Chapter 44 Dominic
Dominic
The instant I saw Incoming Call: Hannah on my phone, every hope and wish and prayer I’ve been putting out into the universe for the past week and a half filled my head and had my heart racing anxiously inside my chest.
But when I answered, all I got in return was outright panic in her voice and her telling me she’s really scared.
“Hannah?” I say into the receiver, plugging my ear with one finger to drown out the noise from the schmuck singing karaoke onstage at Honky Tonk Parade. “Hannah? You there?”
I hear Hannah say, “Where is Monica?” but that’s followed by rustling and static and sounds I can’t make out.
“Hannah?” I say her name again, but she doesn’t respond.
“Hannah?” I say louder this time, loud enough that Shane is now looking at me from the across the bar top table with puzzled eyes. “Hannah? Are you okay? Hannah?”
Silence follows, more rustling, then an ear-piercing scream from a female voice.
I’m on my feet now and Shane is on his, too, his eyes fixated on my face. “Dom?” he questions, and I try to keep listening to the call as closely as I can, but at some point, the line just goes dead.
“Something’s wrong. Hannah’s in trouble,” I say and quickly open the Find My app in my phone, hoping that Hannah is still sharing her location with me.
“What do you mean?” Shane asks, but I’m too busy searching her location to answer.
Relief fills my chest when I see her name in my list of people I can track, but when I see her current location, fear makes a gallon’s worth of adrenaline to dump into my veins.
“She’s at the Swan,” I say, already heading for the door.
“The Swan?” Shane follows, but he’s still confused. “That fancy-as-fuck hotel in West End?”
“Yeah,” I spit and meet his eyes with a hard stare. “The fancy-as-fuck hotel.”
It doesn’t take a second for him to understand.
“Fuck,” he mutters and picks up his pace to meet mine, which is now an all-out sprint toward the self-parking lot on the side of the building. We’re in my Camaro in a matter of seconds, and I peel out of the spot and run over three curbs to pull onto the main road.
I’m hitting seventy miles per hour and swerving in and out of traffic, and when an MNPD cruiser starts to ride my ass, Shane gets on his phone and lets dispatch know it’s us.
“We’re going to need backup,” he says. “The Swan. Lights and sirens ahead of us to clear the way.”
The MNPD cruiser swings wildly in front of me, Officer Marks driving it, and he damn near has to hit eighty to get around me and flip on his lights and sirens as we fly through the streets of the city.
“It’s going to be okay, man,” Shane says, but when I glance at him out of my periphery, the expression on his face doesn’t match his words.
Trust me, I should know, nothing feels okay right now.
Hannah is in trouble and I’m three miles out before I can reach her.
Fuck!