“Oh, don’t give me that shit. You come in here at the ass crack of dawn and this is the best you’re gonna get.”
“Noted,” I answer, sitting in the chair in the corner of the room. “And I’m sorry but I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“I should have known,” he admits with a sigh as he rubs his hand over his face. “I would ask what this is about but you haven’t been exactly subtle about your intentions since you got released yesterday.”
I nod. “She is my one and only priority right now.”
“Figured. Let me ask you something, though. Are you sure she just didn’t bail on you? It wouldn’t be unheard of, Henn,” he says and my fist clenches as I nod.
“Absolutely. She wouldn’t do that - not to me.”
He meets my eyes and the look of pity staring back at me pisses me off. Why the fuck is everyone so quick to assume that my girl just up and abandoned me at the first hint of trouble?
“Seven years is a long damn time, Noah,” he says, softer this time and I nod, pushing myself up from the chair.
“Sure as shit is, which is why we should get started.”
Blaze sighs in resignation. “Better go wake up Streak then but be warned, the boy is not a morning person. His room is at the end of the hall.”
I nod and leave Blaze to get dressed as I march down to the end of the hallway and pound on Streak’s door.
Silence.
I pound on the door again and a low groan greets me.
“Who in the fuck?” he roars and a second later, the door is ripped open. Dressed in only a pair of blue plaid lounge pants, he glares at me. “What?”
“Time to get to work,” I tell him and he takes a step back, his eyes widening.
“Oh, is it, your Highness? I think fucking not. Get the hell out of here before I put my fist through your pretty face.”
“Travis,” Blaze calls from behind me and Streak’s gaze snaps to him before he lets out a sigh and turns back into the room.
“Who in their right fucking mind,” he grumbles before I can’t hear him anymore and Blaze slaps me on the shoulder as he comes up behind me.
“Don’t take it personally. In an hour or so, he’ll apologize for being such an ass.”
I nod. “I suppose you did warn me.”
“That I did.” He laughs, shaking his head. “But until you deal with him firsthand, you can’t understand.”
“Ain’t that the damn truth,” I murmur as Blaze walks over to Streak’s desk and sinks into one of the chairs and Streak looks up at me.
“Well, we’re all waitin’ on you, Princess.”
I shake my head as I walk across the room. “Streak, you do realize I was just released from prison, right? Like yesterday.”
“And?”
“I could literally make a shiv out of ninety percent of the things in your room.”
He shrugs, turning to his computer without responding and Blaze chuckles. “All right, wow us, boy genius.”
“This about Kady?” Streak asks, meeting my eyes and I nod. He sighs. “I wish I fucking could, but it’s like she vanished into thin air.”
He makes a poofing motion with his hand and I grit my teeth, worry eating away at me. How could she just vanish?
“What have you found?” Blaze asks and he grabs a folder off his desk before slapping it down in front of us.
“Kady Jane Sinclair, born on September first, nineteen-ninety-one, grew up in the foster care system until she aged out in two-thousand-nine and worked at Sunrise Diner until she was fired in May two-thousand-eleven for missing a week of shifts. After that, absolutely nothing.”
My gaze drifts over the same information on the paper in front of me. “What date did she start missing work?”
“Looks like,” he murmurs, turning back to his computer and typing briefly before turning back to me. “May tenth.”
Fuck.
“That’s the day after I got arrested.”
Blaze shakes his head, staring out of the window. “What are the fucking odds?”
“You want an actual answer to that? ‘Cause it’ll take me a second,” Streak adds and Blaze shakes his head.
“There’s absolutely nothing after this?” I ask, pointing to the paper. “No bank transactions, no rent payments, no employment history, nothing?”
Streak’s eyes fill with sympathy. “I’m sorry. I’ll keep looking but if I had to guess, I’d say she either doesn’t want to be found or… there’s nothing left to find.”
It would have been kinder if he punched a hole right through my chest. I stare down at the floor, trying to suck air into my lungs as my mind works over the possibility and pain trickles through my bloodstream.
She can’t be gone.
Her face pops into my mind from that last morning. We were laying in bed, my ring was on her finger, and my whole fucking world was perfect. So utterly perfect that it should have be criminal. We had such grand plans for our future but hours later, I was being handcuffed and shoved into the back of a police car and she was vanishing into thin air.
I jerk to my feet and turn away from them. Their gazes bore into my back, I can feel it, but my focus is on getting some air and putting as much distance as I can between me and the unsettling truth that Streak just laid at my feet. Neither one of them say a thing as I practically run from the room and storm down the hallway. When I get outside, I grit my teeth, clench my fists, and take a deep breath.
No.
My girl is not gone.
Everyone else will call me crazy based on the evidence but I know she’s out there somewhere and I won’t stop until I find her.
* * * *
The air carries a chill and I force myself to focus on that as I wrap my lips around the end of the cigarette and inhale, staring off into the darkness. All damn day, I’ve been running from the truth Streak dropped at my feet this morning and no matter how confident I feel that I will find her, I still can’t help but worry. Either way I look at this situation, it’s not good news. If something happened to her, who knows what state I will find her in and as much as the thought kills me, it’s not as bad as imagining that she willingly walked away from me.
My thoughts drift back to the first time I saw her. We were eleven and my family had just moved to Baton Rouge for my dad’s new job, something I hated him for. I didn’t want to leave all my friends in Montana. Of course, I didn’t realize just how amazing it was since I was too young to understand things like fate and destiny but the moment I stepped into that classroom and watched her go toe-to-toe with the biggest kid in the class, my heart belonged to her.
Not that she ever made it easy.
“Henn?” a voice calls from behind me and I glance over my shoulder as Blaze steps out of the clubhouse, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Shit. It’s cold out tonight.”
I nod, taking another drag of my cigarette and turn back to stare into the darkness.
“How are you holding up?”
“Fantastic,” I shoot back, letting out a sardonic laugh. “Either the love of my life is hiding from me and doing a spectacular job at it or she’s dead. That’s the general consensus, right?”