to you now. Keep your eyes open, I don’t trust her.
Thirty minutes before that, he’d sent:
Rang the dick. He says she’s rented a house in Gonzales for a girl’s retreat. She left last night.
The first one had been sent three hours ago, and it kind of made it all fit together.
Spoke to DB. Chantal was pulled over for speeding a couple of weeks ago wearing an auburn wig, man. He says a couple of the guys have mentioned seeing her driving in and out of town in the middle of the night, too. When they pulled her for speeding, she told them she’d been out visiting you.
Typing back a quick reply to tell him to hurry, I rang Hurst.
“I think it’s Chantal,” I growled and then told him what Dale had sent me. “Pull as many camera feeds as you can to see if there was another vehicle or person at the offices. We need to track her down, especially if she’s rented somewhere.”
“Do you think she’ll hurt them?” he asked as he barked out orders to the others.
“I wouldn’t put anything past her. Fuck, Hurst, I should’ve seen this coming. I could’ve—”
“Parker, shut up,” he snapped, shocking me. “You know I worship my whole family, including you, so I don’t say this shit lightly when one of them is missing. You couldn’t have done jack shit. Yeah, she’s unhinged and does fucked up shit, but how in the hell were you to ever know she’d do this? You’ve been the target in the past, so it was right for all of us to assume you were still her target. Kicking and blaming yourself isn’t going to achieve anything apart from clouding your damned mind, which means you’re useless to the search.”
It was harsh, it was tough, but the words were what I needed. “You’re right.”
“You got that shit outta your system, son?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Good, don’t make me ever talk to you like this again, it makes my voice sound like Darth Vader. A calm mind is a clever mind, so you keep on repeating that to yourself. Now, call Dale and tell him to come straight here. I’m going to call Connor and get him in on it. We’ll find them, and this time that bitch is going to prison.” He was so resolute, so steely calm and strong, that it was hard to remember he was in his seventies and not a thirty-five-year-old Marine. “Now, I gotta call Sadie’s dad, too, to let him know his baby’s missing, so if he doesn’t kill me with words or voodoo, I’ll see you when you get here.”
“See you in ten.”
Yelling at Chris that I had a family emergency, I ran out of the hospital and over to my car. If I’d had the presence of mind to assess my mental and physical state at that moment, I’d have noted the calmness and determination I had were totally at odds with how pissed and scared I was. When I looked back on it three days later, though, I realized my hands hadn’t even been shaking as I unblocked a number I’d only kept so I could block it from calling me—hers.
That didn’t mean I didn’t lose my shit when it rang five minutes later, and two women screamed in the background, though.