Page 21 of Now Until Forever
He scratched his jaw. “I didn’t think she’d calm down to this.”
Eliana wanted to take his hand, but it seemed almost like the tension would snap somehow. “She thought my beliefs meant I lived on a different planet. Like I considered myself better than everyone else.” She never would’ve pegged Luci for this kind of life. “Religion is the last thing I thought she might go for. But if she came here, then she found something.”
“Or something found her,” Carlos suggested. “She might’ve been coerced, or as soon as she agreed to come and check it out, she wasn’t allowed to leave.”
“I think that might be above my security guard paygrade.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s look around some more.”
Eliana followed him to the neighboring cabin. “There are no personal belongings anywhere. How are we supposed to know if she was here?”
“Maybe they have files, or admin records of members. Let’s keep walking.” Carlos headed out. “Thanks for coming with me.”
She nodded but said nothing.
There was never a time when their worlds hadn’t overlapped, even when she didn’t see them much. She’d either hung out a lot with Carlos or with Luci. Usually not both. Sometimes it was good, other times there was animosity.
Her mom told her that Luci wanted Eliana’s life, but she just hadn’t been convinced. Eliana had wanted anything but what she actually had. Carlos probably found himself caught in the middle, trying to figure out how to make peace. Until she cut ties with them after he broke her heart and didn’t come around much after that.
As they walked down the dirt track through the resort, she glanced over. “Did you know she and her friends would invite meto the mall, then leave me in a store by myself and wander off? I think I was like nine. The employee figured out I was lost and was asking me tons of questions about my parents. They were on a job, so it wasn’t like I could say where they were—or who they were. I was staying the month with you guys.”
“What happened?”
“Luci and her friends came back. They had sodas. I think they didn’t want to buy one for me. Anyway, they told the employee it was me who wandered off.”
“Sounds like Luci.”
“When you’re with her by herself, she can be nice.” Eliana paused. “I really thought we were friends. But with the crew she always chose, then and now, they have this…way.”
It wasn’t how Eliana saw the world, or how she related to people. Then again, she didn’t have many friends. She had to know someone for a while before she trusted them enough to let them in. It always seemed more like Luci could meet someone and, five minutes later, be their best friend and tell them all her secrets.
Carlos looked around. “What did she get sucked into?”
Eliana shuddered. “Does it feel kind of…dark here to you?”
“The sun is shining behind the clouds.”
She shrugged. “Places like this make me believe there’s a spiritual world and that it really does exist behind what we can see.”
“I’ve been in spots where crime seems to seep into a place. As if despair has a thickness to it and evil soaks into the walls and the floor.”
“So you know what I’m talking about?” She stared up at the gray sky. “This place just…feels evil.”
“Something happened here,” Carlos said. “But I’ve always chalked that feeling up to instinct. Maybe it’s God showing me what I can’t see.”
“This is not a place of peace.” She didn’t mean simply the broken windows or the way some of the doors hung down off their hinges.
“Thanks for coming with me, but I probably should’ve done this alone.”
Eliana frowned. “Because I need to be protected from this?”
“You’ve seen enough crime this week.”
“Don’t remind me.” The words slipped out before she could think through how she was reacting.
Carlos muttered, “Sorry.”
But he didn’t look sorry.
