63. Jace
Chapter 63
Jace
“ T his is bad,” I said. “Really fucking bad.”
“It’s not good.” Wolf’s voice was grim, his eye on the road as we left the campus behind.
Neither of us were talking about the storm: the cloud cover turning the night pitch black, rain pelting Benji in sheets so thick it was hard to see the road.
“Why would he come back?” I asked, trying to work through what we knew. “Why would he leave Blackwell Falls, change his name, get two fancy degrees, build an empire, and come back to Blackwell Falls?”
Wolf shook his head. “Beats me. Seems like you’d want to leave it behind after going to all that trouble.”
“Exactly.” We merged onto the highway and Wolf moved all the way to the left, punching the gas even though the few other drivers on the road were crawling through the storm. “I have a bad feeling. A really bad fucking feeling.”
Maybe it was just the storm, but I didn’t think so.
“Same,” Wolf said. “I’m going to call Daisy.”
He used voice to text on his phone, sitting in the holder on the dash. Daisy’s name popped up on the screen but the call went straight to voice mail.
Just hearing her voice made my chest hurt. She suddenly seemed too far away. Way too fucking far.
“Try Otis,” I said.
Wolf did but it went to voice mail too.
“Think the power’s out?” I asked.
Service was spotty at the top of the Falls, especially when the Wi-Fi was down.
“Maybe.” The worry in Wolf’s voice was an echo of the dread seeping through my gut like an oil slick.
I looked at the clock on the dash and guessed we had another hour before we were back in Blackwell Falls the storm didn’t slow us down.
“I don’t like this,” I said. Otis was capable, but he was also alone. Maybe it was the storm and our distance from Daisy and everything we’d learned about Michael White/Piers Cantwell, but I was paranoid as hell. “We need reinforcements.”
“We could try Rafe,” Wolf said.
Rafe was a fucking dick. Ditto the two swinging dicks who went everywhere with him, but he rumor had it he’d been in the military. We didn’t have the luxury of caring about the dishonorable discharge part.
I scrolled through my contacts for Rafe’s number. “Keep trying Daisy and Otis. And hit the gas, for fuck’s sake.”
The speedometer climbed over 90.