CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Louana
“Talk to me,” I said, giving him a look that said I’d been onto Valen for a while too, that I was worried as well.
“He took off a while ago. Took off his cut. Left his phone. Checked his bag. He took all his weapons with him.”
“Shit,” I snapped, exhaling hard. “Give me that,” I demanded, waving toward the phone in his hand.
“I can’t get it open. Tried everything I could think of.”
“Give it to me,” I demanded, not waiting for him to do so, walking forward so I could rip it from his hand, and type in the passcode.
“He told you?” he asked, brows drawing together. Looking a little, I don’t know, disappointed. That he, the best friend, didn’t have that same level of access.
“He didn’t need to,” I said, going back to his texts. “He’s been receiving texts from someone for like… shit. It looks like years. He never answered. But they’re all here,” I said, turning the screen toward Voss. “They’re all threats. Do you know what this is about?”
Voss scrolled through some of the texts, looking more and more lost with each passing second.
“I have no fucking idea.”
“You guys were traveling with each other for, what, months, years? And you don’t know who was on his ass like this?”
“He talked about his past here and there, but there were blank spots. But mine had some blank spots too,” Voss said, shrugging.
“Guys,” I scoffed. “He never mentioned making any sort of enemy?”
“I didn’t think he’d stayed anywhere long enough to have that shit happen. Told me the stories by the months really. Starting with this shit about working at a tree stand on Christmas Eve.”
“Christmas,” I repeated, brows drawing down. “That was where his stories started? Christmas?”
“Yeah. Thought it was a weird time to leave your family, but figured there was some shit going on.”
“No. Voss, no. He left at the beginning of July. Where the hell did almost six months go?”
And what was he doing during them?
Who had he associated himself with?
“I have no fucking idea. But he never talked about anything before that.”
“Where was that? The Christmas tree stand?” I clarified.
“California. He said how fucking weird it was to not be freezing his ass off on Christmas.”
California. That was… far. And fast. If he was traveling to kind of soak in life and the country, why had he skipped through the rest of it so fast?
“What are you thinking?”
“That is seems like California is a good place to get lost. That it’s really fucking far from this coast.”
“Where he might have gotten himself into trouble,” Voss said, catching on.
But… where?
I mean it could have been anywhere up the east coast. Or even inland a bit.
“Did he talk about anywhere?” Voss asked, snapping me out of my thoughts that were running a hundred miles a minute, but getting nowhere.