Page 42 of Nowhere To Hide
“Yes, please.”
I entered my passcode to unlock it, then handed my phone to Axel as I sat on the edge of the bed and waited while he scrolled through the missed call logs.
“They’re all calls from Jason,” he said, his jaw clenching.“No voicemails, and most of the calls were right after you left.The last one was a few days ago.”
“And the text messages?”I asked, looking up at him as my whole body trembled.
I watched as he read through them quickly and noticed the way his face fell before looking up at me.
“What is it?”I pressed, knowing that something terrible was waiting for me.
He closed his eyes and stood there as if it pained him to have to tell me what had been sent.I stood up and walked over to him, gently caressing his cheek with my finger to get him to look at me.
“I can handle it.Whatever it is, just tell me.”
He turned the phone to face me, his face solemn as my eyes went from it to the picture message that came in from Jason’s phone.It wasn’t from Jason, because given the state he was in in the picture, he wouldn’t have been able to take it.
I gasped and clasped my hands over my mouth as tears ran down my cheeks, as I stared at the image of Jason hanging from a metal beam.His hands and feet were bound with metal chains as his head hung lifelessly.In the next picture, the image was zoomed in, showing a tattooed hand gripping Jason’s head and lifting it to show a bullet wound under his chin.
Axel’s eyes stayed glued to me as he cleared the images and showed me the text messages that had come through with the images.
Jason: A quick reminder of who the fuck you are dealing with.
Jason: You can run, but you can’t hide.
Twenty-Seven
Axel
Ihadn’t slept at alllast night because my mind was too consumed with the text messages Charlie had received.It was obvious someone was using Jason’s phone to try to get her to respond, but the picture of her dead husband still haunted my thoughts.While it had looked self-inflicted, it was hard to picture him being able to do something like that, given how his hands were bound.While I hated the asshole for what he put Charlie through, I felt bad that he died the way he did.
The next morning, I got up early and started breakfast because I was too anxious to sit in bed any longer and wanted Charlie to rest.Last night was rough for her, and I held her while she cried herself to sleep.We didn’t talk much about what had happened.I just let her feel what she needed to feel, knowing that I would be there when she was ready to talk about it.
I had texted Jo this morning and asked her to stop by, so it was no surprise when she showed up five minutes later with Ashley right behind her.That was the thing that I loved about Nowhere—if there was trouble, everyone rallied around whoever needed help and made sure to take care of their own.It was obvious that whoever was looking for Charlie would be able to track her phone to Timber Falls yesterday, so we needed to get ahead of anything headed our way.
I was flipping the final pancakes while Jo and Ashley finished their second cup of coffee, making small talk, when Charlie walked in.She looked exhausted but was freshly showered, with her wet hair loosely braided behind her head.
