I need to know she’s okay. My heart clenches as I think about how she looked at me before I left. She was acting weird. When we made love this morning, I felt like she was saying goodbye. She kept touching me all morning. I almost called in and told Asher I couldn’t come to work, but she insisted I go and said she took the day off to spend time with Mari and had an appointment with her counselor. I slip my phone back into my pocket thinking that’s probably where she is and why she isn’t answering me back right away.
I don’t know how much more time has passed but it feels like hours when emergency lights bounce off the wall. I turn to look out the still open walls of the house we are working on. I recognize Cobi as he gets out of the car and then I see Wes pull up in his Escalade. That’s when I know this is about me. I pull out my phone and dial her number, noticing it’s been only an hour since I sent the text. The call goes immediately to voicemail, and I dial her number again. Again, it goes to voicemail. This time I leave her a message.
“Call me back, spitfire.” I watch Cobi and Wes make their way toward me. I look around as I feel like the walls are closing in on me. I shake my head. “Nope. I don’t believe it.” I choke. It’s when my dad pulls up that I know. My knees buckle. My body falls and I hit the floor before Wes can catch me.
“Brother.” I hear the pain in his voice.
I shake my head over and over. Tears are falling from my eyes. I can’t do this.
“There was a fire,” Cobi says, but I won’t believe it. I fight them. I don’t think as my knuckles connect with skin. I’ll get away from them all. “She and Mari weren’t in it.” Cobi’s words break through the fog.
“Where are they?” I growl as my vision clears, and I see I hit my own father. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Dad.”
“It’s okay, son. But what the heck do you eat to have fists like that?” He chuckles, but I can see the pain in his eyes too. He’s grown close to Sydney and Mari.
“Her house is completely destroyed. No bodies were found. Her car wasn’t there either.”
“You could have fucking started with that.” I stare Cobi down. “Where is she?”
“We don’t know. We can’t reach her mother, she’s in court.”
“July said she saw her leave with a couple of suitcases before the fire broke out.”
“Why would she torch her own house?”
“She didn’t. We have two men in custody who were fleeing the area. They don’t speak English. We are trying to get an interpreter.”
My phone goes off in my pocket. I pull it out sure it’s her, but when I see his name, I click it on.
“Tell me you have eyes on her.” I demand.
“I don’t. Sorry, man, I lost her at the bus station. Her car is there along with her cell phone.”
“Fuck.” I throw my phone at the wall and it splinters apart.
“That isn’t going to help,” Asher says, and I turn to stare him down. “I know how you’re feeling, kid, but what did he say?” He’s told me about what happened to November, but he can’t possibly know how this feels. She lied to me. She told me she loved me and then left me.
“He lost her at the bus station. Her car and phone are there.”
Wes’s phone starts ringing. He smirks as he puts it on speaker.
“Hello, Hawkeye. He got a little angry and broke his phone.”
“Well, I wasn’t done. Did you know she was acquitted of murder? That she was the only survivor of an attack in Zimbabwe? She humped it for a day to get to Botswana, where she was then transported over the border into South Africa.” He uses the military term for hoofing it. “She killed a man named Bahati Abara. The South African government reported everyone died in the attack and the sole survivor died in surgery months later.”
“She told me about an attack. She said that Mari’s dad died in the attack.” I know some of what he’s saying. But I didn’t know she was in hiding; it explains why she didn’t want to tell me much though. And I still don’t understand all of it.
Carter continues, “The man she met with in the hotel is Miles Kant, the owner of Kant Holding International, a huge multibillion dollar corporation.”
“She told me he was going to donate money to the zoo.”
“She lied,” he says. I knew she did as soon as the words came out of her mouth, but I didn’t question it. “My hacker Bekah found some information that he is associated with a group called the Brigade. He paid off the Abara family after Bahati’s death. He and an employee of his, Colton Rorke, had traveled to Africa around the same time as the attack on Sydney. According to Bekah, Rorke has traveled back to South Africa a couple of times in the last year.”
“Fuck, not Rorke.” I scrub my hands through my hair. He really has been behind the attacks on Sydney.
“Yeah, what about him?”
“Someone give me a damn phone right now.” I turn to the others, leaving Carter on Wes’s. “Find her, Carter. She couldn’t have gotten that far. Cobi, can you try Sharon again? I know what’s going on.”