“I’ve spoken to the police; they’re on their way over.” Paul taps his phone against his palm, his annoyance diminished from its peak this morning. He’s clearly worried, too. And so am I. My stomach hurts so bad, it feels like I’ve got the worst period cramps known to womanhood. It’s all nerves, but it’s manifesting in so many physical ways. My head is pounding, my body is sweetly sore from last night and I can’t even enjoy it, and I want to scream.
Where are you, Parrish?! What the actual fuck?
“The Seattle Slayer probably got him,” Kimber murmurs, and Tess just loses her shit completely.
“What did you just say?” she snaps, her voice like a bolt of ice. In an instant, she’s standing in front of Kimber and tearing her phone out of her hands. “You’ve just lost phone privileges for a week.”
“Mom!” Kimber screeches, scrambling up out of her seat. But it’s too late. Tess shoves the phone into her purse and then plants her elbows on the surface of the counter, letting out a small scream of frustration that surprises the shit out of all of us.
“I can’t do this again, Paul,” she breathes, and I almost feel sorry for her. No, no, I do feel sorry for her, even after last night. I can’t help myself. My empathy flares as I watch her shoulders shake with quiet sobs. Her husband comforts her by pulling her into his arms, and I’m reminded of Parrish all over again, of the innumerable times he’s hugged me close and let my cry.
Fuck.
Kimber comes to a stop a few feet behind her mom, her rage dissipating like smoke. Even she can sense how serious this is. Nobody’s seen Parrish since last night. I’m probably the last person to have seen him, and that does not sit well with me.
“What about the security cameras, Paul?” Tess is asking, and my heart drops. Oh. Shit. If they check the cameras, they’ll see me and Parrish kissing in the hallway. They’ll see us open the door and talk to Chasm. I’m not exactly sure where all the cameras are located, but they might even see him giving us condoms.
Chas and I share an alarmed look, but there’s quite literally nothing we can do about it.
“I checked three times already,” Paul tells Tess, and Chasm’s brows go way, way up. It’s very clearly a what the actual fuck? sort of a look. “There’s nothing there. The drive was full. We haven’t actually recorded anything in weeks.”
The look she throws her husband is venomous.
“You could’ve set it to upload to the cloud, or automatically erase over old footage.” Tess’ words are sharp, fully intended to inflict a blow on her husband. She’s hurting and she doesn’t know what to do with that pain.
“I’m sorry, honey. I really am, but what can I do now?”
Tess frowns at him and stands up, starting her pacing game all over again.
“Lucky break,” Chas whispers, sitting a little closer to me than is really prudent. Kimber notices, but she doesn’t say anything, not today. After we get Parrish back, I’m sure I’ll hear alllll about it.
“Guess so.” Doesn’t feel like a lucky break. I’d rather have had Tess and Paul see us kissing than spend anymore time wondering what happened to Parrish. Tucking my legs up against me, I wrap my arms around them and try not to let my mind stray down paths of ‘what if’. What if I’d stayed with him last night, risks be damned? If he was upset about something, maybe we could’ve talked it out? Did I pressure him into sex? What if he wasn’t ready?
“Don’t blame yourself, Little Sister,” Chas tells me, reaching out to put an arm around my shoulders. The contact surprises me, but I don’t dislike it. This time, however, Kimber really does level a violent glare in my direction. “He’ll come back. Just like Lumen. Don’t worry about it until tomorrow. If he isn’t back then, we’ll freak out together.”
I give a little nod, relaxing into Chasm’s warmth. But I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong here. Something is really, really fucking wrong.
By the next morning, the Vanguard house is a chaotic mess. There are detectives in the kitchen, a fresh slew of reporters outside the gate, and a surprise visit from Maxx.
“I got here as soon as I could,” he says, shrugging out of his windbreaker near the garage door. “You really don’t know where he is?”
“Would I have let it get this far if I did?” Chasm snaps back, swiping his hand over his mouth. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean that. I’m just stressed the fuck out.”
Maxx turns his emerald gaze down to me, but there aren’t any inappropriate butterflies to squash down this time. I’m panicking, to be honest. All I can think is that Parrish spooked after what happened between us and left. What else could it be? Like he said, how could anyone possibly kidnap him out of this house? There’s a gate, five locks on the front door, and a security firm that has three cars that regularly patrol the neighborhood.
There’s no way; there’s just no way.
Except … people keep mentioning the Seattle Slayer. It seems absurd, to wonder if a serial killer spirited away your family member in the middle of the night, but then, it really does happen to some people. Kimber spent all night sitting in her room with the door cracked, crying and listening to that stupid Emerald City Murder Podcast. Frankly, I’d love to strangle the hosts with their own phone chargers. They’re fearmongers and clout chasers.
“Are you doing okay, Kota?” Maxx asks, and Chasm—bless his black, twisted fucking heart—decides this is his opportunity to step in.
“They fucked each other the night he went missing,” he whispers, and I elbow him so hard in the stomach that he grunts. “What the hell was that for? You do realize we might have to tell Tess at some point, right?”
Maxx shakes his head and puts his fingers to his temples, closing his eyes for a moment to process the information.
“That wasn’t your story to share,” I growl out at Chas, wondering how the hell I ended up in such a crazy situation in the first place. I just like Parrish. He just liked me. That’s it. It shouldn’t be this big of a deal. “And no, we’re not going to tell Tess, not yet. It would kill him if we did.”
“Yeah, well, the Slayer might kill him if we don’t,” Chas retorts as we glare at each other.
“Wait … you and Parrish?” Maxx echoes, opening his eyes to look at me. That’s when I remember that I told him I was a virgin on our hike together. Great. Just fantastic. What a way to experience my first time. Seems typical that it would end in a clusterfuck and a missing person. “Isn’t he a virgin?”
“Was a virgin,” Chasm corrects, and I groan, slapping my own hands over my face.
“That’s not why he’s missing; it’s not.” The protest sounds feeble, even to me, but I have to keep believing that for now. I have to. If he’s not back by tomorrow, then I’ll … I’ll tell Tess. I’ll just fucking tell her and watch her face morph into one of abject horror. At that point, she won’t just dislike me—she’ll blame me for Parrish’s disappearance.
Not sure our relationship—which is already on rocky ground—will ever recover from that.
“Okay, okay, let’s calm down for a minute.” Maxx drops his hands to his sides, and I do the same, looking up at him with what I’m sure is a pathetic, pleading sort of expression. Any advice or suggestions he has, I’m game to listen to. Something about me seems to get to him, and his cheeks redden slightly. “That and this are not related. You know Parrish: he’s waited this long to sleep with a girl. It wasn’t a decision that was made lightly.”
We all pause at the sound of footsteps, glancing over to see Tess coming down the hall toward us.
“Maxx,” she begins, her voice sniffly, her face red and swollen. She’s wearing her glasses, but they do little to cover the huge black circles under her eyes. Pretty sure she didn’t sleep at all last night. “I’m glad you’re here. Any news?” She sounds hopeful, but it only lasts so long as it takes him to shake his head sadly in response.
“I haven’t heard from him.” Maxx tucks his hands in his pockets. I notice that his hair is a bit rumpled, like h
e didn’t even bother to brush it after waking up. He must’ve jumped in his Jeep first thing after seeing Tess’ texts. “But I’ll start organizing our friends for a search party. Between us, we can canvass all of his secret spots.”
Tess nods, but she’s barely listening at this point, turning and heading back into the kitchen where the detectives are waiting. Also, she either forgot it was a school day or just doesn’t care. Not sure I could even handle the thought of going to class without Parrish; it’s unfathomable.
“Hey.” Maxx reaches out and puts his hands on my shoulders, giving me goose bumps. I look up at him, and he smiles. “We’ve got this. We’ll find him.” Chasm watches us both warily but doesn’t protest. He needs the pep talk just as much as I do. “Why don’t you go get dressed? Chas and I can start making calls, and then we’ll all head over to Whitehall to start looking.”
“I can do that,” I reply, relieved to have someone else take over the situation.
“And don’t blame yourself. Parrish wouldn’t do that to someone he cares about.” Maxx gives my hair a tousle before sliding his phone from his pocket and heading down the foyer toward the kitchen. He’s right though, isn’t he? Parrish cares more about other people than he does himself. He wouldn’t run off, even if he regretted last night. He just wouldn’t; I have to believe that.
“Get going,” Chas says, gesturing with his head in the direction of the stairs. “Let’s find our fucking friend.”
As soon as I get upstairs, I take out my secret phone to look for messages. If Parrish were going to contact me, he’d probably do it via this number.
There’s nothing from him. But there is a text from an unknown number.
I click the message, just in case. Maybe he’s contacting me from someone else’s phone? Maybe he, too, woke up in a field like Lumen, drunk from the night before? Who knows what he did after I left his room? It’s possible that he had a crisis of conscience and panicked, tried to self-medicate or something. Much as I hate to entertain the idea that sleeping with me could cause so much distress.
Fortunately, the text seems to hold some answers.
I found Parrish. Can you call me right away? Don’t tell Tess.
A rush of relief fills me. He’s with someone, a friend probably. He’s okay. He’s safe. I very quickly make the call, but nobody answers. I’m about to try again when a video call comes through from the same number, and I accept it.
I’m smiling. At first.
The call connects, and it takes me a full minute to recognize what I’m looking at.
It’s Parrish, that’s for sure. Only … it’s Parrish tied to a chair and bleeding. And oh my god, there’s so much blood. It’s fucking everywhere. My head swims and my vision blurs as I blink through the panic and my mind scrambles to make sense of what I’m seeing.
“Dakota,” he says, his voice ragged and pain-riddled. He barely looks coherent, like he’s on the verge of passing out. What. the. fuck. is going on here?!
“Parrish.” His name is barely a breath, a promise, a desperate wish as it leaves my suddenly dry mouth. “Where are you? What’s going on?”
He shakes his head briefly, his body sagging against the chair. Behind him, I can see a wine cellar, row after row of glimmering bottles against a stone wall. But that’s about it. No other clues immediately present themselves, and I’m too freaked out to look for them anyway.
“I need you to do something for me,” Parrish continues, lifting his head up to look at the camera. His body looks worn out, but his eyes are sharp, glimmering with violence and unspoken things. “You need to go downstairs and ask Tess a question.”
“I’ll do you one better: I’m getting the detectives.” I stand up suddenly, but Parrish’s voice cuts through my resolve.
“No. Dakota, no.” His eyes flick to one side, like he’s looking at someone just off-screen before turning back to me. “You can’t do that.”
“Why not?” I blurt out, my own body flooded with so much adrenaline that my hand is wracked with tremors.
“If you do that,” Parrish begins, licking the edge of his bloodied mouth with his tongue before refocusing on me again. “He’s going to kill me.”
Those words echo in my skull, like a bullet bouncing around my brain, destroying me from the inside out. I somehow end up in Parrish’s room, pacing ruts in the floor the way Tess was doing earlier. But she’s working on fears and assumptions: I’m working on facts.
Parrish is tied to a chair.
Parrish is wounded and bloody.
Parrish doesn’t want me to talk to the cops.
“Here’s what I need you to do. I need you to go downstairs, and I need you to ask Tess a question. Can you do that for me?” Even as he was pleading with me to save his life, his voice was calm, almost soothing, like he was trying to hold my hand through this.
That just about killed me, the way he looked at me like he was sorry for putting me in this position. As if he has anything to be sorry about at all.
“I can’t answer any of your questions, not yet. First, you need to find Tess. You need to ask her about a man named ‘Justin Prior’.”
Justin Prior.
I tried looking him up online, but it’s a common name. There wasn’t anything special or noteworthy for me to find. I even tried combinations like ‘Justin Prior Tess Vanguard Medina’ and other random collections of keywords. Nothing. Fucking nothing.
Now here I am panicking because I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I can go down there and ask Tess about some random guy while she’s in the middle of a crisis, wondering if her son has been hurt or killed while I know the answers to all of those questions. He’s alive. He’s hurt. He might be dead if I don’t do this.
I bite down hard on my hand to stifle a scream. There are detectives down there. All I have to do is walk my ass down the stairs and tell them what I saw. How would the person holding Parrish captive even know that I’ve done it? How?
“He’s going to kill me.”
But fucking hell. Is it worth the risk? Is there anything in this world that’s even remotely worth the risk to Parrish’s life? It’s just a question, at the end of the day. Just a stupid, easy question. What it means, and what it has to do with Tess, I have no idea.
Could be a crazy fan, I muse, thinking about the huge crowd of reporters outside. Tess is pretty famous, and she does write a lot of true crime stuff which could put her at risk … but really? Kidnapping her son? How did this guy even get to Parrish? Did Parrish go out for a walk and get snatched off the street? Did someone actually come in here?
My mind strays to that night in the woods, the one that I’ve decided to push aside in favor of chalking the experience up to sleepwalking and nightmares. If someone came in the house then, they could do it again, couldn’t they? It just seems so … coincidental that the security cameras weren’t recording. Even the outside cameras that are supposed to livestream to the security company picked up nothing unusual. They didn’t even catch Parrish leaving the property voluntarily, so what happened? He had to have gotten out somehow.
The door to Parrish’s room flies open, and I stifle a small scream. My nerves are fried at this point.
“Relax, Little Sister. It’s just me.” Chasm pauses, and then, upon seeing the look on my face, slams the door behind him and puts his back to it. “What the hell is going on?” he asks as I sputter and try to come up with a lie. Even now, with just Chasm in here, it feels like the truth is going to burst out of me and spatter the room with Parrish’s blood. “Dakota.”
Chasm stalks across the room and snatches my phone from my hand. He sees the text message right away. That, and evidence of the video call that ended almost fifteen minutes ago.
“What the fuck is this?” Chasm chokes out, staring down at the screen. I jump but I don’t answer him, not right away. I’m shaking so hard that I can’t stand up anymore; I end up sitting on the edge of Parrish’s bed without remembering how I even got there. “Dakota, what is th
is?!”
“Parrish.” Just that one word. It’s impossible to say more. How can I? What could I possibly say? “It’s Parrish. He’s …” I take a deep breath and rub at my tired eyes. “He’s been kidnapped.”
Chasm just stares at me like I’m a crazy person before letting out a nervous, breathy laugh.
“Not funny, Dakota. Did you talk to him? If you know where he is, you better fucking—”
“I’m not lying!” I shout out, shoving up to my feet and snatching the phone from Chasm’s hand. He looks taken aback, leaning away from me like he doesn’t know who I am anymore. Or maybe never did, come to think of it. “I got a video call from Parrish. He was tied to a fucking chair. He was bloody and bruised, Chas. It looks like someone beat the shit out of him.”
Chasm just keeps staring at me, but he doesn’t move, and he doesn’t say anything. He’s just blinking through the moment like he can’t quite fathom what’s going on. I don’t blame him. Isn’t denial the first stage of grief?
“He told me not to tell the cops. He said that if I did … they’d … that they’d …” I turn away from Chasm and pace over to the window, shoving it open and climbing out onto the roof. I just need air. I just need to remember to breathe.
“That they’d what?” Chasm snarls, following after me and crouching on the roof beside me as I put my forehead to my knees and try to think. “That they’d what?”
“He told me if I didn’t do what his captor wanted, that they’d kill him. He said they’d kill him.” I’m talking into my knees since I can’t bear to lift my head up quite yet.
“You’re lying,” he tells me, his voice accusatory. “That’s bullshit. None of that is true.”
I lift my head up to look at him and he recoils like he’s been slapped.
“It’s true. Parrish told me I had to ask Tess about some guy named Justin Prior or … or else.” It sounds like a load of shit, doesn’t it? Like something from one of Tess’ novels. Only … it’s not. It’s actually fucking happening to me, and I can’t just sit here. I have to do something.
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