Kara:Can you send her home please? This is ridiculous.
I frowned, thumb hovering while I contemplated my reply. Willow wasn’t here, but even if she had been, where she chose to go next was her decision. Wasn’t stupid enough to say that to Kara though. Not this time, anyway. My ears were still ringing from yesterday.
“It’s just a number, Locke. Willow turning eighteen doesn’t give you an excuse to check out from responsibility.”
Wish I could say Kara had hurt my feelings with that one, but she hadn’t. I got that letting go was hard for her. It had been hard for me all those years ago when I’d realised I’d never be the father I wanted to be. At least she still had Nicky.
“Did Nash tell you something?”
I glanced up. Saint was still weirdly close, his gaze bright with an intensity I wasn’t prepared for, leaving me no time to consider an answer he didn’t immediately see in my face.
Fuck. “About what?”
Saint’s jaw ticked. He shifted his gaze to Orla for the briefest second before he skewered me so hard, I took a literal step back. “Where are they?”
Cam.
Nash.
If I’d needed confirmation of my worst fears—that today wasthe day—one look at Saint’s face was it.
“Who?” Orla abandoned her desk and came closer. “What are you talking about?”
He’s talking about your first love, and your big brother—your protector since the day you were born. They’ve gone somewhere they might not come back from, and whatever Saint doesn’t know, I can tell by his face that he knowsthis.
The words stuck in my throat. I had to tell her. Icouldn’tfuckin’ tell her. The same went for Saint. He needed to know, but Cam hadn’t told him for a reason—the same reason Nash hadn’t told Orla, plus a dozen more. “I?—”
“Don’t lie to me,” Saint warned, his voice like gravel. “Something’s gonna happen, I can feel it.”
Later, I’d realise that this was the moment that I became more terrified of anything than I’d ever been. In the present, the cold fear that gripped my heart felt distant—like it belonged to someone else living a different fuckin’ life.
My phone rang.
Kara.
I didn’t move.
No one did—not me, Saint, or Orla, who’d frozen in place like Saint was a cornered wolf.
The call cut off.
I took a breath.
It rang again. I answered it, lifting the phone to my ear. “Hey?—”
“Willow’s gone.” Kara’s panicked voice blared down the line. “She’s taken that stupid bloody car and driven off in it to who knows where. I thought she’d gone to Maddie’s, but she hasn’t been there since last night.”
“Wait—slow down. When did you last see her?”
“This morning. She flounced off with a flea in her ear because I wouldn’t hand over her passport.”
“It’s not yours to keep anymore.”
“That’swhat you’re focusing on here?” Kara’s voice turned shrill, lancing my healing eardrum.
I switched sides, stepping further away from Saint, finding zero comfort in the fact that he let me. “I’m not focusing on anything. Tell me what happened.”
“The usual.” Kara took it down a notch. “She thinks now she’s eighteen she can do whatever she wants, and I’m not having it. She’s still in full-time education. She can’t just?—”