You’re Next (Devil’s Backbone #3)

Chapter 1

ROYCE

Royce: I know you asked for time but…how much? Specifically. Just so I can tell the guys to back off and stop stressing.

Ashley: I don’t know. Maybe a month.

Royce: ?!?!?!?

Royce: You’re kidding, right?

Royce: Okay, I’m pretty sure you’re kidding. Funny joke, babe. Now please come home?

Royce: I’m worried about you. Can you please reply?

Ashley: I’m fine. Please respect my wishes and leave me alone.

A shley was acting weird. It seemed like an obvious statement, considering she’d packed a bag and “moved out” while we were all at Nate’s birthday party, but she’d explained her need for some time and space in a way we found it hard to argue with.

We’d all come on too fast, too strong, and she’d freaked out.

But since then, her replies had become less frequent and more terse. It had me in a tangle of anxiety and conspiracy theories that I just couldn’t shake.

“Hey, have you guys heard from Ash today?” I asked as I headed over to the sofa, where Heath and Carter were playing video games.

Heath glanced up at me with an arched brow. “You haven’t?”

I huffed a frustrated sigh and flopped down into Nate’s favorite armchair. “I have. But she’s…I dunno. Off. Don’t you think?”

Carter scoffed, shaking his head, but didn’t reply. Heath just wrinkled his nose my way. “Obviously. She’s refusing to see any of us in person. That’s not exactly in character for her.”

I scowled, drumming my fingers on my knee. “Okay, so…are we okay with that? We’re just…giving up?”

Carter tossed his controller, shooting a death glare my way. Pity it had no effect on me, but I appreciated the effort. “No one is giving up , dickhead. Unless you are? Because I’m sure as fuck not. Neither is Heath, right?”

“Right.” Heath nodded.

I gritted my teeth, trying to remember that we were on the same team here.

Our bullshit agreement that Ash would eventually have to choose between us was just that: total bullshit.

I had no intention of walking away like a goddamn gentleman…

not unless she could look me dead in the eye and tell me she didn’t love me.

“So what are we doing about it?” I asked with a growl, so frustrated that I was tempted to punch a wall. I wouldn’t do it, of course, because that would solve nothing. But the tension thrumming through me was so intense, I was starting to twitch. “Where’s Nate?”

He’d been weirdly absent all week, ever since his party. He’d been mopey and flat at the party itself and begged off early with a bullshit headache. When we got home and found Ashley gone, he admitted they’d argued but refused to give us any more information than that.

“Avoiding us,” Heath muttered with a scowl, putting down his own game controller. “Carly’s on her way over, though. Apparently Ash asked her to pick up her class notes.”

That saw me sitting up straighter. “Carly’s seen her?”

Heath shrugged. “Ask when she gets here. She didn’t say much on the phone.”

The doorbell sounded, and Lady barked her own warning as the sound roused her from sleep. Carter shushed her and gave her ears a scratch on his way over to the front door, checking through the peephole before opening it.

“Speak of the devil,” he drawled as Ashley’s best friend stormed in with a scowl set across her face. “Do come in, Carly, make yourself at home.”

“Shut up, Bass,” she snapped. Then at Carter’s glare, she sucked a sharp inhale and paled noticeably. “Um, shit. I mean, sorry. Hi. Can I come in, please?”

Carter rolled his eyes and gestured for her to continue across to where Heath and I sat. Her whole mood shifted dramatically as she approached, glancing nervously over her shoulder at Carter, who followed.

“Hey,” she said to me with a little wave, then sat down awkwardly beside her cousin. “Are you guys talking about Ash?”

I nodded. “Heath said you’d seen her?”

“No, I didn’t,” he argued, and I shrugged. Close enough—it was implied.

Carly shook her head. “No…but I checked in on her this morning by text, and she asked if I could pick up her notes so she could work on her assignments.”

“So you know where she’s staying?” Heath asked, scrubbing a hand over his messy, dark hair.

Carly frowned and shook her head again. “Not really. She asked me to drop them over at the country club. Don’t you guys have her phone bugged or GPS tracked or something? Shouldn’t you know where she’s staying?”

Carter and I exchanged a glance, and he huffed a frustrated sigh, sitting back down beside his dog. “The app is malfunctioning.”

Carly’s brows rose in surprise. “Okay, I was half joking about that. But now I’m more worried… What are the odds of your stalker app malfunctioning right when you need it? Something smells bad here, and not just about her request for class notes.”

I wasn’t following. “What’s suspicious about that?”

Heath gave a small groan of understanding, nodding his head thoughtfully. “She already finished all her open assignments early, and the professor hasn’t given them any new projects, so why the fuck would she need those notes?”

He was right. Ash had been way ahead on her assignments, so why the hell would she be asking Carly for those notes? And why ask Carly, not one of us?

“I don’t get it,” I admitted, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands. I hadn’t been sleeping anywhere near enough. How the fuck could I, without my roomie? “Is this code for something?”

Carly huffed and shook her head. “Fuck if I know. Has anyone actually spoken to her? I mean on video call or in person or even a voice clip ? Literally anything more than text messages?”

I hadn’t. Neither had Heath or Carter. We hadn’t bothered asking Nate, because why the fuck would she reach out to him? Clearly whatever he’d said the night of his birthday party had upset her enough to make her run. Dick.

When none of us spoke, Carly groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “Fuck.”

“You don’t think it’s her,” Carter said quietly. “The last time any of us saw her was Nate’s birthday…”

“Six days ago,” Heath murmured, frowning. “But we’ve spoken to her.”

“By text,” I countered, the dread growing inside me with every passing second.

Heath blew out a long breath. “Yes…but Carly and Nate both saw her leaving the party, and she was fine, right?”

Carly nodded, chewing the edge of her fingernail. “Yeah. I mean she was clearly upset, and I didn’t speak to her, but that’s because Nate said to give her a minute alone. And then when I tried to find her later, she was already gone.”

Nate. Fucking Nate had said something or done something to cause all of this, and it was about damn time he fessed up.

“Where is he, anyway?” I pulled out my phone to text him and ask, even though I was pretty sure he was in the gym downstairs.

It was where he’d been spending a whole lot of time this week…

working off his guilty conscience, perhaps.

“Okay, so, Carly, you saw Ashley leaving the party after speaking to Nate, right?” Carter asked, processing the very few facts we had. “And then all our interactions since then have been by text message, which didn’t seem so strange until Spark asked for notes that she doesn’t need.”

“Also, she’s cold and distant by text with all of us,” I added.

Carly wrinkled her nose at that and gave a small shrug. “No offense, but that could be anything. Nate is not being honest about whatever they argued about. He could have said any number of hurtful things to make her try to force some distance.”

“Test it,” Heath suggested. “Text her and ask something, Carter, but call her Squirrel . See if she notices.”

That…was actually a really good idea. I shifted in my seat, sitting forward with anticipation as Carter did as Heath said, his thumbs flying across his phone screen as he typed out his message. Then we all waited.

And waited.

“She’s not replying.” Carter glowered at his phone like he wanted to strangle the device.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Carly muttered, echoing my thoughts exactly. “Maybe you should try, Roycey? Call her Spark?”

Carter glared my way, like I was the one who’d implied she’d reply to me faster than him. But if it wasn’t Ash on the other end of the phone, what did it matter? If someone else had her phone, who the fuck had her ?

Before things could get heated, Carter’s phone dinged.

I held my damn breath, and I was pretty sure everyone else did too as Carter opened the message, then reeled back with confusion.

“Thumbs-up. It’s just a thumbs-up. What the fuck is that?

Is that like this?” He held his thumb up at us with a bland expression.

“Or like this?” He did it again with a clearly sarcastic fuck you sneer. “I’m confused.”

“Does it matter? You called her Squirrel, right?” Heath pointed out, raking his fingers through his hair. “And her only response was a fucking thumbs-up? No freaking way is that Ashes texting you.”

“I agree.” That sick feeling of dread was damn near suffocating me. “Someone else has her phone.”

“So where the fuck is Ashley?” Carly asked in a strangled voice, looking like she was all of two seconds away from crying, she was so pale.

With impeccable timing, the front door opened again.

Nate strode in with his headphones still on, sweat coating his bare arms. He dropped his gym bag on the floor and started for the kitchen before seeing us all and stopping dead in his tracks.

“What?” he asked, pushing his headphones down to his neck.

“You all look like you just saw a ghost or some shit.”

Nate looked like crap. For all his nonchalance about Ashley taking off, he also wasn’t sleeping well, the dark circles under his eyes betraying him.

Carter rose from his seat and folded his arms. “Something’s happened to Spark,” he announced, voice like a fucking thunder crack. “Whoever is texting from her phone is an imposter and something bad has happened . What are we doing about it?”

Nate’s brows rose so hard, they almost leapt off his face. “What? Why do you think that? She’s fine. She just needs some breathing room and then you guys will be right back at it, fucking like rabbits every waking moment. Just be patient with her.”

Why did he seem so shifty right now? I’d never known Nate to be so obviously guilty about something, like he was carrying genuine regret for something he’d said or done.

“Here,” Carter held out his phone. “Read that. Can you seriously tell me that’s her?”

Nate crossed over to take the phone and read the messages for himself. Then he frowned and turned the phone over like he was checking it was, in fact, Carter’s phone. Yep, the penny must have just dropped about the nickname trap.

“Thumbs-up?” he muttered in confusion. “That’s passive-aggressive. And no reaction to you calling her Royce’s dumb pet name?”

“Nothing,” Carter confirmed, as if Nate couldn’t see that for himself on the screen.

Nate glanced around at the rest of us, concern heavy in his dark gaze, then he exhaled as he sank into a seat on the sofa. “Fuck.”

“Remind us again what happened between you guys the night of your birthday,” I prompted him, desperate for even just a shred of a clue. Something to give us a lead on what might have happened after Ash had left the event.

Nate’s gaze instantly dropped, his shoulders hunching with some kind of physical need to hold his secrets inside. I wanted to punch him. Not in a friendly way, but in the way that would force him to fucking talk.

“Nothing ,” he lied after a painful pause. “Nothing happened. We just exchanged some words, and she asked for a minute outside alone to clear her head. That’s it.”

“Some words,” Heath repeated. “What words? Whatever words were exchanged…she’s now missing and someone else is pretending to be her by replying to messages. So think really fucking hard about whatever you’re keeping secret, Nate, because for all we know…Ashes is already dead and you’re to blame.”

Wow.

That statement hit like a wrecking ball, and bile rose in my throat. I scrubbed a hand over my face, swallowing hard to get a grip. Heath was just making a point for dramatic effect, right?

Ashley was fine. She had to be. Because if she wasn’t…

No. I refused to think like that. There was another explanation—there simply had to be. But what?

That thumbs-up was awfully damning.