“Is that all there is?” I ask him.
“Keep watching.”
Tessa eventually lowers her phone, clutching it in her hand near her side. By now she’s walked past around five or six stores, just as we were able to determine last night. She spins on her heels, facing the camera again like she’s going to start walking back. She only takes about three steps before a white van pulls up to the curb. Tessa turns her head to the passenger side, and it looks like she’s talking to them, her finger pointing off in the distance as if giving them directions.
Already, I’m getting a bad feeling before the side door of the van suddenly slides open. Two men jump out and grab Tessa. In the blink of an eye, she’s thrown into the back of the van, the men jump in, slam the door, and then it takes off down the road.
“Fuck!” I shout while my hands spontaneously bend the iPad damn near in half. This is even worse than we thought. Charlotte…god, the woman is going to have a nervous breakdown when she sees the video, but I have to show it to her. She deserves nothing but honesty, even when the truth will break her heart.
“Sorry,” I say when I hand the folded-up device with a cracked screen back to Danny.
“No problem,” he says when he takes the iPad back carefully and tries to bend it back into shape. “The, um, MC paid for it, and we have others. I can email a copy of the video to your phone as soon as I get back to the office.”
“Do that,” I tell him. “Were you able to get a license plate?” I ask, not worried about a few hundred dollars wasted on broken tech right now.
“I’ve got two guys working on it,” Danny says. “They’ll zoom in and get as much information as they can. But right now, all we know is that the tags are from North Carolina and the van has some sort of flooring business plastered across the side.”
“Keep working and let me know when you have something solid.”
“Absolutely. Sorry to bring you bad news on a Saturday.”
“It’s not your fault. I appreciate you working on your day off.”
“Something bad is going to happen to that woman,” he says sorrowfully. “Me and my guys will keep at it until we get everything we can find from the video.”
“Thanks. Now get back to work.”
When I get back inside, Winston and Conrad are hanging out at the bar.
“What’s up boss?” Conrad asks. “Everything okay?”
“No, it’s not,” I answer. “Get everyone in here ASAP for an emergency meeting. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Charlotte
* * *
“It’s more than an hour after noon,” Syd says as if I haven’t been watching the clock tick by every second since we got home last night. Twelve hours. It’s been twelve hours since our friend disappeared out of thin air without returning any of our calls or texts.
“I know,” I tell her.
“What are we going to do? Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” I answer in a stupor. The intense worry for my best friend’s unknown whereabouts combined with a total lack of sleeping and not eating since dinner last night isn’t helping. I feel like a powerless zombie. All I can do is walk the floors of the beach house and wait, unable to do a fucking thing.
“We have to do something!” Rita says. “We’re supposed to be leaving in the morning!”
“Nobody at the police station would even talk to me! We drove around all morning and called every hospital in a thirty-mile radius. What else is there to do?” I ask. I feel completely hopeless, as if the four of us are the only ones in this whole entire town who give a shit that Tessa has gone missing.
“We should call her parents. And Paul,” Ruth suggests.
“And tell them what?” I reply. “That we lost their daughter and fiancée at a club last night and have no earthly idea where she is? They’ll lose their minds like we are!”
“Does it suck to have to tell them and worry them? Yes, but they deserve to know what’s going on, Charlotte!” Bev says. “Maybe they’ll have more luck with the police department since they’re her family.”
“Fine,” I say with a sigh. “You know her parents better than I do, Bev, so if you’ll call them, I’ll call Paul.”
“Deal. Good luck,” Bev tells me before she takes her phone out on the front balcony.
I take mine to the bedroom I’ve been staying in and shut the door while trying to figure out what the hell to say to the poor man I’m about to call.
I’ve been sitting on the foot of the bed, racking my brain and staring down at my phone for about fifteen minutes when there’s a knock on the door, a much-needed reprieve from delivering bad news, even if it’s just a moment.
“Come in!” I call out.
The last person I expected to see when the door opened was Roman.
“What are you doing here?” I ask when I jump to my feet. He doesn’t say a word, but I suppose it isn’t really necessary based on his frown and his eyes that are practically overflowing with pity. “What is it?” I ask. “Why does your face look like that?”
“Sit down, Charlotte.”
“What? No. Just tell me!” I yell at him as my heart races in my chest. It can’t be good news. If it were good news, he would’ve spit it out already. Maybe…maybe he just didn’t find anything and hates to come here empty-handed. But then I see the cell phone he’s clutching in his hand and know that’s not the case either. “What did you find out?” I ask, the sentence hard to get out because my throat is constricting.
“There’s a video. It’s not good,” Roman finally says. “Before I show it to you, I want you to know that my IT guys are working on getting more details and I’ve called a meeting with the other Kings to help out.”
“Show me,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around my stomach.
“Sit down and I will,” he instructs me. Normally, I would argue or demand he just let me see the damn video, but this time I do what he says, going over and taking a seat on the side of the bed. Roman joins me, the mattress dipping with his heavy weight, and then he presses the home button on the device that lights up. It doesn’t take long for the image in front of me to make sense. “It’s her,” I say, pointing to the lone figure walking down the sidewalk past other groups of individuals.
“Yeah, I thought so too,” Roman says.
I keep watching, noticing she’s on her phone but that she didn’t call me or any of the girls. Was she talking to Paul? Finally, she removes the phone from her ear and turns around as if starting back to the club.
“She’s coming back,” I say in relief.
Then, like a scene from a horror movie, I can only watch with dread as a van pulls up beside her. I want to yell at my best friend to keep walking, to go into a store or run away. But it’s no use.
I know what’s going to happen before it even does, but that doesn’t make it any less disturbing when the men grab her, forcing her into the van so quickly no one around seems to notice.
“Oh god!” I say as I cover my gaping mouth and tears stream down my cheeks when the van speeds away with Tessa inside. “She’s gone!”