“Hey,” he said as soon as he saw her face. “What’s wrong?”
He swooped her up and sat, settling her in his lap and leaning her against his chest. He wiped her tears with his hand, but had no shirt on to use as an improvised handkerchief. The sound of paws on hardwood filled the room with a familiar hubbub.
She shrugged miserably, not sure what to say.
“I feel strange. There’s something wrong, and I’m scared.”
He raised a brow. “Do you need to see a doctor or something? I’ll call one over.”
“No, no. It’s Severin. I think...I’m going to go over and check on him,” she mumbled. “This is stupid.” She tried to dry her face on her borrowed shirt’s sleeve, but it just smeared moisture over the parts of her face that weren’t wet yet. One of the pups nosed her hand, and two of them had started an anxious whining.
“When was the last time you heard from him?”
“I don’t know. Twelve hours ago? I was nagging him about eating but he was in the middle of a project.”
“I talked to him about seven. He’d finished that for the night and was thinking about going for a swim later.”
She leaned into Rodrigo harder, feeling as if only his arms were holding her together. He tightened his hold on her and murmured beautiful Spanish words. Even though she wasn’t quite sure what he’d said, it sounded reassuring.
“Come on. We’ll call, and if he doesn’t answer, we’ll go.”
“But your meetings!” she objected, feeling stupid for making him go to the trouble. “I’ll go. You’re booked all day today.”
“I’m the one with the purse strings. They’ll reschedule and count themselves lucky I’m not canceling entirely.”
The drive home felt longer than usual, and no matter how hard Minnow tried, the lump in her throat wouldn’t go away. Rodrigo held her hand, their fingers laced together, as she tried not to imagine the worst.
Her stomach roiled. For the first time since she was a kid she got car sick, puking her guts out on the side of the road while Rodrigo held her hair and rubbed her back.
By the time they got home, the dogs’ anxious whining had become the soundtrack on replay in her chest.
Rodrigo had barely put his Mercedes GLS in park before she was stumbling out the door and across the grounds.
“Don’t you want to check the house first?” he called as he let the dogs out of the tailgate.
“He’s not in there,” she called back, feeling the certainty of that as she headed behind the house.
Rodrigo and the dogs chased her over the manicured lawn, and she hoped like hell this was a stupid lark and they’d be laughing about it in a few minutes.
The forge was empty and cold. She plunged on, heading into the woods and taking the path toward the lake, as though she had some sort of internal Severin GPS.
“He could be in bed for all we know,” Rodrigo pointed out.
She wished her legs were as long as his.
“If he’s in bed, he’s probably safe.”
“Good point.”
They made their way down to the beach. The lake’s smooth surface was the antithesis of the feeling in Minnow’s belly.
“Not here,” Rodrigo pointed out, but there was no reproach in his tone.
A dark patch in the sand made Minnow crouch to see it more clearly. Red and wet. Blood?
Rodrigo moved up beside her, then examined the palm-sized spot himself. “Maybe a nosebleed. It’s not a lot of blood.” But he didn’t sound certain.
The dogs tried to take off into the woods, but Rodrigo held tight to their leashes.