Chapter 8
Matt
A car honked at me and my eyes jerked open to find that I'd been zigzagging on the highway. I fucking fell asleep, which was shocking in itself since I hadn't been able to sleep all night.
Slapping myself in the face and cursing my recklessness, I focused on getting to the airport in one piece. I should've called a frigging taxi. But I was anxious for the only good news we'd received so far. Eric would be able to use his contacts to help us locate Marco and lead us to Lily.
When he spotted me, the reality hit him all at once. His eyes locked onto mine, holding a question as he walked to me. She's not back yet? He asked without words. We both knew the answer, but it was still difficult to grasp, that after so long she wouldn't just come back. Luggage in hand and face hardened, he hurried toward me. When he got closer, the redness in his eyes grew striking. He fell into me when my arms wrapped around him, shedding what he must have been holding in since the moment he heard the news. My body rocked with him as the river in my own eyes flooded my face.
His knees buckled and he surrendered, almost falling to the ground save for me holding him up.
"Tell me you have something that will help us find Lily." I pulled away, unsure I'd be able to keep from collapsing myself.
"Yeah." His shoulders shook on a gasp of breath. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a notebook. "A search and rescue team." He reassured me. "Where are the rest of the guys?" He pulled his dragged eyes from left to right.
"Ethan's wasting his time with the police," I told him on our way to the car. "And I'll be back in a couple of hours or so to pick up Ryan. But this. This is what we need." I waved the book he'd given me at him and got in the car.
Swearing as I knocked my head on the way in, I dropped into the driver's seat and punched the steering wheel.
"You need me to drive?" Eric offered.
"Let's just get out of here." I hissed, turning the car on and pulling out.
Great, on top of everything, I had a monster of a headache. The road blurred before me, but I forced my eyes open.
"Don't worry about picking Ryan up later, I'll do it. You look like shit," he said.
He wasn't wrong. "Says you." I looked over at him, swollen red eyes and his lusterless unbrushed reddish-brown hair pulled back in a low man bun. It was fair, considering. "Doubt you're in better shape than I am."
His eyebrows shrugged. He didn't contest.
"So, have you made contact with the search and rescue team yet?" I asked.
"No. Fuck. Are you sure this is the only option we have to get Lily back?" he asked.
What the fuck kind of question was that? "What do you mean, 'if it's the only option'?" I spun my head too hard to look at him, almost giving myself whiplash, and the throbbing in my head grew larger. There was no way he just asked me that.
"Damn it." He swiped his hand over his face. "I'm just wary. If anything goes wrong, I can't have my parents blaming themselves, you know? We don't know who we're working with and if we involve their contacts and any of them lose their lives..."
"But you'd rather risk Lily's life with those same people you're worried might kill trained soldiers?!" I yelled. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and I almost slammed my foot on the brakes in the middle of the road.
"No. Of course, not!" He barked. "Damn it!"
In a fit of rage brought on by desperation and lack of sleep, I reached for the notebook. "Well, if you won't fucking use it, I will. We can worry about that afterwards. Lily's life is on the line."
He didn't let go of the notebook. "I know that and I'll do anything I have to, to get her back! I just need a minute!"
"Lily doesn't have a fucking minute!" I pulled again.
"Will you stop it? I'll call them, myself." He tugged it back toward him.
Within the next second, the world went up in smoke. There was a bang, and before I could assess what happened, the car was spinning out of control. Horns and angry drivers bellowed at us, and next to me, Eric was flopped forward on the dashboard, his face turned toward his window and blood dripping from the side of his head. By the time I gained control of the vehicle, if you could even call it that, the side of the car Eric was on slammed into a light post. My airbag puffed up, and I threw my weight on my door, pushing it open. Running over to his side, my heart stopped beating at Eric's still body.
"Fuck! Fuck!" I cried. With tears pouring from my eyes, I pulled him from the vehicle and onto the side of the road.
Onlookers exited their cars, phones were out recording, and I couldn't find my voice to beg one of them to call the police. My trembling hands searched my body for my phone, but it must have fallen out in the car. Eric's was smashed, and the notebook? Where was the notebook?
Luckily, an ambulance found us not long after. Eric was still breathing, thank goodness. But he wouldn't wake up. As they took care of him, I ran over to the car, found my phone, and spared a few minutes to look for the notebook. The smell of gasoline caught my attention in time for me to hear someone yell, 'Get away from the vehicle!'
But the notebook! Gritting my teeth with my heart in my mouth, I finally gave up and pulled away. Seconds after I walked off, I witnessed something I'd only seen in movies. My car went up in flames as I stared at it, mourning the loss of the damn notebook, the uncertainty of getting to Lily sooner rather than later, and standing frozen in the realization that Eric and I could've still been in that car. Before the ambulance could drive off with Eric, I jumped in with him, only noting after that I also had blood dripping down the side of my face.
Ethan
"So, our investigations tell us that this Lily lady's a drug addict," the cop stated.
"Was! Was a drug addict!" I sliced the air with the side of my hand as I gestured to him. "She's been clean for years. What does that have to do with anything?" I scowled.
"Once an addict, always an addict. Trust me, I've seen it before. She could've relapsed. Wandered off..." the cop suggested.
"Fucking unbelievable," I hissed. "Where the hell is Matt and Eric with those damn contacts?" I mumbled to myself. He was already convinced that coming to the police station was a waste of time. He wasn't wrong, damn it. After counting down the minutes until the 24-hour wait period, hoping they'd finally get their heads out of those foul asses and get their jobs done, this...THIS IS WHAT I'M FACED WITH?
I stuffed my breath, pressing my hand against my lips to keep myself from having an outburst. Thankfully, my phone rang, and I all but jumped for joy when I saw that it was Matt.
"What did Eric say?" I asked as soon as I answered.
"I'm going to need you to pick up Ryan in a couple of hours," he said.
Reeling from the lack of an answer, I shook the noise out of my head.
"We were in an accident, but we should be back later this evening," he continued.
"What the actual fuck? How bad was it? Are you two okay?" The world landed on my shoulders.
Hissing, I left the police station. They were useless anyway. As Matt explained what happened to me, I was more cautious myself when driving back to the Airbnb. Deciding to get some rest for the next couple of hours, since they almost lost their lives due to lack of sleep, I flopped down onto the living room sofa. Because if anything happened to any of us, Lily had no one left.
As if she had anyone at all to begin with. Four heads together and we still couldn't find Lily ourselves. She was fucking doomed with just us in her corner. I was almost suffocated by my inability to catch my breath. Shutting my eyes filled my head with noise and doubt.
I doubted I slept a fucking wink when I jumped to my feet before my alarm went off, racing out the door.
Matt
I told Ethan that we should be back this evening, but Eric was still lying in the hospital bed unconscious. Patched up with gauze and cotton taped to my forehead, I trembled. I had almost killed my best friend and set us back in our quest to find Lily. Tapping my feet against the tiled floor, I looked at my phone screen, slightly cracked. I had Eric's parents' number. All I'd have to do was call them and ask them for the contacts we lost, but then they'd ask for Eric, and I'd have to lie, not knowing whether or not he'd actually be okay.
There were no words to explain what was going on inside my body right then. For the first time, I understood why some people call the body a vessel, because I was detached from mine. It was like an ornament sitting in the chair next to Eric, and I was floating around the room. That might have been trauma talking, being stuck in limbo when I wanted to be running toward Lily, or it might have been the painkillers I got. Luckily for me, I got away with a few scratches and bruises. If Eric woke up, I promised we'd be a united front, even if he accused me again of being the reason Lily was missing.
The meds had me emotional, because I broke the fuck down again, head in my hands, wailing. He was right. Ethan and I should've been more careful. Whether Marco was the one responsible for her disappearance or her father, that visit should've served as a warning. We were too consumed in lust and the lightheadedness of falling in love, to take a fucking step outside of our wonderland. We should've never left her alone. That was the reason we'd moved in with her in the first place, to keep her safe. I was selfish, missing the luxury of space. Now I had unimaginable space and I'd do anything to turn back the clock and wake up in her tiny room on that hard and lumpy mattress, crushed against her body with Ethan on her other side.
"Bro, what the fuck?! Where am I?" Sluggish words jerked my head up and I exhaled in a rush.
"Woah, woah. Stay right there." I jumped to stop him from pulling the tubes from his arm. He swayed to the side and I pushed him back onto the bed. "We were in an accident."
"Lily!" He groaned, pushing me out of the way.
My heart tightened so much, I swore tiny holes had formed in the thin flesh and there were thin lines of blood spurting out inside my chest.
"Yes. Lily." I grunted. "You can't go after her like this. If we're going to find her, we can't run ourselves dry, clearly. Or there will be nothing left over to help her with. You need to get some rest." I told him as the hypocrite I was, knowing that sleep was as far away from me as the earth is from the rest of the planets, if that made any sense at all.
Calling the nurse in, I breathed a sigh of relief when they confirmed after running some tests, that he would be able to leave later that evening.
Ryan
"So, the notebook's destroyed? Are you fucking kidding me?" I yelled, looking through the rearview mirror at the two idiots who almost got themselves killed today. "Good fucking job guys. Now what are we going to do?"
Shame covered them like a wave.
"It doesn't matter now." Ethan gritted his teeth, even though I knew he shared my anger. I was about to pop off again. "I'll hire a private investigator or something."
"Okay, that's something. But how long is that going to take? Damn it! Fuck!" I lost my head, punching the dashboard.
"About as long as the search and rescue team would've taken, I assume." Eric groaned.
Pressing my lips together, I turned to look at him. I knew he almost died today, but I could kill him for daring to speak when we were so close, he had the damn contacts and lost them.
Matt locked eyes with me. "You aren't the only one furious here, so why don't you settle back into your seat, huh? Before you cause another fucking accident?" He challenged.
"Enough!" Ethan yelled. "Matt's right. You aren't the only one who's furious. We won't be of much help to Lily if we're at each other's fucking throats." "Exactly. We need to work as a team now more than ever." Matt added.
I let out a breath and turned away from him before I lost my fucking temper again. "I don't know why you're talking." I hissed at Ethan. "Of course the two of you agree with each other. If you guys didn't leave Lily alone..."
"Stop it!" Eric hollered, grabbing his ribs. "If we're going to blame Ethan and Matt, we have to blame ourselves too." He panted. "We left."
"Stop. Your parents needed you." Matt reassured him.
"Did they? I felt as useless over there as I do now." He choked.
My heartbeat hammered my eardrums. At least he had a valid reason for leaving. What was mine? A job? I should've stayed. Jobs come and go, I'd have gotten another one. But I'll never have another Lily. "I should've stayed." My emotions tumbled out of me.
Ethan pulled into the driveway of the Airbnb. I hadn't even noticed that we arrived. He turned off the car and reached over to pull me into a hug. The other guys reached across to comfort me as well.
"The only person who is to be blamed here is the scumbag who took Lily from us. We're all going out of our minds here, running low on sleep, panicking without any leads. We're going to drive ourselves crazy running around in circles if we don't get our heads right. So, why don't we go inside, get some rest and see if we can't approach this differently? I'll get my lawyer on the phone before I go to bed and see if he can find me the best private investigator money can buy. I know it's eating at us, but we don't have any choice but to wait and have faith that Lily is still safe," Ethan reassured us.
"Yeah, I'll do the same." Matt grabbed his head. "The best private investigator money can buy," he agreed.
With a plan and no other option but to rest and wait in agony, Ethan and Matt helped Eric inside while I grabbed my bags. As soon as we opened the door, however, a collective ding went off on our phones.
We all looked at each other in response to the strangeness of it. In hopes of some news, I dropped my bags and grabbed my phone from my pocket.
My eyes popped open. "It's Lily," I gasped.
Eric hopped out of Ethan and Matt's hold. "Is she okay? What's it say?!"
The phone shook in my hand. "You weren't the only ones in the hospital tonight," I gulped as I pressed play.
A choked up, guttural groan escaped me. Her head was wrapped up in white bandage. She was dressed in a pale blue hospital gown, asleep, with a machine beeping next to her.
A disguised voice broke through the first few seconds of silence like the scene of a horror movie.
' She's alive. For now. And if you want to keep her that way, there's a price you will have to pay. Fifty million buckaroonies. Shouldn't be a problem though, you're rolling in dough. Don't take too long, I'm already being generous with my time. In seventy-two hours, I'll contact you again.'
That fucking piece of shit. Where the fuck was that contact number? My eyes floated to the top of the message. Since when could you send a fucking message from an unknown number?
"I'm going to kill him!" I growled.
"I'm right behind you," Eric grunted, hopping back outside the door.
"And where the hell are you going to find him?" Matt rolled his eyes at Eric. "There must be a way to call him back."
"Already tried that," I scowled at him.
He ignored me. "Star, sixty-nine," he said out loud as he punched in the number.
Okay, I didn't try that. I held my breath.
"Damn it!" He growled and tried again until he threw his phone across the room. "I have several million in a safe back at my place." He pounded his fist against his palm while pacing.
"Me too," Ethan interrupted. "I can probably get the bank to agree to let me withdraw a few more in a short amount of time. Hell, I can get on my jet now and have the money by tomorrow. There has to be a way to get through to them!" He yelled, still trying and failing to call them back. "There isn't even a fucking voicemail! Do they want the damn money or not?!"
Eric and I looked at them spiraling, and we all wore matching expressions. Sweat beaded on my forehead and my breath grew shorter. Seventy-two hours was too damn long. How did we know they wouldn't kill her as soon as they got the money? What was to say they hadn't already killed her and sent us an old video?