Thirty-Two
THIRTY-TWO
Mia
I COULDN’T brEATHE . This didn’t make any sense . Byron would have said something, wouldn’t he? Nat would have said something!
Don’t be stupid , whispered my inner voice. Of course they wouldn’t have .
I didn’t want that inner voice to be right, but it sounded like the truth inside my own mind. Wheezing with panicky, too-fast gasps, I fumbled for the dropped phone—desperate to figure out if Byron had been sleeping with both of us at the same time. The last message from Nat had been during my heat, but Byron couldn’t have met up with Nat then. He’d been with me .
I couldn’t get my thoughts to focus well enough to do the math on the others. Had they been before I’d met Luca and Zalen at a bar? Before I’d succumbed to temptation and texted Byron for—I’d thought—a no strings attached one night stand? My mind spiraled in tighter and tighter circles, with no solid answers in sight.
God, they were both missing. Luca was missing! Was there some kind of connection to what I’d just learned? How could there be, though? Luca couldn’t have been involved.
Luca would have told me if he knew .
I grasped that undeniable fact like a lifeline. Luca wouldn’t have kept this a secret from me.
I was losing it; shaking and crying with a double espresso shot of reaction. With trembling fingers, I pulled out my own phone and set Nat’s aside on the couch. The group chat with Zalen, Emiel, Byron, and Luca had been quiet for the last two days, since the others agreed what time to come to the restaurant reopening after they got off work.
Come to jennimgs I need you , I typed clumsily, then followed with the street address, retyping it three times before it was free of mistakes. Ten seconds later, two texts came in practically on top of each other.
On my way , from Emiel.
Are you okay? Safe? That, from Zalen.
Yea , I sent back, even though I felt like I was having a heart attack. Found something on Nat’s phone .
Emiel’s closer , Zalen texted. Don’t unlock the door until he gets there. I’ll be as quick as I can .
I clutched the phone in both hands and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees and trying to breathe. My eyes burned from exhaustion and tears. I felt like I might throw up.
Time stretched like used chewing gum, sticky and cloying. It simultaneously felt like only seconds had passed, and like I’d been sitting on this couch long enough to grow roots when a knock sounded at the door.
“ It’s me ,” Emiel called, his voice muffled by two inches of solid wood.
I had to stop and think about how my legs worked, staggering a bit as I pushed myself off the battered sofa and wove unsteadily toward the front door. I unlocked it and opened it to let Emiel in.
He took a step forward, then stopped cold as though he’d run into an invisible wall. My pheromones , I thought distantly. He’d always been rattled by them, and I could only imagine what I smelled like right now. But he gave himself a nearly imperceptible shake, clasped a supporting hand over my shoulder, and gently closed the door behind himself, locking it again.
“Think you’d better sit down, Mia,” he said.
I could only nod in shaky agreement and let him lead me back to the couch. I pulled him down with me, lost to my own neediness—but he came easily.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked, once we were settled.
I burrowed into his side shamelessly and shook my head. “Wait for Zalen,” I rasped, not sure I could get the story out twice.
He hesitated, but then I felt the set of his spine loosen. “Okay,” he said, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. A moment later, a rough, unpracticed purr rumbled up from his chest.
I set my ear against him, letting the noise roll through me—soothing places inside that had barely seen the light of day until I’d met this pack of misfits and had my world turned upside down.
My breathing had steadied, and my heartbeat was no longer pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs, when another knock came at the door.
“That’ll be Zalen,” Emiel said, giving my shoulders a final squeeze before extricating himself to open it.
I chewed on my lower lip, looking down at my fingers tangled together in my lap, as Zalen hurried in.
“What happened?” he asked, crouching in front of me with a hand resting on my left knee.
“She hasn’t said yet.” Emiel returned to the couch and sat down next to me again, giving me a bit more space than before.
I swallowed a couple of times and looked up. “Sorry. It feels kind of stupid now. But... I snooped in Nat’s phone. Just to see if there were any clues about what might have happened, you know?”
“Were there?” Zalen asked.
I tried to center myself with a deep breath, but it caught somewhere high in my chest. “Byron slept with Nat. Three times, I think. They’ve both been hiding it from me. And now they’re gone, and so is Luca, and I’m worried that—”
I broke off, not sure how that sentence should end.
Zalen’s dark eyes widened, and next to me, Emiel drew in a sharp breath.
“You’re worried it might have something to do with them going missing?” Zalen asked carefully.
“I don’t know!” I practically wailed, clenching my fingers together until the knuckles hurt.
Zalen covered them with his other hand. “Did this happen recently? Since you’ve been with us, I mean.”
I tried once again to get my brain cells functioning, with about as much luck as before. “The last text was from when I was in heat,” I managed. “Byron didn’t answer. The others were earlier.”
“Can I see?” Zalen asked.
I unlocked Nat’s phone and handed it over. Zalen took it, frowning at the expanding bloom of damaged pixels in the corner. He scrolled up, his eyes scanning the messages.
“The other texts are from before the night we met you at the bar,” he said with certainty. “Which doesn’t make their secrecy any more palatable. But it would be hard to argue that Byron cheated on you with your husband.”
“Might argue that Nat cheated on you with Byron, though,” Emiel muttered, frowning.
I shook my head miserably. “He said he wanted an open marriage. I was mad, but I never told him, ‘ No, you can’t do that .’”
“All right.” Zalen locked the phone and handed it back to me. “I can maybe see Byron using the excuse of being at the restaurant to try to talk to Nat privately. He was, um... a bit upset after finding out that you and I slept together, Mia.”
“Can see Luca noticing what was going on and following after Byron to snoop, too,” Emiel said.
“Yes,” Zalen said. “That’s also a possibility. But an uncomfortable conversation turning into three people going missing feels like a serious stretch. I don’t think that’s what happened.”
“What if they were just standing together when someone showed up hoping to snatch one of them?” Emiel suggested. “So, they took ’em all to avoid leaving witnesses.”
A terrible, cold feeling trickled down the back of my neck. “The leader of Luca’s old gang wants him back,” I whispered.
Zalen’s handsome face drew into harsh, grim lines. Beside me, Emiel growled, low and menacing.
Zalen took a breath and let it out slowly. “And SSG is after your restaurant. Nat might be a target, as one of the owners. I don’t know of anyone who’d be after Byron.”
“Dunno,” Emiel said. “He does manage to piss off a lot of people.”
This was all too much.
“What do I do?” I asked plaintively. “We have to find them, but I don’t know where to—” I broke off, shaking my head sharply.
Zalen squeezed my knee. “You driving around the city randomly looking for them isn’t going to get them home any faster,” he said.
Emiel looked down at me seriously. “I’ve talked some to Nat... at the gym, and we get coffee sometimes, afterward. He’s so proud of you and that restaurant he could burst with it. I think he’d want you to keep it going until he gets back.”
The weight of that settled across my shoulders, pressing me down.
“Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “He would.”
It would gut Nat to find out that his disappearance had put the final nail in the Elderflower Inn’s coffin, right after things had taken a turn for the better with the successful reopening.
Could I do it, though? I felt like I was about to buckle under the strain, just sitting here on the damned couch.
Zalen nodded. “We need the police to do their fucking jobs. Mia, will you trust me to take point on finding the others? Emiel, I’d like you to stay with Mia at all times, whether it’s at home or at the restaurant. Just in case—because if someone was after Nat, they might come after her, too.”
“Yeah, I can do that,” Emiel said. “What about the Hope Project?”
Zalen’s expression hardened. “I think we’ll have to close it for a few days. I’ll focus my efforts on lighting a fire under the police department’s collective asses. But there’s one other avenue I want to check out, as well.”
I frowned at him quizzically. “What other avenue?”
He sighed. “I’m listed as both Luca and Emiel’s emergency contact and next of kin,” he said. “But I’m not Byron’s, and I want to talk to the person who is.”
Emiel’s brows drew together. “He’s still got family? I didn’t know that.”
“A grandmother,” Zalen confirmed. “By all accounts, she’s, uh, formidable . I’d like to see if she knows anything about other contacts Byron might have. Less savory ones, specifically.”