Page 70 of The Complete Truth Duet
Please: I’d never hated a word more.
“Where is she!” I roared at Drew, the pressure in my head threatening to split me in half.
“Relax. She’ll be back,” he replied with his back to our apartment door, preventing me from leaving.
“Move!” I snarled.
“You’re not going over there and waking those kids up. Her text said they were already asleep when she left and that she would be back in a few. You need to calm down before she does get back and sees you acting like a madman.”
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. You know what the fuck I’ve been through.” I sucked an exasperated breath in through my teeth. My eyes were wild, and my chest didn’t feel much better.
She’d been gone for three hours.
Three fucking hours was not a few.
The first hour, as I’d paced a path in the parking lot, my mind screaming, my heart thundering in my ears and my anxiety skyrocketing, had not been a few.
The second hour, as I’d driven around the city, searching every possible location, constantly texting Drew to see if she’d shown back up but always coming up empty, was not a few.
And the third hour, as I’d destroyed our apartment, time-traveling from the past to the present through memories in my mind until I wasn’t even sure where I was anymore, was not a few.
One thing I knew.
Something had happened.
Whether it was Marcos or Dante or…fuck. I don’t know who. Something had happened to her.
And once again.
I had no idea where she was or how to help.
And I was suffocating, buried six feet deep in the what-ifs.
I’d called.
And called.
And fucking called.
She never answered.
And when I’d gone into the hall and heard her phone ringing in her apartment, my entire life had ended all over again.
She was gone.
I had no way to reach her.
And…and…
“Please, Penn. Please!” Her voice screamed in my head.
Fuck.
I choked on the bitter acid of reality. “We have to find her.”
He bulged his eyes. “She’s not Lisa, Penn. She’ll come back.”
“And if she doesn’t!” I yelled, the sound echoing around our apartment. “I swear to God, Drew, if they so much as touched her, I—”
His hands landed on either side of my head, his palms covering my ears, his fingers biting into the back of my skull, and his face filling my view. He spoke slowly and definitively, but he couldn’t hide the concern in his brown eyes. That same concern was currently burning a hole straight through me.
“She. Will. Be. Back.”
“No.” I shook my head repeatedly before stepping away. “We need to get back out there and look for her. Let’s go together. Get the gun. We’ll head over to Dante’s.”
“You already drove by Dante’s, Penn. Her car wasn’t there.”
“Well.” I planted a shaking hand on my hip and searched through my mind for any possible theory that would enable me to not only find her, but also bring her home—alive. “Maybe they weren’t there yet.”
He once again got in my face, his hand landing hard on my shoulder. Steady and confident, he said, “Penn. Brother. Listen to me. She left her phone, and knowing her attachment to the women in this building, not to mention River and Savannah, that was not an accident. Let’s be logical here. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Maybe she doesn’t want to be tracked.”
I swallowed hard. Hope spiraled like a vortex inside me, and I was so desperate that I was willing to cling to anything—even a tornado. “Catalina,” I whispered.
“Bingo,” he replied with a smile.
That hope lasted exactly one second.
“You think they caught her?” I intertwined my fingers, resting them locked on the top of my head, and started pacing again. No air found my lungs, but with every step, my panic grew. “They must have followed her.” Every muscle in my body flexed painfully as that god-awful scene played out in my subconscious.
Same hotel room.
Same blood.
Cora’s body.
“Fuck!” I boomed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
It was my every nightmare come true.
I’d watched Lisa die. Castrated to help her.
And there we were again. Full circle. Only, now, it was the one woman I wasn’t sure I could survive losing.
Not like that.
One day, she’d be gone, living her life, smiling and laughing. Free of the clouds of hell that had been following her for the majority of her life. That I could survive.
But this?
My stomach rolled. “Oh God.”
Finally, he answered.
With the sound of a car pulling into the parking lot.
My head snapped up at the same time my body shot forward. Drew wisely stepped out of my way as I reached him. Then I snatched the door open and flew down the steps as fast as my legs could carry me.
“Hey!” she chirped, looping her broken purse over her arm, a glowing, white smile on her face.
I marched toward her, my heavy strides devouring the distance between us as my gaze raked over her from head to toe and back again.
