by Ellie Parker
I did not leave my name and number.
I did not leave a message.
I called again.
And again.
And again and again and again.
The more I called, the more the panic soared. Stone had his foot on the gas pedal, pushing the car to the very limit, but even that didn’t feel fast enough.
“She’s not fucking answering?” I cursed, phone still pressed against my ear, ringing into oblivion.
“The cops are at the house,” Chase confirmed. “They’re probably tearing through his room right now. Jessa’s fine. I promise.”
I thought about my mother. About how broken she’d be by all this mess. She was a proud lady and that pride would keep her away from this town for an eternity, I was sure of it. Right now, she was in London, my guess was that she’d stay there. Probably have a crew come over to the house reaping everything she wanted. Or maybe she’d leave it all behind. I hated the feeling I had thinking about it. I hated that she’d break with no one there to help put the pieces back together. We didn’t exactly get along great, my mother and me. But that didn’t mean I wanted her to suffer.
And what about the way Jessa suffered. The thought hit harder than I ever expected to. It was painful to think about. Even more painful because of how long the goddamn traffic light was taking to change. It felt like every minute counted. And maybe it did.
I looked at Stone. He seemed just about as nervous as I was, picking at the corners of his fingers, his legs bopping up at down to the rhythm of his worries.
As soon as the light flickered yellow, Chase hauled ass again, swerving through the narrow, curved roads. His foot new gas, and only gas. His eyes were laser focused on the mission ahead. Another ten minutes and we were coming up to the driveway of our house. An empty driveway. No cops. No lights. No guns. Jessa’s car wasn’t here either. Somehow, I couldn’t decide whether or not that was a good thing. There was a chance that dad had her park in the garage. But why would he do that? If he’d gotten her to come here under the guise that I had overdose, telling her to park in the garage seemed senseless. I checked anyway. And just like I thought, her car wasn’t there. Maybe that was a good thing. I tried to convince myself that it was. The truth of the matter was, we’d been fucking assholes. Sure, her dad said she went running when she heard about the overdose. But maybe she went running away from me as opposed to toward me. I fucking hoped that was the case.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Stone said.
Panic washed over Chase’s face as he pulled up right in front of the patio. He didn’t answer. But he didn’t need to. The way he hopped out of the car and scrambled to the front door was enough for me to know that this was not what he was expecting.
Stone and I weren’t far behind him, pushing our way into the house just the same way he did. We were met with silence. Stillness. The kind that haunts you all the way to your bones.
“Where the fuck are the cops, Chase,” I grunted, but didn’t stop moving. I was up the stares in an instant, my brothers on my heel. Dad’s room door was locked, but there wasn’t a part of me that gave a damn about that. I thrust myself against it. Once. Twiced. Again and again. It budged, but only a little. But three is better than one. Now, it wasn’t just me throwing my body against the door. All of us tackled that thing like it was the way out of the apocalypse. Finally, finally, finally, it caved. We barged in to nothingness. No Jessa. No father. A big fucking pile of nothing but a freshly made bed and spotless surroundings. The back room proved to be just as useless.
I took my phone out again. Called Jessa and then my dad. Then Jessa, then my dad. Nothing.
Sven was throwing shit. Breaking whatever the fuck his hands landed on. Chase was calmer, at least on the outside. I could see, in his eyes, however, that he was so close to exploding in the most volatile of ways.
He stepped outside of the room, moved out into the hallway and pressed his phone against his ear. “Chase Stark here,” he started, his voice shaky, but professional. Not long after he started talking, I figured out that he’d made a call to the police station. The call went on, with him talking, explaining, shaking his head, clenching his phone harder and harder. “Yes. No. Detective Ronster. Ronster. Yes. Yes. Three hours ago. Yes. No. Well my fucking girlfriend is missing, okay. So maybe you guys need to start moving your asses around there.” When the call came to an end, he tossed his device over the banister, a series of expletives roaring over his tongue.
“What did they say?” I asked, panic pumping hard and fast through my veins.
“Ronster went home with a stomach bug,” he said.
Never, did I think those were the words that would make my world feel like it was closing in and crashing down on me all at the same time.
29
Chase
My phone splintered into a thousand pieces as it hit the ground. I’d hardly failed at anything in my life. Hell if I was going to fail when it came to finding Macy.
“What did he say?” Stone badgered. He looked like he’d seen death twice over. I didn’t blame him. I felt like that’s exactly where this whole thing was leading to.
“Ronster went home with a stomach bug,” I answered and the only thing that shocked me was that I trusted the bastard in the first place. My father owned this town, I knew that. I was just too stupid to think that the cops would give a shit about doing the right thing. Looking the other way when it came to his money laundering was one thing, but what we were talking about here was murder. And not just someone outing some hoodlum for stealing his headphone, but the murder of a teenaged girl. A murder that had wrapped this town in a mist of fear for years.
“You think he called dad and warned him?”
“I know he called dad and warned him,” I said. The man on the phone seemed halfway competent, if not a little confused. I decided that that wasn’t good enough. I grabbed Stone’s phone from his pockets and called the police station in three different other towns, including one I knew had it out for my dad. Different towns, different bosses and that town in particular had a boss that wasn’t exactly a fan of my father. Next step was the FBI. I had screenshots of all the shit I’d found in dad’s fuck room and forwarded it over to them quick as a whistle.
When Sven came into the hallway, he looked like he was ready to throw himself off the banister. His eyes were red, his fists redder, blood pooling on his knuckles.
I pulled him to me, holding him at the shoulders. “We’re going to find her,” I said. “And we’re gonna give that bastard just what he deserves. We need work fast and we need to work smart.”
It was easier said than done. Our first course of action was to file through the camera footage of the parking lot. I sat on the only charge in front of the desk and my brothers stood behind me, eyes peeled as the watched the footage fast forward.
At the first sign of Jessa, I hit stop and rolled it back a little more to get the beginning of her arrival. She rang the doorbell and looked up, directly at the camera. The panic in her eyes wasn’t something that could be faked. She thought Sven was in danger, so at least there was something to hold on to that she didn’t hate us as much as she damn well should have.
Dad opened the door. The only thing in sight was the top of his head, but the way he was moving made it evident that he was acting out a scene. He stepped back and then forward, pulling a jacket over his shoulders while he talked to Jessa.
Why the hell was she even entertaining this?
If he called to tell her that Sven was taken to the hospital, wouldn’t she at least question why the hell he stayed behind.
“Why the hell are they walking to the car?” That was Stone, thinking out loud.
No one answered. We just continued to watch as my dad opened the door for Jessa and then closed it behind her. He stepped away and I thought okay, good, maybe he didn’t take her. But then she doesn’t drive off. For at least five minutes she was there. Waiting. Not long after, we figure out what she’s waiting for. My dad
walked back to her car, carrying a small duffle bag. Even with the less than perfect quality of the video, I could see the gun in his waist. He slipped into the passenger side of Jessa’s car, gun now in his hand. There wasn’t much to be seen after that. Not with them locked in the car the way they were, but I was sure of one thing, Jessa wasn’t going down without a fight.
“Sven, there’s an extra cellphone in the top left drawer of the cabinet, can you get it and see if it’s charged.” He stepped back, following my instructions without question. Tossing my phone was a dumb as rocks idea, now that I think about it. “Get my sim card from the phone downstairs and plug it in.”
Sven rushes off and I copy the video file we’d just watched. The more evidence we have, the better. I forward that over to the police departments I’d been in contact with, including the one in our town. And then posted an update to Facebook, asking anyone and everyone who might have seen them to contact me. I didn’t give a shit about what that meant for my family or our reputation. We were fucking ruined the day we were born. Until now, he’d just been exceptionally good at hiding it.
Downstairs, I found Sven with my phone pressed to his ear. There was babbling coming from the speakers. Babbling that sounded a lot like my father.
“Where the fuck is she?” I barked, prying the phone from Sven’s palm.
“Ah,” my father said, his signature cockiness shining through his tone. “You fucked up big time, Chase.”
“We’re gonna fucking end you,” I warned.
“I know,” he said, like he’d already come to terms with his demise. “But I’ll make sure that you’re in pain every day of your life. Why don’t you go ahead and say goodbye to Jessa.” There was screaming in the background. The kind that could drive even the sanest person mad. My heart broke just that much more. I didn’t think it was possible, not with how shattered it had become in the past few months.
I listened some more. Trying to see whether or not background noise could give me an idea of where the fuck they were. There wasn’t much to go off of. Jessa’s wailing pretty much drowned everything out.
Before my father could say another word, I ended the call and dialed my mother’s number. She didn’t answer. Not the first time or the second.
Again, panic.
The unexplainable kind of panic. I tried to tell myself that she was okay. I’d talked to her on the phone only a few days ago. She’d confirmed that she was in Europe, telling us about her trip to the London Eye. There was no way the bastard could have gotten to her without us noticing that he’d left.
“We need to split up,” Stone said. “The lake house. The condo in the city. The police station. Make sure to get on them as much as you can. Make sure they’re actually moving their asses.”
“We can’t go unarmed,” Sven added, then walked in the direction of the garage. He entered it from inside the house and in less than a minute came back with half of dad’s gun collection.
30
Sven
We went in three different directions. And in all those directions, we found nothing. The police were claiming to be doing the best they could. At least the chief had the smarts to look embarrassed for having a disgusting piece of shit like Ronson on his team.
I phoned Stone and Chase to talk strategy. Chase was quick off the line, wanting to get back to badgering the police. Outside of clearing out every hotel and motel in the state, Stone and I were coming up short on ideas.
My phone beeped, letting me know that another call was coming in. Without looking at it, I clicked a button to connect the calls, sure that it was Chase. The voice that spoke, however, belonged to my mother.
“Hey, Sven. Is something going on there?” She sounded terrified. That tends to happen when you’re miles away and can’t even lend a hand to prevent your world from crumbling to pieces.
As quickly as Stone could, he filled her in on the details. It took all of two seconds for her to burst into tears, apologizing for something that she didn’t do.
“Where have you looked for her?” She asked her voice shaky.
“Unless you’ve got any goddamn ideas,” I barked, “then how the fuck does it matter.”
I was angry. Of course I was angry. Not just at her, but at the world – as unjust as that was.
“I have a house just outside of the city,” my mother said. “I was planning on coming home a few days ago, staying there as opposed to at the house, but I couldn’t find the key. I took it as a sign that the universe was telling me to stay put. Check if maybe he took her there.” She rattled off the address, following it up with another apology.
I hung up my phone, taking it as a sign to start dragging ass. I’d never been happier in my life to own the car I did. Hand on the horn, my car roared to remove every goddamn bastard who stood in my way. I was very likely betting on zero, but like hell was I going to waste a minute to find out if that was the case.
The house mom had was in a relatively lonely neighborhood. Big, but not expansive, like our house. I tried not to wonder why the hell she had another house. As I was starting to learn, our family had way too many secrets for me to keep track.
I spun the car into the driveway, taking not of the fact that Jessa’s car wasn’t here, but trying like hell not to have that tamper my enthusiasm. Gun in one hand, I pushed down the handle on the front door, only to find that it opened right up. This was way too easy. I should have thought about that before I set a foot inside the house, because as soon as I did, something heavy crashed on the top of my head and the next minute, I saw stars.
31
Stone
Sven wasn’t answering his phone, which could mean nothing or it could mean everything. Especially since his car was parked out front. Quietly as I could, I stepped up to the house and walked around back. There was small window there that overlooked a mass of woods. No one to see the monster. No one to hear the monster.
Dad couldn’t have chosen a better place to bring Jessa. Light on my toes, I tried to find a point of entrance that wouldn’t alarm him of my presence. There was a window at the back, not unreachable, though it was high enough that I’d have to step on something in order to get through it. But not accessible either, unless I shot through the glass. I started to move to the side of the house when wailing from the inside alarmed me. Jessa. Panic mode struck and I knew that the window was my only fucking point of entrance. I couldn’t start scavenging for another. I tipped over an oversized flowerpot, dragged it to the wall and climbed on top of it. Right there, within shooting range, was my father. He had a fistful of Jessa’s hair in his hands, a knife to her throat. She was naked as the day she was born. Tied to a chair, her body was covered in bruises and blood dripped from her nose down to her chest.
Sven was in the corner of his room. I knew because I could see his fresh white sneakers poking out, even though I couldn’t see much more than that. My bet was on him being alive. I didn’t doubt that dad would kill him, but the fact that dad was making a show of how he was about to slit Jessa’s throat open, was enough for me to know that his methods were a measure of tormenting Sven. Sven wailed. He kicked out. But his body didn’t move forward. Tied up, restraint, dad had a lot of experience with that, didn’t he?
I contemplated my moves. The gun was hard enough to break the window. But that kind of alarm could cause him to slip or intentionally shove the knife into Jessa’s mess.
I needed something. I needed to do something. I scanned my surroundings, looking for a way to get to them without it ending in their demise. I even fucking called out to God I didn’t believe in. Of course, there wasn’t a god damn answer. That God existed, was something that was one hundred percent up for debate. The devil, however, I’d seen him a lot of times. Right now, I was watching his filthy hands at work.
My father pressed his knife deeper against Jessa’s throat before leaning it on the tip and sinking it deeper. I saw blood. I saw rage. I saw the gun in my hand pointed at his head. And then I saw that very head spl
atter into a million pieces. My father’s body fell, plummeting onto the ground like a sack of rotten potatoes. Bile rose to the top of my throat and I leaned to the side and hurled about a year’s worth of food from the pit of my stomach before falling to my knees.
32
Chase
I showed up to a house my mother apparently owned, shaking like a I was chilled right down to the bone. After Stone called me with the location of the house, he went silent. Sven went silent too. I forced the police to send a squad out and hopped in my vehicle, speeding behind them like I was a part of the team.
I knew, even before I stepped into the building, that disaster was what I’d be faced with. Somebody was dead. I’d never smelled death before, but the scent in the air was unmistakable. I pushed through the officers and barged through the front door. Sven was tied to a pole in the laundry room. Jessa was covered in blood. But it wasn’t her blood. My father was at her feet, his head blown to bits. And Stone? Stone was nowhere to be found.
I untied Sven and then Jessa, pulling her into my arms with enough force to crush her. I wasn’t one for crying, but the tears that poured down my face were unstoppable.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Even when the police came in. Even when they tried to pry us apart, I held on to her.
Sven got up, a little shaky on his feet. He whispered something at Jessa, but his words were so slurred that it was hard to make out what he was saying.
Releasing her hold on me, she rushed over to Sven an placed a hand at each side of his face. “I forgive you,” she whispered against his lips.
