I couldn’t leave Journey, but at the same time, this needed to be dealt with, and I would stop at nothing to hunt down the person who did this to her. Killing was the one crime I never wanted to commit, because it was the one crime I was supposed to commit, but seeing Journey like this? I was ready to be what dear ol’ Daddy wanted.
“Baby.” I grabbed onto her face and brought our foreheads together. She had stopped crying, but she was still sitting in the exact spot on the dirty floor with her knees tucked under her and her bloody hands bundled in her lap. “Stay with the girls and do what Shiner says. We’re searching the school.”
“I stabbed him in the stomach,” she said, bouncing her glossy and suddenly tired eyes back and forth between mine. Then, she glanced up to Bain. “He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing all black. He had a mask.” I felt the wind of Gemma’s head moving up to look at Bain. I knew why she was looking up at him. She remembered someone wearing a mask back when she was at the Covens. “His voice was deep. Scars on his arms.”
“What kind of scars?” I asked, blood pumping through my body like the rapids. My skin felt hot and sticky.
“Small knicks. Like glass had hit him or something. I don’t know. He said he wasn’t here to kill me, but he was here to take me.”
“Take you?” The thought of someone taking her from me pulled me to my feet. I spun around, not even bothering to mind that Bain was interested in helping, and pinched the bridge of my nose.
The girls were helping Journey to her feet, and Shiner had taken the lead with the four of them. Before they walked through the door, I turned around and said her name. She peered over her shoulder at me as I began walking toward her, and I grabbed onto her arm, quickly twisting her body to mine. I gave her a kiss right on her blood-stained mouth. It wasn’t a normal kiss. This was a kiss that was filled with an unyielding amount of emotion. A kiss that ripped from my soul and had silent words attached to it. When she pulled back, I swore the room had emptied. I wiped her blood from my mouth, tasting her sweetness filled with the tang of metallic. “I love you,” I said, feeling the burn as my heart caught on fire.
Journey’s chin wobbled again, and she nodded, a croak of a whisper leaving her. “I love you, too.”
And then, she was through the door, and I was turning around with a sick feeling in my gut. “Let’s go.”
The school wasas quiet as it usually was. It breathed in the dark like it was its only source of oxygen and breathed out a sinister feeling that crept behind my back with every turn I took. The Rebels, along with Tobias, split up, but Bain wasn’t far from my eyesight because I didn’t trust him.
The pair of us stood inches away from the spot that Journey was attacked in, and we knew this because there was blood on the floor and a trail that had mysteriously stopped halfway through the entryway.
Isaiah’s voice echoed through the expansive hall as he talked to the headmaster on the phone. The Rebels and I were jaded when it came to the authorities, so the police were a no-go. We only trusted a select few. We’d learned long ago that some officers were easily paid off, and their handlers weren’t on the right side of the line between morally ethical and downright immoral—our fathers being a few of them. I checked out of the conversation when they began talking about the security system Headmaster Ellison was trying to get approved by the SMC.
“You gonna tell me why you’re obsessed with my girl?” I kept my head down, staring at the dark-red blood on the floor, inches from my black Vans.
“Not obsessed,” Bain answered in a short tone, his words clipped with irritation.
I huffed out a sarcastic laugh. “Oh. My mistake. Someone who takes photos of a girl without her knowledge, stares at her every second of the day, suddenly volunteers to find the person who attacked her—even though he has never once lifted a finger for the right cause before—doesn’t indicate that at all, does it?”
“Mind your own fucking business,” he said, bending down to inspect the blood, as if he could test the fucking DNA with his fingers.
My foot ached to kick him right in the stomach, but at the last second, he stood up, and we stared at each other as if we were about to throw down. “She is my business, so stay away from her, Bain. I don’t know your fucking angle, but I don’t like it.”
“Calm the fuck down. If you’re worried about me stealing your girl, I won’t.”
“And I bet you didn’t give me all those threats before she was taken last time, did you?”
I watched him very closely. His body language. His face. His words ran a circle through my head as I inspected every last syllable. There was the smallest flicker of annoyance there, resting over his blank face. It was him, wasn’t it?
My foot stepped forward, my eyes flaring. “Did you do it?”
“Did I do what?”
I don’t have time for these fucking games.
“Are you trying to protect Journey or get rid of her like you tried to do with Gemma?”
He laughed, a sick smile sliding onto his face. My fist clenched by my side. “Why don’t you just worry about protecting her yourself, and then the rest won’t matter, right?” He shrugged. “I mean, you didn’t protect her last time, or while she was stuck inside a psych ward with men like Richard Stallard, but third time’s a charm, yeah?”
My hand was around his neck, but he didn’t fight back. His smile grew wider, and the thing with men like Bain? They had nothing to live for. They had nothing to fight for. There was no heavy desperation laying behind every move they made, causing them to act irrationally and out of instinct. Men like Bain weren’t driven by self-sacrifice or noble character. They didn’t become devoted to another person like I was to Journey, and that made them unpredictable and untrustworthy.
“Cade,” Brantley’s gruff voice hit the back of my skull, but I squeezed Bain’s throat tighter.
“I will fucking kill you if I find out you did something to her.” My hand dropped, and he gasped, the sick smile still on his face.
“We’ll see,” he said before walking past Brantley and me with red marks around his neck. I glowered as he walked to the stairs and disappeared up them, heading to the dorms. I would have followed him if Journey was up there, but I knew she was with Shiner and the rest of the girls at the headmaster’s house.
“School is clear,” Brantley said, ignoring my furious gaze that was still glued to the stairs. “Whoever it was left on foot.”