Most people are convinced she up and ran away, but who does that? I try not to think about how similar the senior girl is to Carly. Carly wouldn’t run away, so there has to be another explanation. One she damn well better have by the time I get to class, or I’ll be just as neurotic as Paige is.
I brush off both of our fears with a shake of my long ponytail. “You watch. She’ll be calling us after lunch with tales of the dude she picked up.”
My voice sounds confident, but Paige has known me our whole lives and doesn’t buy it for a second.
“C’mon,” I say with false cheer, “I’ll pick you up a coffee at the cafe.”
* * *
I’m not a needy person. In fact, I like to believe I’m self-sufficient. But when Carly doesn’t show up for class, I start spinning out of control with worry. I don’t want to freak Paige out before I get back to the apartment, so I swing by the campus bookstore where my boyfriend, Gavin, is working the afternoon shift.
I step into the frigid air with relief, comforted by the familiar fragrance of the strawberry candles the manager likes mixed with the crisp, clean scent of new books. Scanning the check-out counters for Gavin, I frown when I don’t find him assisting any of the customers. Normally, he prefers to be up front and right in the middle of the chaos, but he’s not there or in the manager’s office where everyone takes their break, which is strange.
There’s a small café area to my right, so I take a seat on one of the benches to wait and pull out my phone. Carly hasn’t returned any of my or Paige’s messages since Friday, which is odd considering she keeps her phone glued to her side. I checked in with some of her teachers, and they told me she missed three important midterms, which will have a devastating effect on her near perfect GPA. Then as I was leaving each of her classes, I stopped a few other students and asked if they had seen her, not a single one of them had.
The next rational step is to call her parents and the police. They would take it seriously and investigate or send out more search parties. It had only been a few weeks since the senior went missing, so I know the police wouldn’t drag their feet about another missing girl. I don’t want to cry foul play and look like an insipid college chick, but I’m also worried about my friend.
A few minutes pass and Gavin still hasn’t shown up, so I push myself from the little table and stride across the room to check-out counter where a friendly face looks up and smiles openly.
“Hey, Joseph.” I volunteer at an animal shelter and Joseph is one of the extras who comes in when we need additional help.
He looks up, his eyes brightening when they land on me. “Piper. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Midterms,” I say and make a face.
He finishes checking out the freshman and hands him his change. He turns his attention to me and says, “Killer. Need help with something?” Flashing a teasing grin, he leans a hip on the counter.
His brilliant smile brings out my own if only for a moment. “Actually, yes.”
“Anything.”
“Have you seen Gavin around? I need to talk to him.”
His smile falters just a little. “Yeah, I think I saw him go into the storage room. I can call him up here if you want.”
Already pushing from the counter, I wave over my shoulder. “That’s okay, I’ll go hunt him down. Good to see you!”
His response is cut off by another customer.
I’m well acquainted with the large storage room off the back of the bookstore. On multiple occasions, we’ve made use of the space behind the towering shelves full of supplies with Gavin whispering words dirty enough to make me blush. The thought almost puts a little warmth back into my icy stomach.
I push through the throngs of students, who are too busy searching for last-minute testing study materials to care, and head to the large gray doors with black rubber trim. I don’t bother looking around to see if the manager is watching or if anyone is going to stop me. I’ve practically become part of the staff and have gotten to know everyone during the long, often dull, summer hours I sat around with Gavin.
Thoughts about Gavin only remind me how eager I am to find him to allay my worries about Carly, so I shoulder open the door. I skid to an immediate stop, like I’ve run into an invisible wall.
My gasp draws their attention, and they break apart with an audible smack. Face is frozen in horror, feet epoxied to the floor, I can’t even summon words to express the sudden bottomless pit my stomach becomes.
“Piper!” Gavin extricates himself from the arms of another woman and takes a hasty step back. “What are you doing here?”
“I should go,” the girl says before she makes a hasty exit.
The loud slap of the double doors shutting shatters the ice freezing me solid, and I take a step back even as Gavin moves forward.
“I can explain,” he’s saying, but I just keep moving backward as he keeps moving forward. I hold up a hand and shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts.
“What? Did you accidentally shove your tongue down someone’s throat?”
He winces, and finally stops moving toward me. I’m thankful for that. I’m not sure what I would have done if he had managed to reach me. “You’ve just been so busy.”
“Busy.” My voice is flat. Hollow. He thinks I’ve been too busy, and this is what he does? I feel strangely removed from the situation, as if I’m watching it from above or from someone else’s point of view.
“Ya know. Wrapped up in yourself. School. The future. We never have fun anymore.”
I’m not immune to my faults. Whenever I get lost in tasks, Paige is there to pull me out and remind me to have some fun. I’m very goal oriented, some would say blind to others when it comes to my own aspirations. I can be single-minded and forceful in my own opinions, but I would never even consider cheating on Gavin.
“Fun,” I repeat. The word sounds strange, not because I don’t have fun anymore, but because he’s using it as an excuse to cheat on me. “We don’t have fun.”
He shrugs, and I’m so consumed with the urge to wrap my hands around his throat, I have to turn around. With quick, clipped steps, I force myself to walk out of the storage room and back through the heavy doors. Compared to the dark, intimate lighting in the storage area, the LED bulbs are blinding. I shove my way through displays and racks of Florida Southern University gear until I reach the automatic doors.
“Piper!” Joseph comes around the corner of the checkout counter, and his mouth pulled into a frown. His head swivels when he spots Gavin storming out of the storage room.
“Thanks for your help!” I wave to Joseph and barrel through the door before it’s even completely open. I try to I lose myself in the afternoon crowd, but when I look back, Gavin is right behind me. He is reaching for me as if to grab me, but I don’t let him. Whirling around, eyes flashing, I spit out, “Don’t touch me!” in a voice more brittle than I’d like.
The crowd around us slows to watch, and I swear I can hear the click, click, click of a shutter as he steps forward with his hands in front of him. My teeth are ground together as I shake my head. I do not want him to freaking touch me. When he steps toward me again, I step off the sidewalk, just needing to get him away from me, and a car honks. I don’t know how close I come to being hit, because almost as soon as it happens, someone is pulling me to safety.
Joseph’s warm brown eyes hold my blue ones and for a second I am thankful he’s there. “Are you okay?”
Then I hear Gavin’s shouts and I push away, needing the space. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
The crowd continues on its way now that the drama is dying down. Gavin tries to elbow his way through a couple burly dudes, but they’re too distracted with hitting on a couple of sorority sisters to care. I use the few seconds he’s distracted to bolt in the other direction.
Joseph jogs to keep up with me. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? I don’t know what happened between you, but you shouldn’t run off mad like this.”
Th
e light changes and traffic starts, so I stop at a crosswalk and stab at the button. “I’m okay, I promise, but I appreciate your help back there.”
“Anytime.”
My phone buzzes against my thigh, causing me to jerk. With a self-depreciating laugh, I pull it out and find a text from Paige. I curse under my breath, remembering I forgot to update her after my class about Carly.
To think my biggest worry this morning were midterms.
I put my hand over the phone after I press the call back button. To Joseph, I say, “I owe you.”
His lips spread in a grin. “Fine by me. You can treat me to lunch tomorrow.”
Before I can say anything else, Joseph sprints back down the sidewalk, passed an open-mouthed Gavin, and into the bookstore.
“Piper? PIPER!” Paige screams in my ear.
“Hey, I meant to text you back—”
Paige makes an impatient sound. “They found her.”
Shaky laughter escapes my throat. God, what a day. “Thank God, is she at the apartment?”
“No—” A sob cuts down the line, and my whole body goes still—as if every cell inside me already knows what she’s about to say but my brain refuses to acknowledge it. When she gathers herself, her voice is no more than a whisper, forcing the words into my ears and making the situation real. “I mean the police found her. S-she’s dead.”
Piper
I don’t get much sleep.
Paige, who is closer to Carly than I am, cries for hours until finally passing out from exhaustion. I don’t dare leave her side, so I spend the sleepless few hours until daybreak on a chair beside her bed in case she wakes up in hysterics. It gives me entirely too much time to think, and by seven I’m contemplating waking her up. I don’t, and it’s another hour of having my own thoughts for company before she wakes.
“Time izit?” Paige sits up, rubbing at her bloodshot eyes.
A yawn escapes me. “About eight.”
She explodes from the bed in a flurry of blankets and shedding clothes. “I’m gonna be late for class.”
“Paige.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?” She shrugs into a hoodie which muffles her voice. “I have a lecture at eight thirty!”
“Paige.”
Her head pokes out of the neck, her hair disheveled, and her face pale against the dark blue material. “We emailed our professors yesterday. We don’t have to go to class today. We’re excused.”
She frowns at me as she ties up her hair in a messy bun. “Why would you—” Then her eyes widen, and she claps a hand over her mouth. Fresh tears sheen her eyes. “Oh my God.”
Even though my legs are weak with exhaustion, I get to my feet and cross the room to pull her into a hug. “We’ll get through this.”
“How?” she whispers. “How do we get through this?”
“Together.”
Her arms come around me then and squeeze tight. “I just don’t understand.”
“I know.” I have to pause around my own tears. “I know. I don’t either.”
When her tears abate, she pulls back and wipes her face. “You look worse than I do and that’s saying something. Did you sleep at all?”
I shake my head and wince at the resulting throbbing. The headache I couldn’t seem to shake pulses angrily behind my eyes. “I couldn’t. I was worried about you.”
Her face softens. “Why don’t you go take a shower, and then it’ll be my turn to take care of you. Maybe take a nap after?”
“A nap sounds like heaven, but we promised we’d go talk to the police today. They want to take our statement.”
She shoves me in the direction of the bathroom. “Fine, take a shower and I’ll grab some coffee. Lots of coffee.”
Twenty minutes later, she cracks open the door and thrusts a hand holding a cup inside through. The scent emanating from it is enough to make me groan aloud. “Thank you.”
Paige peeks her head in. “Thank you. You’re a good person, you know that?”
“I’ll remind you of this conversation the next time I forget to do laundry or wash the dishes.”
She opens her mouth to speak, and then her eyes widen. I know without asking that whatever she had been about to say was about Carly. Even gone, her presence is still all over our apartment.
“I ordered a cab,” she says instead. “They should be here in about twenty minutes.”
I nod and she closes the door. When I hear her footsteps recede down the hall, I lean my forehead against the wood. I give myself a few minutes to surrender to my own tears and then I suck them back, get dressed, and find Paige.
* * *
The bus stop just outside our apartment is full of students and every single one of them glance over at Paige and I as we cross the sidewalk to the waiting Uber. The news spread much faster than I thought it would, which is silly. I should have known something like this would reach every inch of campus.
“Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Department, right?” the driver asks as we get in and buckle our seat belts.
“Yes, thanks,” Paige answers. She leans against the seat and closes her eyes.
I pull out my phone, hoping to lose myself in the mindless, banal updates on my social media. Then the page loads, and all I see are pictures of Carly’s face and posts from all of her other friends mourning her death.
I didn’t want to know the details.
I don’t want the last memory I have of Carly to be tainted with the bloody residue of her death, but social media has no conscience, and it only takes one swipe for me to see the gruesome reports of the last minutes of her life.
My eyes scan the words before I can tear myself away.
In the final hours of her life, Carly was raped repeatedly, sodomized, brutally beaten, and finally strangled. Her naked body was dumped like garbage near a dumpster by the venue where the party had been held. A place where we’d all gone for various get-togethers and parties. Her face was nearly unrecognizable and her hair had been hacked off.
A strangled sound escapes my throat, and Paige sits up in her seat. “Are you okay?” she asks.
I toss my phone into my purse, willing the images away. “I’m sorry.” I clear my throat, hoping I sound more convincing. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
She takes my hand in hers. “It’ll be okay.”
“Hey, I thought I was supposed to be the strong one.”
Her hand squeezes mine. “You can’t be strong all the time. You have to break a little.”
“I’ll break after we find out who did this to Carly.”
The ride to the police station is a short one. The receptionist takes our name and information and we sit in a cramped little room until an officer with graying hair leads us to a freezing conference room with a battered table in the center and chipped filing cabinets lining the walls. We take a pair of seats and the officer, who introduces himself as Detective Manning, sits across from us.
He slaps a legal pad down on the table and uncaps a pen. “I’m sorry for the loss of your friend. I’ll do what I can to be as brief as possible.”
Paige smiles, but it’s a ghost of her normal cheerful expression. “Thank you.”
“How about we start with the last time you saw Carly?” he asks, pen poised over the legal pad.
“Um, Friday,” Paige answers but then looks to me for confirmation.
I nod. “She’d just got off work—she’s a receptionist at a doctor’s office—and she was going out to a friend’s birthday party.”
He asks for the name of the doctor’s office and notes it down. “Did you hear from her the rest of the night? Maybe a text letting you know when she was coming home?”
“Around ten or ten thirty,” I glance to Paige for confirmation and it’s her turn to nod. “She texted me to let me know she was going to be late. The party ran long.”
“Do you have the exact time?” Manning asks.
I fumble with my purse and pull out my phone. Carly’s face greets me as I open our last conversation. The reali
ty that I’ll never see her face again hits me right in the gut, stealing the breath straight from my lungs. It takes a moment for me to remember what I was looking for. Blinking back tears, I tap our last message and provide him with the time stamp.
Manning jots it down on his legal pad, his brows furrowed. “And did she mention meeting someone there? A man she was going home with, maybe.”
Paige shakes her head and looks down at the table. “She didn’t say. We didn’t hear from her after that.”
“If she were to meet someone, would she leave with them without telling you?” Manning asks.
“That’s what we thought happened at first, but she would have let us know the day after. It’s how we knew something was wrong.” Realizing how it sounds, I add, “She wasn’t . . . promiscuous or anything. She didn’t go home with every guy she met.”
“I understand.”
Paige taps her thumb against the wood tabletop. “I don’t even think she’d have gone home with anyone. We had midterms this week. It wasn’t like her to be reckless and put her personal life ahead of school, not even for a cute guy.”
Manning’s impassive face softens. “Whatever happened, this was not her fault, and we’re going to do whatever we can to find the person responsible.”
“Thank you,” Paige says.
He nods. “Now, was she involved with anyone? Did either of you notice anyone paying her a lot of attention that made her uncomfortable? An ex-boyfriend maybe?”
Paige and I share a glance. “She wasn’t seeing anyone new that I know of,” Paige tells him.
“Me either. Her last relationship was last year and there hasn’t really been anyone since. She was more interesting in playing the field and her work.”
“Around when was this?”
I rub at my temples and squeeze my eyes shut. “June, I think.”
“We can get you her laptop, if that helps. I mean, if her parents say it’s okay. I’m not really sure how this works. We just want to help find who did this to her.”
He questions us for another half hour, and we tell him everything we remember about Friday, her friends, and her habits, but to me, none of it points to who killed her. For all I know, she went to her friend’s birthday party and was abducted the moment she left. Based on what he told us, no one at the party saw her leave with anyone, though one person did see her walking out to her car.
Savior (First to Fight Book 4) Page 2
