Chapter 37
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
DILLON
“ D illon? Hey, excuse me?”
I turned around and glowered at the redhead tapping my shoulder. “What?” She retreated a couple of steps back and wrung her hands. “What did you want?”
“Dillon, be nice,” Buchanan scolded me, handing me another beer. Jamie was taking forever to get changed, but whatever. I could be patient. I did have my limits though, and if another five minutes went by, I’d storm backstage to find him.
“Oh, umm. Jamie asked if you could go backstage and help him? His feet are kill?—”
“When did he tell you to ask me?” I bit out. Was she for real? The show finished almost forty minutes ago.
“Errm.” She glanced at her watch and winced. “Like forty minutes ago?
“Fuck!”
“S-sorry, I got distracted.” I stepped right up in her personal space and bent down so we were eye level. “If he’s upset, or worse, hurt…” I poked her in the chest. “I’m holding you personally responsible.”
“He’ll be fine, he was soaking his feet when I left him.” I ignored her fumbled words, tapped B on the shoulder for him to follow me, and cut through the crowd toward the side entrance for the backstage area.
“Why are we doing this, Dillon? He wanted you .”
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Call it trusting my gut. Something isn’t right.” I didn’t know how to explain it, but as the minutes ticked by, the tension in my body coiled tighter and tighter. After that slimy twerp earlier and now this… it felt like things were working against me and my little crow. Nothing on this goddamn green earth was going to keep him from me.
Jamie liked to think of me as a good guy. And to him—minus my fuck-ups the last few months—I was. But to everyone else, I was a deranged man child with a hair-trigger temper. The only people to ever cross me were Stevens and fucking Chad, and they were about to realize revenge was a dish best served cold. When I was through with them, they would no longer be on the team and most likely kicked out of Briar U altogether.
Cory was worth his weight in fucking gold. He found out about their sex game and how Stevens got so many conquests. The guy had been drugging girls left and right to get the highest points in a night. Fucking savages! Disgusting. I couldn’t believe I once thought Stevens was a decent guy. It turned out I was a shit judge of character, unlike my little crow. He surrounded himself with people who would go to war for him. They were drawn to him like moths to a flame.
The door looming in front of me snapped me out of my thoughts, and I pulled down the handle. It didn’t open. What the fuck? Irritation and a flash of fear coursed through me. “Fuck this door,” I ground out and slammed my shoulder into it. Buchanan laughed behind me, muttering “Fuck that bush. Fuck that bush.” Fucking child. It took our combined forces to open the door, and once we got through, it all made sense. Someone had barricaded it with storage shelves and prop shit.
“This ain’t good.”
“You can say that again, B.” I grunted as I kicked a pile of boxes out of the way.It was like a fucking rabbit warren around here, and was dark as night. “Fuck!” I yanked my hair as the door slammed shut behind us, and my skin crawled with frustration.
“I’ll get the… shit.”
“What?”
“The lights don’t work.” He pulled out his phone and switched on the flashlight. Thank fuck one of us was thinking straight. I pulled mine out and did the same.
“Which way?”
“Call him. If he’s here, you can follow his ringtone.” He paused. “Assuming you know it, that is.”
I punched him in the shoulder. “Of course, I fucking know it. It’s some Falling In Reverse song he’s obsessed with.” I tapped the speed dial, and his phone rang in my ear, but I couldn’t hear anything in the space around us. Buchanan muttered something, but I didn’t catch it as I was too focused on the fact my call went to voicemail.
“Levi said to go straight ahead. It’s the last door on the right.”
Levi? He must have texted him. I shook my head at myself. I needed to stop letting my emotions get in the way of rational thought.
“Come on,” I replied, picking up my pace. Buchanan followed, hot on my heels. My heart was hammering against my ribs, but I ignored it, trying to keep my mind clear and focused as I tried Jamie’s phone again.
“He also said there was no issue with the lights.”
Well, that was just fucking great. I knew something was off. “Fuck me! This damn door is locked too. Step back!” I braced against the wall opposite the door before charging it and kicking it in. It crashed into the drywall, the sound reverberating through the large room.
B flicked the light switch. “Still no lights.”
Jamie’s phone went to voicemail for the fourth time, and I still couldn’t hear his ringtone. I wanted to punch the damn wall as frustration ate away at me, but I couldn’t. I refused to let him down again, like when I almost hurt him in my room. Fuck, that killed me to think about, and it probably always would. It was my cross to bear; my penance for being a broken piece of shit too scared to embrace what was right in front of me. I would spend the rest of my life begging for his forgiveness.
“Voicemail again. I say we start by the runway entrance and work back. There must be another exit somewhere in here, right?” I turned to look at B and nearly blinded him with my flashlight. “Right?” He shrugged and followed behind me as we swept our phones in an arc, looking for any sign of him, but there was nothing. What the hell? He wouldn’t have left without me. He’d have called or texted me to let me know if he was going to leave, that much I was sure of. The space was empty apart from a few chairs in front of dressing tables and the odd empty box. I glanced at them before moving on, not seeing anything.
“Uh, Dillon? Come ‘ere.”
“What is it?”
“Just fucking get over here. Now.” Buchanan stood by one of the chairs, the hysterical edge to his voice making me rush over. “Here. Look at these.” His voice wavered as he passed me four Polaroids.
“What the fuck?! What the hell is this?” I looked at him wide eyed.
My chest felt so tight, it was like my heart was on the verge exploding as I flicked through them. A photo of Jamie on the runway, one of him with me, and two of him backstage.
My hand covered my mouth as bile seared a path up the back of my throat and coated my tongue. I scrunched the photos in my fist as anger and fear pulsed through me. This was a fucking pile of shit. I tucked them in my pocket in case we had to call the police if we couldn’t find him. I refused to accept that outcome.
Jamie was fucking mine! No one took what belonged to me and got away with it. Fuck that shit. I’d burn the world to the ground before I lost him again. Five years without him was like being stuck on death row. I refused to contemplate another stay in that hellhole.
“Where did you find them?”
“Here on the chair and on the floor. Uh, hang on.” He dropped to his knees and pulled something out from under the bowl of water. “Got it.” Buchanan handed me a card.
I’ve found you!
“Fuck. What does this mean?” My knees buckled and collapsed underneath me. I braced my hands on the floor and dry heaved with each gasping breath, but couldn’t stop rereading the damn message as it stared up at me. A hand landed on my shoulder, and I flinched as my mind spiraled.
“Pull yourself together, Dillon. You’re not going to be any help to him like this.” B sighed as he straightened, pulling me up by the collar of my shirt. He grabbed my jaw and forced me to look at him, his face swathed in shadows. “Look, we don’t know what’s going on, but we will find him. Focus on that and get your head in the game.” He pushed his forehead into mine. “Focus, Hargraves.”
Focus? I wanted to kick the shit out of something and make some fucker bleed. Instead, I grunted and pulled away, stalking to the corner we hadn’t searched yet and using my phone to search the area.“Oh shit.” My heart froze mid-beat, and every muscle in my body locked up as tight as my eyes snagged on Jamie’s bag. My feet moved of their own volition, and I tore through his bag before realizing what I was doing. I yanked out his phone, tapped the screen, and saw seven missed calls. Four from me and three unknowns.
“Can you hear that? That buzzing?”
I couldn’t hear much above the ringing in my ears. B dropped down next to me and emptied the contents of Jamie’s bag on the floor while I shined the light from my phone on it. Papers, books, makeup, and an old-style phone skittered across the floor.
“I’ve got it.” The illuminated screen went dark just as I grabbed it, but it started to ring again immediately. I glanced at the screen to see who it was, but it was a withheld number. Thankfully, there was no password or face recognition; all I had to do was press the green phone button.
I pushed it and held it to my ear. My heart throbbed behind my ribs and blood pounded in my ears. “Thank fuck, Jamie! Where the hell are you? I need to get to you right now! He’s there. Jamie?—”
“Who the fuck is this?” I growled as my stomach lurched. Why was another man calling Jamie? He sounded older, powerful. Was my little crow…? Tears stung my eyes. No. He wouldn’t cheat on me. He wouldn’t! I sunk my teeth into the bottom of my lip as I tried to make sense of what the hell was going on.
“Where the hell is Jamie?”
“Shut up, asshole. I asked first! Who are you, and how do you know Jamie?” The phone slipped from my sweat-slicked hand, but I caught it before it hit the floor. “Fuck.”
“...again. I’m FBI agent Daire Whitlock, Jamie’s uncle.”
“Jamie doesn’t have an uncle!”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, punk. He has a whole damn family. Now tell me where he is, or I’ll arrest you for wasting police time.” Uncle, family? Jamie had all these people in his life and didn’t tell me? How could he keep this from me after everything? I thought things were good between us, but it seemed my little crow still had skeletons in his closet I didn’t know about.
I licked my dry lips. I didn’t trust this guy as far as I could throw him. I wasn’t going to give him anything easily. “W-who’s he?” I knew what he was going to say before he took a breath. But fuck me, I wanted to believe a beautiful lie right now, because the truth was going to be a damn hard pill to swallow. And I didn’t want to, because that would make everything real and meant my little crow was in serious danger.
“That’s between me and him.” Agent Whitlock said with no room for argument. “I don’t know who you are. You could be a stranger on the street or working for…”
“For fuck’s sake, I’m Dillon. I’ve been his best friend since he was eight.”
“Until he left and stopped all contact with you.”
“Yes, but?—”
“No buts, kid. I don’t know you from Adam, so no dice. Pass me to Jamie.”
“Fucking listen.” My voice shook with the force of his fear. “Did you know Mr. Abernathy beat me up after they left? Put me in the hospital with a broken arm and concussion? Because I couldn’t tell him where Jamie and Selene had gone?”
“I did.” His voice was softer, filled with regret. “I’m sorry, kid but I need?—”
“Don’t you think I’d have given Jamie the damn phone if he was here?” I bellowed and broke. Tears flowed from my eyes in torrents. “I-I don’t k-know where he i-is…” My breath hitched, stealing my words as my world shattered around me. Memories of Jamie telling me what his dad had done to Selene flashed through my mind, along with all the times Jamie had unexplained bruises and split lips. I screamed because he wasn’t here to hold. If he wasn’t in my arms, he wasn’t safe. I didn’t know where he was. My heart splintered all over again, and all I had to cling to was thin air. I pounded my fist on the floor as if it would give me the answers I needed, only to be met with silence and my labored breaths.
“Dillon, we need to go.” My gaze zeroed in on B’s face. “We need to go. Now! I’ve messaged Mal and Ava to meet us at Jamie’s dorm.” I stared at him as his words flowed in and out of my ears. He could have been speaking another language as nothing made sense. I was numb.
I licked my lips, catching my tears on my tongue and blinked as if it had the power to clear the storm in my mind. Vivid image after vivid image bombarded me. Some were memories I could place, others were possibilities I didn’t want to think about. My whole body shook from the force of them, like I was being shot by a firing squad.
Buchanan’s eyes bored into me, trying to give me the strength of conviction I needed to keep going. He was trying to patch me up with Band-Aids, but I was bleeding out faster than he could plug me. He fisted the front of my suit jacket and shook me. “Get. The. Fuck. Up! You want to save him?” I nodded. “Then get up. The others are meeting us there.”
“How do you…?” I pushed up onto unstable feet and let him drag me through the door next to Jamie’s bag—the only one that wasn’t locked.
“I took the phone off you when you had your little meltdown and spoke to Agent Whitlock. He’s meeting us and already has men on campus searching for your boy.” I looked at him, my vision hazy from the water filling my eyes. “You good?” I gritted my teeth and nodded. I had to be. I would be for him.