Page 9 of What We Become

My phone buzzes. Milo.

“Talk,” I say, putting him on speaker.

“Okay, three things.” His voice is rapid and precise. “One—the tracker is pinging from a property owned by Alan and Christine Davis. Brock’s parents. Their beach house.”

Holden’s hands tighten on the wheel. Micah leans forward between the seats.

The beach house.

The fucking party that started all of this.

Why the fuck is Fury there?

“Two—I called Amy. She’s already at Dean’s. She says Jamie dropped her off about an hour ago. She was tipsy, Sage was tipsy, Jamie was sober. She said Sage and Jamie were on their way here.”

“On their way here,” Holden repeats. “So what happened between Amy’s door and this house?”

“Three—I pulled traffic-camera footage from the coast road junction. Jamie’s Civic passed the camera heading south at 4:39 p.m. No other vehicles followed for eighteen minutes.”

Holden checks the clock on the dash. “That’s fifty minutes ago.”

“I know.”

The siren wails. The road opens ahead of us, the setting sun flashing across the windshield as the houses thin along the bluffs.

“Holden.” Milo’s voice is quieter now. “Is Jamie Stephen? Has he been under our noses the whole time?”

Nobody answers for three seconds. Three seconds is a long time when the sirens are screaming and the speedometer is climbing past ninety and the woman you love is a pink dot that isn’t moving.

“I don’t know,” Holden says, voice sharp. “But we’ll fucking find out.”

My head throbs. I checked Jamie.

Plates. Address. College. Work. Everything came back clean. House-sitter. Graduate student. No record. No red flags. Harmless enough. Some kid doing his graduate studies.

I signed off on him.

I missed it.

My hands curl into fists against my jeans. My fingernails cut little moons into my palms.

If he’s hurt her⁠—

I don’t finish the thought. Finishing it makes it real. And if it’s real, the thing that lives in the base of my chest—the thing I keep locked down with control and discipline—will get out. And when it gets out, it doesn’t go back in until someone’s bleeding.

Micah says nothing from the back seat. His head is tipped down, face gone tight, his hands pressed flat against his thighs like he’s holding himself to the seat.

“Four minutes out,” Holden mutters.

I stare at the pink dot.

Still unmoved.

The road curves along the bluff, the ocean hammered silver below us. Sweat trickles between my shoulders. My knee starts bouncing. I pin it beneath my palm.

I kissed her at the door four hours ago. She tasted like that lip gloss Milo bought her, the cherry one. She laughed against my mouth and called me Knoxie. I told her to have fun because I trusted this. I trusted the tracker. I trusted the friends. I trusted the world to give her one fucking afternoon.

The house appears around the bend, shadowed and silent behind manicured hedges.