Fear pulsates through my body. I quickly check my phone to see if there are any messages from Ayden, but I have no new texts.
My mother shoves back from the table, the chair legs making a godawful scratching noise against the hardwood floor. “Let me just grab my coat and I’ll be over.”
I stand up so abruptly I damn near tip the chair over. “I’m going with you,” I say to Lila.
“Okay, that’s fine.” Aunt Lila is distracted as she glides her finger across the screen of her phone, checking for messages. “I don’t know why he’s not answering my calls or texts… he never does stuff like this.”
“I’ll drive around with Lyric, and we can check some places, too,” my dad adds as he hurries for the stairs. “Just let me grab my phone and wallet.
I send Ayden a text.
Me: Where the hell r u? Everyone’s freaking out.
Then I head to grab my jacket from the coat rack when the back door opens up behind me.
“I found her house,” Ayden says to me as he enters the foyer and closes the door.
“You’re okay!” I throw my arms around him, unaware until now how worried I was. “Everyone’s freaking out.” I pull back. “Wait, found who?”
“The last address my sister lived at.” His hair is disheveled, there are dark circles are under his eyes, and his shoulders are hunched, as if the weight of the world is crushing him.
“Rebel Tonic got back to you?”
He nods. “With an address.”
“And?”
His throat muscles work as he swallows hard and fights back tears. “It was a vacant house with this,” he lifts up the bottom of his shirt and taps his finger on the rough tattoo on his side, “painted all over the boarded up windows.”
I gulp. “Why… I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.” He grips ahold of my hand. “But we’re going to go find out.” He marches across the room toward the kitchen.
“Where are we going?” I ask as I shuffle to keep up with him.
“To my house. I need to talk to Lila to find out what that letter was about.”
“Lila’s here, in the kitchen. She was about to go look for you,” I tell him, which only makes him quicken his pace.
When we enter the kitchen and Aunt Lila sees Ayden, a choking sob wrenches from her lungs.
“Oh, my God, we were so worried about you.” She crosses the kitchen and wraps her arms around Ayden.
He stands with his listless arms to his sides, still holding my hand. “I need you to tell me what that letter was about.” He doesn’t have to explain what letter he’s speaking of. The reluctant expression on Aunt Lila’s face reveals she already knows.
“Ayden, Ethan and I already explained that there’s some things you aren’t ready for yet,” she reminds him sympathetically.
“I tracked her last address down,” he states bluntly, firmly holding her gaze. “It was about ten miles away from here. The house is boarded up and has these marks spray painted on it, ones that match my tattoo.”
“Ayden…” Her face contorts with emotional agony.
He tugs me closer to his side. “Just tell me.”
Aunt Lila seals her quivering lips together as tears fill the corners of her eyes. Ayden’s fingers clench around my hand as he watches her unravel in front of us.
“Your sister was kidnapped again not too long after you guys were … found in that house.” She lowers herself into a chair. “She’s been with those people for the last two and a half years. The police honestly thought she was dead until they received a note from her over a year ago on the day we brought you home.”
“What did the letter say?” he chokes out hoarsely and I feel him sway, his legs about to buckle.
“I don’t know,” she replies as tears stream down her cheeks. “The police won’t release that information.”
“Is that what happened to my brother, too?” he whispers in horror. “Was he kidnapped? Did they kill him?”
“All I know about your brother is what you do. He vanished out of the system a couple of years ago. Social services assumed he’d ran away. The next time he was found…” She reaches out to touch his shoulder, but he moves away. More tears bubble in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me this?” Ayden starts to sit down even though there’s no chair around. I quickly usher him to a nearby barstool before he ends up falling on the floor.
“Because we wanted you to have a normal life.” She fights back a sob, her chest heaving as she verges toward hysteria. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
She runs over, wraps her arms around him, and squeezes him tightly. Ayden stares like he sees a ghost in the space in front of him, those dark eyes of his completely haunted with his past.
“You’re going to be okay,” she promises him, smoothing her hand over his head. “We’ll get through this. The police are looking for her.”
Still clutching onto my hand, my arm ends up getting crushed between their bodies. I wiggle it, but Ayden refuses to let go. Finally, I relax and let him hold on.
“I want to try to remember,” he croaks. “Do whatever it takes to find those people… Doctor Gardingdale… he said there were other methods…”
“Yeah, the detective mentioned those to me, too,” Lila’s tone is uneven. “And they’re too risky.”
“Leaving my sister with those people, hoping she’ll make it out alive is too risky…” His fingers enfold around the back of his neck and grip tight. “I swear I heard her scream in the parking lot tonight… She was there…”
“Oh, honey.” She pulls him nearer, like she has no clue what else to do but hang onto him.
I want to stop the pain in his life and make him feel safe, but I don’t have that power.
Right now, everything relies on what the people after Ayden want. Until we find out exactly what that is, no one’s going to feel safe again.