Chapter 58
FIFTY-EIGHT
FAUST
In the dead of night, the drive will be quicker, but it still isn’t fast enough to get to my girl.
In my head, her running into my arms, away from Jackson—the very first night we met—plays on a loop.
She was scared, yeah, but there was something else too.
Like she was having a wicked sort of fun, the way the corners of her red lips were tipped up a little and she flashed the barest hint of a smile when her palms collided with my chest.
I like to think she wasn’t too unhappy to see me. I enjoy imagining that when our eyes collided in the dark outside the arena I’ve spent way too much time in, something sparked for both of us.
I know now she thrives on a little danger, but it doesn’t erase what we have.
And if Tasia tries, I just might kill her myself.
In the passenger seat of my BMW, Sylvan is dead silent. Highly unusual for him, and it goes to show just how much we both have fallen for this girl.
Detective Lincoln is on his way, too, but I left him behind as soon as we got on the 407.
What, like he’s going to pull me over? I don’t think detectives have that kind of power anyway, and regardless, he’s too worried about solving the serial murder case that might make or break his career to give a damn.
What I don’t understand is how Tasia fits into this.
Is she that bitter? I think the answer is obvious, and yet it still doesn’t seem to make much sense.
She and Sylvan had sex a few times, but they were never dating.
Then again, it’s not like he learned much about the girl from what I can tell.
The few questions I’ve asked have been met with piercing glares and stony silence.
If he treated Neve like that, she’d never speak to him again. And maybe neither would I. But we’re past that now, aren’t we? Without a conversation, not even a discussion on commitment, it just seems she’s ours.
She’s fucking mine.
My fingers tighten on the wheel as I think it while we drive in complete darkness, few other cars on the highway, and the sun not due to rise for hours yet.
I try her number again with the buttons on my wheel, but once more, I don’t have enough service to call her. I try not to let panic bleed in. Sylvan tried too, but the 407 is notorious for claiming 5G, then not allowing a single text to push through.
The blond American girl. I had no idea that was the type I’d fall for.
I glance at Sylvan, his hair sticking up at all angles with the way he’s ran his gloved fingers through it so many times.
Yeah. The blond American boy didn’t quite fit my future either, but now I can’t imagine anything else.
I turn up the song playing through my speakers—“Soldier” by Eminem—if only so I don’t lose my mind thinking about her, about Tasia, about Nolan on the security camera.
They couldn’t find where he went though.
At least that’s the story Lincoln told us.
We didn’t get to look at the footage ourselves; we’ve never met her brother, so we couldn’t claim we needed to ID him.
But the detective wouldn’t have left Kawartha Lakes if he thought his guy was still there, would he?
Which means something, either from the footage or other intel he hasn’t shared with us, told him Nolan Devine was no longer in cottage country.
My mind spins as I try to think it through.
Tasia, not bothering to hide her number, sending texts in the dead of the night spooky enough to convince Neve they were from a burner phone of her brother’s.
Which means Neve had some indication her brother didn’t quite have normal brotherly feelings toward her.
I clench my teeth, the idea like tangible violence in my bloodstream.
But I push it aside for now, my foot on the gas, fingers close to snapping the fucking steering wheel in half as, for one of the first times in my life, hockey doesn’t eat at my brain. Neither does the fact I might miss the game tomorrow night. It all seems far away, and the contract does, too.
Nothing, though, is further than Neve, my north, and the anticipation that tastes like vengeance when I see Tasia and Nolan. No bad call on the ice, no hit, no penalty—missed or otherwise—has ever made me feel like this. Not even my father, but maybe because I feel absolutely nothing for that man.
Yet when I think of how Neve’s soft, sleepy voice sounds in the morning, the way her eyes narrow when she’s reading her course books, the quick sarcasm laced in her wit when she snaps back at Sylvan, how well she takes both of us, the future that looks like blond and dark-haired babies both, anyone or anything standing in the way of that has to simply… disappear.
“Faust.”
I blink at Sylvan’s crisp word, worried I’m about to drive off the road or something, the way my mind is tunneling into vengeance. But I’m in the fast lane, going 130, no one in my way.
I cut my eyes to his and see he’s staring straight ahead.
My pulse rises and I narrow my gaze, looking back at the road.
There’s nothing.
“Spit it out,” I snarl, his strangeness heightening my anxiety.
Then again, isn’t he always fucking strange?
“What if it wasn’t Tasia?” His voice sounds raspy. Haunted.
I shake my head once. “You have her number in your phone for some ungodly fucking reason—”
“No, I mean…” He trails off and ice crawls down my spine, just like the edges of the road, the snow and debris plowed to the side.
“What? Like someone is spoofing her number?” Is Nolan that good at hacking? Is it how he turned off the cameras that should have caught him by the library, stabbing Will? How many people has he fucking killed in his life?
Sylvan is silent so long I want to wreck the car just to get him to fucking speak.
We’ve got half an hour to Drayton, and I still can’t get a call through to Neve.
That means calls can’t come through to me, which means I have no idea if she’s safe, if Lincoln knows anything else, if more texts have been sent, nothing.
I’m in the dark, and if there’s one place I don’t want to be, it’s the fucking dark.
“No,” Sylvan says slowly. His voice sounds far away. “It’s her number. Her phone.” He takes a quiet breath. “But it’s him texting Neve?”
My body goes rigid.
I don’t look at him, as if meeting his gaze will confirm his theory.
“He’s with Tasia. Or her body,” he finishes with quietly.
I glance in my rear-view mirror.
Then I nudge the speedometer up higher.