Isaiah
My chest felt tight,like a rubber band was wrapped around my torso, and it just kept getting tighter as the seconds passed. If I didn’t have to meet up with Collins in the next town over during my game to get the last document for Gemma, I wouldn’t have been going. Lacrosse was only a way to pass the time at this school. A way to blend in and shield myself from prying eyes like Bain. Now, it didn’t matter. There were much bigger things going on than beating some lacrosse team full of punks who didn’t even know how to hold their own dick.
“Are you good?” Brantley asked, bringing his head down when we both shoved our lacrosse gear into the back of the bus.
My abs flexed with the twisting of my stomach. “Something feels wrong,” I admitted, resting my arm along the bus door as other players threw their bags on top of ours.
“That’s just tomorrow creeping up on you. Things are about to change. It's heightening your stress.”
I shook my head, pushing off from the bus. It wasn’t heightening my stress. It was heightening my senses. “I’m going to go say goodbye to Gem. Something feels off. I’ll be right ba—”
My words were cut off when I saw Shiner jogging down the sidewalk without his bag. He was lasered onto me, and his face was flush with sweat. Brantley and I both froze, seeing that Shiner’s features were pulled a little too tight to be normal.
“What’s wrong?” I snapped, meeting him halfway.
He was out of breath but forced the word out anyway. “Bain.”
My heart began to slip. “What about him?” I snarled, looking around the school grounds, waiting to see his smug fucking face. All he had to do was wait another day, and he’d have what he wanted.
“I passed him going to my room to get my shit. He was coming out of the girls’ hallway. He looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Ask Isaiah where Gemma is.’”
My feet hit the sidewalk, and I took off running. My heart, lungs, and soul all seemed to stay behind. I felt nothing but panic and rage slithering through my veins as I hopped over the curb and flew to the side entrance. My peers were a blur of maroon as I ran past them, not stopping once until I got to the girls’ hall. I paused, silencing the thumping in my ears as I sliced my eyes down the quiet corridor. Where was everyone?
It wasn’t a good sign. I knew it wasn’t. There wasn’t a single girl loitering. Their doors weren’t opening or closing.
There was no one in sight.
My pulse danced behind my skin in angry booms. I prowled down the hall and stopped outside of the linen closet. The same linen closet that Gemma and I had been in when we first made our deal. I sucked in a heavy breath, swung the door open, walked over to the shelf tucked away in the very back, and reached underneath, unhooking the Glock 19 and pushing it into the back of my lacrosse shorts.
Maybe I was being impulsive, but there was something intuitive about my mechanical thoughts. Too many years of growing up, walking into situations with my father, unprepared. And maybe I knew, deep down, that something was seriously fucking wrong.
I felt it in my bones.
I had felt it in my bones last night when I had Gemma in my arms.
Something didn’t feel right.
I felt eerily calm with her tucked away in my bed, and I should have known that something was about to go wrong.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Leveling my breathing, I exited the supply closet and continued down the hall. I knew my heart was beating a mile a minute, but the only thing I focused on was the single door that was half opened.
“Gemma?” I shouted, pushing my hand on the tall slab of wood. The chain echoed off the side as the door slowly slid open, revealing nothing but her and Sloane’s empty room. Gemma’s bed was untouched. The phone I’d given her was on her bed. “Gemma!” I shouted again, knowing she wasn’t in here. Fucking shit.
“Isaiah?” My uncle’s voice sounded far away, but within a second, I saw him rushing into Gemma’s room with a red face and rising chest. “What’s going on? Shiner ran into my office and said something was going on. What the fuck is going on?” He spun around Gemma’s room and looked for anything out of the ordinary, just like I was doing. But there was nothing. Everything was in place. The only thing that caught my eye was that Gemma’s desk chair was pushed in a little too far at her desk. I bent down and noticed that the two front legs were sticking up from the floor, and that was when I saw her journal.
Sliding it out from underneath, I quickly closed it and held it tightly within my grasp. Cade showed up next as my uncle was walking around the room. The bathroom door was closed, and he was seconds from knocking when Cade said, “She isn’t anywhere. I can’t find her or Sloane. Mercedes has no idea where she is, and it seems that all the girls had been sent to various places in the school. Mary’s Murmurs had some announcement for the girls to meet in the library about some stupid Sadie Hawkins dance that they were planning.”
“She was fucking taken!” I yelled, gripping the top of my hair. “Get Bain. Right fucking now.”
Cade gripped me by the shoulders, and I was too busy trying to control my breathing to shove him away. “Do you think she might have left early? Maybe Bain tipped her off. Threatened her for some reason? Maybe he forced her to go. Blackmailed her or something.”
“What are you two talking about?” My uncle’s shout went through one ear and out the other. I shoved Cade’s hands off my shoulders and stomped over to the bathroom, knowing that Gemma wasn’t in there because she hadn’t answered me. I was still going to check, though.
“She didn’t fucking leave. I hadn’t even given her the documents. She knew that tonight was our last night. She would have told me if Bain had said something.”
“What documents?” Uncle Tate threw his hands up. “And leaving? Isaiah, I told you to leave Gemma up to me!”
I got in his face the second I saw red. “Leave her up to you? You don’t even know half of it, Uncle!”
Fuck. Was there oxygen in here? Why couldn’t I fucking breathe?