Chapter 29 Dare
TWENTY-NINE
DARE
There was fire.
Fire everywhere. Fire in the house. Fire in the fields. Fire in my skin. It blinded me. It choked me. It killed me.
I opened my eyes and patted beside me, looking for his warmth and affection. The bed was empty.
Shit.
I sat up at once and blinked several times trying to clear my vision, searching for him.
"Zach!" I shouted.
He wasn't in the en suite or anywhere in the room. I approached the bedroom door trying to convince myself he'd be in the kitchen cooking up something new and exciting for me. Why wouldn't he be? That was where he always was. The kitchen. Surely he'd be there again.
He wasn't.
My heart raced before I even reached the kitchen counter. It was deathly silent but for the pitter-pattering of Lookah and the goats in the other room who must have heard me get up.
A knot formed in my throat and my vision became blurry. I steadied myself on the kitchen island and tried to breathe, to think, but I couldn't.
I didn't know what had possessed me to sleep in, to pretend like everything was normal, when Lombardi knew where we were. I shouldn't have gone to bed with Zach. I should have packed our stuff and gone someplace else. Anywhere but here.
I reached for my phone and dialed his number, but it went straight to voicemail. Of course it had. I called Wyatt next.
"Dare?" He sounded startled.
I couldn't blame him. It wasn't every day I willingly called him.
"He's taken him, Wyatt. He's taken him. What do I do?" I said and ignored that feeling in my chest as if I was doing something wrong.
Everything felt wrong when speaking to Wyatt. Especially speaking about Zach as if he was my world when Wyatt used to be my everything.
It was weird and absurd and I didn't care. I only cared about finding him.
"Huh? Who's taken who?"
"Lombardi. He's taken Zach. He's not here. He's gone," I said, pacing the room, still trying to come up with a plan but coming up empty. "I woke up and he wasn't here. He's gone."
"Okay," he sounded firm. "Have you tried calling him?"
"What do you think?" I snapped.
"Are you sure he's been taken? Wouldn't you have heard something?"
"I don't know, Wyatt. I was pretty wiped after the asshole burned my fields."
Wyatt took a deep breath then said, "Even so, Dare. You're a trained Navy SEAL. Are you sure you didn't hear anything? A whimper, commotion, something?"
"No Wyatt! I didn't hear—" I started and stopped in front of the fridge.
There was a piece of paper pinned to the stainless-steel door with a pineapple magnet. Wyatt called my name through the phone, but I dropped my hand to my sides and read the note, trying not to feel like I was being gutted alive.
*Letter formatting* "I'm sorry baby. This is the only way. Please don't hate me. I love you and I'll miss you. Zach."
"Dare!" Wyatt screamed on the phone.
I still ignored him. I ran back to my bedroom and opened my closet. Gone. Looked under the bed. Gone. Opened my drawers. Gone.
I checked the guest room. Patted the blanket on the bed hoping he was there, lying under it in the freezing cold despite the fact the bed was still made. I checked the closet and drawers there too.
"No. No. It can't be," I muttered under my breath and kicked the bathroom door open.
My head started to spin. His toothbrush was gone. His stuff was gone. Everything was gone. He was gone.
"Dare, talk to me!" Wyatt shouted and his voice did something to me and I collapsed, there on my cold tiled bathroom floor.
My guts flared, my heart thumped, and my mind...it went still.
"He left me," I mumbled. "He left me."
"What? Speak louder, Dare. I can't hear you!"
I raised my hand to my ear with so much effort I could have passed out and spoke softly, defeated, to my ex.
"He left me, Wyatt. Zach left me."
Wyatt didn't miss a beat. He spoke loudly and with authority that couldn't be questioned.
He was always good in a crisis. Other people's crises. Never his own.
"What do you mean? How do you know?"
I looked up at the ceiling and fought the sting in my eyes.
"His stuff is gone. He left me a note. He abandoned me. He did a you." I choked a laugh, but it turned into a sob.
"What does the note say?"
"What do you think?" I snorted. "He's sorry. That's it."
Wyatt huffed.
"Dare, I need you to pull yourself together and tell me exactly what the notes says."
I sighed and pushed myself off the floor and stumbled into the kitchen so I could read aloud the words that would torment me for the rest of my life.
"I put my trust in him, I let my guard down, I let him in and he left me. He fucking left me!" I shouted.
Rage filled my head. My temples throbbed. My eyes blurred and my blood boiled.
"Dare—" Wyatt started but I couldn't take it anymore.
I growled. I screamed. I punched the note on the fridge, and it dropped to the floor along with the magnet leaving a fist-sized dent in its place.
"Dare!" Wyatt shouted. "He didn't leave you."
"Pftt. What do you know?" I stumbled backwards and collapsed on the kitchen stool.
"Right. Dare, listen to me. I know I hurt you. I know I did a terrible, unforgiveable thing, but I'm not stupid. Zach didn't leave you. He wouldn't call you baby or say he's sorry if he had."
"Fuck off, Wyatt," I said.
"Oh my God, you're such a big dumb-ass. He didn't leave you. He went back to his ex to protect you."
I blinked and tried to focus on a point in the wall. A little crack from moisture. I had to repaint this room with anti-condensation paint before it spread to the rest of the house. Though what was the point? What was the point in anything anymore?
"What are you talking about?" I asked, defeated.
"Can you really be this thick? He left the day after his ex burned down your fields and left you an apology note?
I might not know the kid, but it sounds like he went back to Lombardi so he won't hurt you.
‘This is the only way?’ Why would he say that?
It's not an 'I'm dumping you' note. It's a love note. "
I could have laughed at the notion.
Then again, maybe Wyatt had a point.
I shook my head, put down the phone and looked at the facts.
Zach was vulnerable.
He hated Victor and what he did to him.
He hated how Victor started to hurt the people closest to him, starting with Mr. Rogers.
I hummed, closed my eyes and remembering the events from yesterday. He'd been so apologetic, so hurt and heartbroken that I'd lost some of my crops. He'd acted so guilty, as if it was his fault.
Then all of a sudden he stopped apologizing, he started kissing me, he made love to me as if nothing had happened. As if...
"Oh for fuck's sake. I'm so stupid!" I picked the phone back up. "Are you still there?"
"Always," he answered and I was too focused on the issue at hand to roll my eyes.
"You're right."
"I know I am."
"Shut up. We have to find him. I have to find him. I can't let him go back to that guy. He hurt him, Wyatt. He hurt him in all ways imaginable."
Oh gosh, even thinking of all the ways he had hurt him and all the ways he still would...
"Let me call Slade," Wyatt said and my mind kicked to gear.
"Shit. Yeah. He can look into his phone. It's okay. I'll call him. Go back to...whatever you were doing."
"I was sleeping, Dare. And no. I can't go back to sleep now. We have a guy to save. Your guy."
I hung up on him. I couldn't stand listening to him anymore. Not when there was another, better, guy I could be listening to. Someone who could get me closer to Zach.
"Slade, can you hack into Zach's phone?"
Slade yawned.
"What happened?"
"Long story short, Zach went back to Lombardi. I need you to find out where they're going or what they're planning. Anything."
"Oh shit," he answered and I heard a shuffle before someone asked him what he was doing and Slade reassured his boyfriend before I heard more shuffling and then finally the click-clacking of a keyboard.
"Anything?" I asked.
"Yup. He made a deal with him. He told him he'll go with him to New York if he leaves us all alone. Then he told him to pick him up at four in the morning."
Fuck.
Just as Wyatt had said.
A part of me hated that Wyatt had been right. But a bigger part of me was glad I'd been wrong.
So terribly wrong.
"What do I do? Fuck!"
"Hang on," Slade said. "I'll get a ping off his location and see what's going on."
"His phone is switched off."
Slade snorted.
"Yeah, that means nothing. Unless you take your SIM card out of your phone I can still find you."
"Shit. Really?"
Slade hummed and typed some more.
"They're on the mainland, on Route 6 heading northwest."
"They’ve got a headstart. Fuck!” I spat.
"Looks like it. But I'll get a team together and we can intercept—"
"No. I need to get to him," I said. "That bastard hurt Zach for far too long. I need to find him. I need to save Zach."
"And you will. But we can help. You don't know what you're dealing with and what he—"
"Slade, stop. I don't need Wyatt's team to the rescue. The only thing I need is his location. I can take care of everything else myself."
Slade tried to argue with me again, but I wasn't listening.
I wasn't going to take it. Wyatt had already done enough.
He might have nothing to do with what had happened to Zach in the past or the fact Victor had found him, but he had started a war with the syndicate on the island.
And he'd put so many of us in danger by doing so.
I needed to be the one to do this. To find Zach. To save him from Victor and his abuse and to put an end to Lombardi once and for all. No team to assemble, no help.
Or maybe a little help wouldn’t hurt. Especially if it slowed Lombardi down. Slade was more than happy to help with that and as he took care of things on his end, I ran out the door.
On my way to the bay, I called my contacts so that by the time I got there a boat was already waiting for me.
When I got to the mainland, my other contact would be waiting for me with a car. It was all going to be fine. I didn't need Wyatt. I could do this myself.
I jumped into the boat and split the sea in two trying to get to Zach. The sky roared and thunder echoed all the way into my bones.
"I'm coming Zach," I repeated out loud. “I’m coming. Just hang in there.”