“If you’re worried about me, don’t be.” He gave me a crooked smile and started walking again. “I’ll call if I hear anything about Callie.”
I stood there, shuffling from foot to foot until the unfinished conversation settled within me and the urge to run after him passed.
Whatever the reason for Callie’s prolonged silence turned out to be, I’d learnt my lesson about interfering in Grant’s love life. The short version? Don’t. Just don’t.
I pulled out my phone to check in with Haley and saw I had a text notification from an unrecognized number: I need to talk to you urgently. Alone.
Assuming it was a wrong number, I replied: Who is this?
It wasn’t a wrong number: Callie.
Every fiber of my being went absolutely still, my thumb frozen on the screen, my breath caught in amber. Her battery was dead. Or she’d lost her phone. Thank God. Relief surged through me, restarted my body.
I hit the call button on the unknown number. It beeped and cut off, so I sent another text: Call Grant. Everyone’s worried about you.
Callie: Can’t talk to him yet. Only you. Don’t tell anyone I’ve contacted you.
Me: Your mom is freaking out. The Sheriff is sending a search party to the creek.
Callie: Sorry. I’m in trouble. I need you to fetch me. Only you.
Me: Why me? Should I ask Libby to—
No. I deleted that. I had no idea why I was at the top of Callie’s emergency list, especially if she wanted to talk feelings or if she was in trouble. But I didn’t want to scare her off. I just wanted to get her back home.
Me: Where are you?
Callie: The old LPAK warehouse. Come alone. Please. Don’t want to see anyone else right now. I’ll only talk to you. Don’t tell anyone else. Anyone!!! Or I’m out of here.
What on earth did that mean? She’d run off again? Okay, so…bad breakup, she needed time, but why couldn’t she go home?
Grant. Of course, if this was all about Grant and she wanted to get inside his head, I was the obvious choice. But that still didn’t explain why she was holed up at the old LPAK warehouse. It was only a mile or so out of town, totally walkable.
Stay right there. I’m on my way, I texted as I hurried back to Lex and Kenzie.
I should call everyone.
Grant.
Callie’s mom.
The sheriff.
Let them know she was okay.
But.
But Callie had been so specific. Only me. If I made the wrong move, would she disappear again? And why? What was going on?
The only answer I had was the one she’d given me.
If I went to her, if I went alone, if I didn’t tell anyone, if I did exactly as she asked, she’d talk to me and allow me to bring her home. Making all those calls would probably take longer than the drive to the warehouse.
And by alone, I meant with Lex. I told myself I didn’t want to waste the time it would take to retrieve my car, but in my bones I knew it was more than that. Lex and I had some sort of co-dependency thing going on.
Wherever I went, he went.
If he couldn’t go, I stayed.
As Haley had put it, we were practically joined at the hip. I should probably be more concerned than I was. This wasn’t like me at all.
I wouldn’t call myself a loner, but I’d been raised to be alone.
While my friends had parents and siblings and extended family, I’d had a housekeeper. Now that Lynn was gone, I didn’t even have that. I worked at the Shadow Grill to fill some of the space of my empty house. I relied on my friends without using them to substitute all the missing people.
I had a complicated relationship with aloneness but I’d never before allowed it to master me.
Although to be fair, this thing with Lex didn’t feel like clinginess or neediness. It felt like something less definable and at the same time utterly unavoidable.
It just was.
14
SAGE
Kenzie wasn’t impressed with our abrupt departure, but I didn’t have it in me to spin some elaborate excuse to help her feel better. It was hard enough looking her in the eye without blurting out the real reason.
“I have to make a detour on the way home,” I mentioned to Lex as we climbed into his truck. “Do you mind?”
He sent me a questioning look. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I buckled up and folded my arms, reluctant to offer more as I directed him on the main road out of town.
I didn’t want to have to justify why I’d kept the news of Callie quiet. I wasn’t sure I could. My brain felt like a radio that was a hair’s breadth off tune. The slightest twitch would either make everything crystal clear or plunge me into chaos.
There wasn’t much time to worry about what I was or wasn’t saying. The crossroad at the top of town was still in our rearview when we came to the faded blue and yellow LPAX billboard.
The packaging factory had stood abandoned for as long as I could remember, but the warehouse had been in use until recently, leased out to various enterprises over the years although we all still thought of it as the old LPAX warehouse. Unlike the more modern structures, the only aluminum visible was the dulled roller doors that fronted the building. The rest was brick with a row of small, wood-framed windows dotting the ground level along one side that could be seen as we approached.
“This is it,” I said vaguely, squinting against the glare of the sun at the deserted loading bays. I’d expected—hoped—Callie would be waiting out on the road, but there was no sign of her.
This place didn’t just feel abandoned, it felt desolate. Weeds cracked through the pavement. The alarm box on the wall appeared lifeless, no blinking light or motion camera. The only real security appeared to be the surrounding fence and there was a chunk of that ripped away and sagging around a support pole, possibly taken out by a storm somewhere along the way.
Lex pulled up alongside the fence, kept the engine idling. “I think you should tell me what’s going on.”
I thought so, too, especially as I needed him to stay in the truck until I’d coerced Callie out from wherever she was hiding. If she were even here, which I was starting to doubt. Why would she hide? But why would she send me on a wild goose chase? None of this made sense.
“It’s Callie,” I admitted, sending him a grim smile as I unbuckled. “She’s here. At least, she said she’d be here.”
“Callie?” His brow crashed down, narrowing his eyes to slits. “You spoke to her?”
“Yes.”
“When?” His voice was raspy, as if it hurt to speak. His gaze drilled into me. “When did you speak to her? Why the fuck didn’t you say anything sooner?”
The force of his demanding questions pressed me against the door. He sounded…almost aggressive. There was something wild in his eyes, in the way he looked at me. Then he wasn’t looking at me anymore. He turned his eyes forward and slammed the truck into gear.
Oh hell.
No!
My fingers fumbled for the door clasp. I managed to get it open, one foot out before he grabbed me by the arm, his grip bruising, pulling me firmly all the way inside again.
“Lex!” My heartrate shot to high heaven. “You’re scaring me.”
“Sorry.” His grip loosened a fraction. “Fuck, Sage…sorry. Just give me a minute, okay?” He stretched across me, reaching. I was too taken aback to react before he’d yanked the door closed on me. “We need to talk about this.”
I glared down at the hand latched to my arm. “Let go of me.”
His fingers flexed, releasing me. The desperate plea in his eyes kept me from instantly bolting. This was still Lex, however strangely he was acting.
I leant away, rubbing my arm. I’d give him this, but I wasn’t happy about the way he’d just treated me. And if he tried to drive off, I’d jump out of the damn moving truck. “Turn off the truck, Lex.”
He looked at me, gauging my intentions, then he cut the engine and threw his ha
nds up. “Are you absolutely sure it was Callie you spoke to?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“She called from her phone?”
“Well, no.” I frowned at him, not understanding the fuss. “She must have borrowed a phone from someone. Why are you being so weird about this?”
“Can I see?” he said. His hands came down, a palm flipped over to take delivery.
I sighed loudly and slid my phone out from my back pocket, pulling up the conversation before I showed him.
“Texts,” he said, reading before he pressed the call button.
No surprise when the call didn’t connect. “They probably don’t have airtime.”
“Jesus, Sage.” He looked at me, exasperated. “Did it occur to you these texts could have come from anyone?”
“Like who?” I snatched my phone back, just as exasperated at him. “None of my friends would play this kind of sick prank. We’re all genuinely worried about her.”
“That’s exactly what he’s counting on.”
“What who’s counting on?”
Lex pushed a hand through his hair, his jaw clenching as he looked at me.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “Everyone’s acting like mad hatters on a full moon but there’s only one way to find out if Callie’s here.”
I turned my shoulder on him and went for the door.
This time he stopped me with quiet, chilling words. “Why do you think she insisted you come alone?”
One hand on the door clasp, I sent him a scowling look. “What are you not telling me?”
“I can’t explain. You wouldn’t understand, but you have to trust me.” He pulled out his own phone, his gaze swerving past me, to the warehouse. “If Callie is there, we’ll get her back. I swear. Please…” His intense, troubled look returned to me as he put the phone to his ear. “We have to let Gideon handle this.”
Seriously? “How is Gideon involved in any of this?”
Lex glanced away. “It’s complicated.”
So he was involved?
What the fuck.
Gideon. Lex. Me. Grant. Callie.
A cold hush came over me as my brain strung together the pieces of the puzzle. They didn’t fit, but they hung together and that was enough.
My gaze froze on Lex’s forearm, stuck to the missing scar. How was I supposed to trust Lex when I didn’t trust my own eyes? And I certainly, one hundred percent, did not trust Gideon.
“Gideon, where are you?” Lex spoke into the phone. “We have a situation.”
I yanked the door open and bolted.
The slam of a car door came from behind.
A jutting link of the fence snagged the leg of my jeans as I bowled through the gap.
“Sage!” Lex shouted.
I didn’t look back. Lex didn’t want me going into the warehouse. He didn’t want me speaking to Callie before Gideon got here.
Don’t tell anyone else. Anyone!!! Or I’m out of here.
As much as I hated it, I couldn’t dismiss how this all tied up perfectly to Callie’s paranoia. Grant would have told her about me and Lex. If, how, when she somehow got mixed up with Gideon, she would’ve learnt about his relationship to Lex.
My eyes scanned, taking in the roller doors. No way through that. I sprinted around the side of the building. The ground level windows were grimy and I was moving too fast anyway to see inside.
Callie wasn’t avoiding Grant.
She was afraid of Gideon.
She’d run because of Gideon and I’d done exactly what she’d so desperately tried to prevent. I’d told Lex and in doing so, I’d brought Gideon to her.
“Sage!”
Lex sounded closer, hot on my heels.
No part of me believed he had anything to do with what Gideon might have done. Deep down, I trusted Lex…just as much as he no doubt trusted Gideon. That was the problem. That was the reason I didn’t dare pause to look into his eyes, to allow him to talk me around.
I staggered, my foot landing funny as I tripped over a stone buried beneath a clump of weeds. Pain shot through my ankle, yanking a gasp from my lungs but it didn’t feel sprained.
I rounded the back of the building, skidding to a halt at a pedestrian entrance, the door ajar. A busted chain with a padlock lay on the ground. Darting inside, I made the split second decision to pull the door closed after me. The only light came from sunbeams struggling through a tiny, grimy window. It was enough to see what I was doing. There was no key in the lock, just a flimsy door latch that I secured.
The door handle rattled.
I held my breath.
Another rattle, then Lex moved on. He had no reason to suspect I’d entered and locked him out. He’d be back when he couldn’t find me, and that latch wouldn’t keep him out for long, but it gave me a few minutes.
I was in some kind of office. Old fashioned pigeon holes lined the wall behind the desk. A thick layer of dust covered everything and left my footprint behind.
“Callie?” I called as I rushed through into another office, a short hallway, then into the cavity of the warehouse. “I’m here! Callie!”
My voice echoed back at me.
Cold and hollow.
And something else.
I stilled, listening hard as I scanned the random stacks of crates that dotted the floor and the high rafters above. A gallery ringed the cavity—some kind of grated walkway. On the far end, I could just make out a conveyor belt that ran the length of the space.
A shiver rolled through me. I put it down to the dark shadows and cement floor. I wasn’t scared. Not exactly.
It wasn’t like Gideon posed a real threat.
He wouldn’t have really harmed Callie, would he?
Not physically.
But I could easily imagine him saying something, suggesting or implying something wicked, that might drive her to fear. When he was in the mood, Gideon had a way of insinuating cruelty into his very presence.
The muffled sound came again, pulling my eyes to an overturned crate near the conveyor belt.
I walked over, calling softly, “Callie? It’s me.”
Why wasn’t she coming out? She could see I was alone. Maybe it wasn’t her. There was quite likely all manner of rodents skittering around in those dark shadows. Another shiver crawled down my spine at the thought.
I felt him before I heard or saw anything. My neck hairs bristled. Goosebumps prickled my bare arms. Then came the muted thud of the footfall on cement and I spun about. I recognized him—the guy chatting to Callie in that picture from the beach party—it was definitely him.
“Oh, hello.” I wet my lips, slightly nervous that he hadn’t announced himself. “Are you here with Callie?”
He stared at me, silent, his measured stride bringing him closer and closer.
I took a step back for every step he advanced. “What… What are you doing?”
The glint of metal caught my eye.
He was carrying a blade.
My nerves jarred wide open, live wires tingling my scalp. I was too shit scared to take my eyes off him, but I’d already scanned the place. My mind raced through what I’d seen—other thoughts crammed in: why in blazes had I latched that stupid door? why hadn’t I trusted Lex and waited for Gideon like he’d wanted?—I shut them out, swallowed past the thickening in my throat.
Think, Sage. There were plenty of places to hide, but only one escape and he was between me and the office entrance.
He was still coming, forcing me into a blind retreat. At some point I would hit a wall. Or the conveyor belt. Or a stack of crates. I could use that. Lead him on a chase and make my way back to the office.
It happened on my next step. My foot hit wood and I wrenched my eyes from him to dart around the overturned crate by the conveyor belt—and smacked right into something warm and soft that screamed.
I screamed right back.
The confusion cost me my small advantage. An elbow hooked around my throat from behin
d, jutting my chin up. I struggled, squirming within his grasp as he dragged me backward.
“Stop that,” he growled, bringing the blade up before my eyes. “Or you’ll get this against your throat instead of my arm.”
An icy wave washed over me, stiffening every muscle in my body and locking in my limbs.
“Good girl,” he whispered, his breath hot against my ear.
The warm body crouched behind the crate shot up from the shadows.
My heart hammered, relief vying with terror. “Callie?”
Her eyes wide, filled with fear, went straight to the guy behind me. “I did everything you asked. I got her here. You promised you wouldn’t hurt us.”
It wasn’t just her eyes. Her voice trembled. And now that she was upright, I saw her wrists were bound, and the rope was tied to the crate.
“No one will get hurt if you all do exactly as I say,” he said in that horrible, wet whisper near my ear.
I wanted to believe the bastard. I so badly wanted to just do as he said and believe we’d all walk out of here unscathed. But I’d watched enough horror movies to know how this ended. “What do you want?”
“You.” He started dragging me backward again, making sure to keep that blade in my line of sight in case I forgot his threat.
“You’ve got the wrong person,” I said hoarsely, my heart chomping as I put the pieces together. He’d planned this. He’d used Callie to lure me here. “I don’t know you. We’ve never met.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
If he had indeed mistaken me for someone else, he didn’t care.
I stared at Callie, willing her to look at me, to look at what she’d done to me. I wanted to shout at her to try, to free herself, to help me, to do something, anything but stand there uselessly and watch this sick bastard drag me off.
I dug my heels in, but that didn’t stop him. The pressure on my windpipe increased until I gave up the resistance.
Each step he dragged me put more shadows between me and Callie. If she finally had the guts to look me in the eye, I never saw it.
We’d gotten halfway across the cavernous space when hope flared. He was dragging me, taking me somewhere. He didn’t plan on killing me here and now and Lex was out there. “Where are we going?”
Torment: Dark Paranormal Romance (Eclipse Warlocks Book 1) Page 15