I wait a few minutes before someone else appears.
“Where’s Hads?” Remi asks, looking around much like I did.
“I don’t know. You meant to be meeting her?”
“Yeah.”
Remi spins on the spot, searching through the crowds loitering in the hallway.
By the time she’s facing me again, she’s got her cell in her hand and hits call on Hadley’s number.
I wait as she listens, but at no point does she speak.
“It just keeps ringing out.”
Remi’s brows draw together with concern, but I refuse to allow myself to feel it.
“She’s probably been pulled in for a last-minute practice by Lylah.”
I follow Remi down to the gym, but it’s empty. We check the cafeteria but again come up short.
“Okay, I’m starting to worry now,” Remi admits after we finish checking in the classrooms we know she’s been in today.
“Let’s go to her dorm. If she’s not there then…” I trail off.
She’ll be in her dorm. She has to be. She’s probably forgotten a book or something.
Our fast pace soon turns into a run as we get closer to the dorm building and we make quick work of getting inside and racing up the stairs to her room.
“Hadley?” Remi calls, pounding her fists into the door.
“Out of the way,” I say, pulling her key from my pocket. Remi looks at it in shock, but she doesn't say anything.
The door swings open and we’re greeted by her empty dorm room.
“Cole, something’s not right here. Hadley doesn't just disappear.”
Dread sits heavy in my gut, but I still refuse to acknowledge it. There has to be a good explanation for this. There has to be.
That thought is halted as my cell buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and find a name that I really don’t want to see scrawled across the screen.
My curiosity has me opening the message. Donny usually calls. He never texts.
My hand trembles the second the words appear on the screen. I want to scream, I want to hurt someone, I want to do… anything. But all I do is stand there, staring in utter disbelief.
It looks like I have something that belongs to you.
A photo of Hadley tied and gagged appears under the message and my stomach turns over.
“Cole, what’s… fuck.” Remi rips my cell from my hand and stares down at it much like I just did.
“Oh no. No, no, no. This can’t be happening.”
My lips part but no words come out.
“We’ll find her. Everything will be okay.”
“How can you say that?” I ask, but my voice doesn't sound like my own.