“Actually, I’m using the money my dad left for me, but thanks, Jared.”
And just like that, my happiness deflated. The problems weren’t gone—they’d never been gone. They’d merely been hidden in the depths of my mind. Out of reach of reality while I dove headfirst into my music.
I blew out a long breath, scrubbing my hand over my face. “I’m sorry, Riley.”
“For what?”
“For being a shitty-ass friend. For not being there for you. For not jumping on a plane, no matter what you said. For… well, for everything.”
“Jared, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m doing fine without you here. Without all of you here. I know that sounds bad, but I think it’s helped me move forward. It’s made me realize I’m not going to fall apart. Even if I wanted to. Besides, it would have been selfish of me to want you all to drop everything you were doing and rush home to hold my hand.”
I slumped against the wall. “But that’s what friends do, Riles. They take care of one another. They show up, just to be there.”
“Sometimes. But I know you guys all have important things you’re doing. I can’t fault any of you for having a life.”
But she could fault us for keeping things from her. And one day, she would. One day, we’d all break her heart, and the lies would be the breaking point for all of us. Our friendships were a sentence away from shattering into so many pieces that there would be nothing left. The question was—who’d be the one to speak it?
“Listen, not to cut you short, but I gotta get going. I have a few things I need to do before I head out to grab something to eat with Paige,” Riley said, jolting me from my internal meltdown.
“Yeah, yeah… I’ll ah, talk to you soon?”
She laughed. “Of course you will, dummy.”
“Being brushed off for Paige. Seriously, Riley? That’s just mean.”
“Yeah, but you know I still love you.”
“That’s the only reason I put up with your shenanigans.”
She sputtered a laugh. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Bye, Riles.”
I hit the end button and hung my head with a deep sigh.
“Hey, there you are,” Murphy said as she walked into the bedroom. Her footsteps faltered for a second before she asked, “You okay?”
“Yeah, I was just talking to Riley,” I said, setting the phone back on the nightstand.
A look of concern pinched her brows together. “How’s she doing?”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, thinking back over our conversation. “Surprisingly, she’s doing really well. She’s going back to school.”
Murphy’s eyes widened as the corner of her mouth lifted. “Really? That should keep her busy.”
I chewed my lip with a sigh.
“Wait, is that not good news?” she asked, taking a step closer to me.
“No, it’s good news. I just feel like I’m lying to her every time we talk.” I rubbed at my neck to ease the tension settling in my shoulders. It happened every time I talked to Riley and didn’t tell her about Ace and Aiden.
She tilted her head, squinting as she crossed the floor and stopped in front of me. “Well, it’s not really lying. It’s more that you’re avoiding. Which are two totally different things, by the way.”
I snagged Murphy by the belt loop, bringing her in between my legs. She ran her fingers through my hair. It was soothing, but it didn’t help the guilt that plagued me. “I’m keeping things from her. When she finds out—and she will find out—things will never be the same for all of us.”
Her hands dropped to my shoulders, rubbing the bunched muscles as she said, “I don’t think you’re giving her enough credit, Jared. Riley sounds like a really reasonable person with a good head on her shoulders.”
I melted into her touch, finding only a smidgen of energy to reply, “She’s a damn hellcat with a sharp set of claws. And don’t even get me started on her friend Paige. Because, whatever Riley would do, Paige would be ten times worse.”
“I know it hasn’t been easy on you, Jared. I’ve seen the haunted look in your eyes. I’ve watched you try to bury it under everything else. Maybe instead of holding onto the frustration and anger, you should just let it go. Not forever, but just for now. It doesn’t do you any good to worry over things you can’t even explain yourself.”
Hearing Murphy say it made more sense. It also made me feel a little better about not telling Riley about Ace and Aiden. Even if I wanted to tell her, what could I say? Nothing, I would say nothing, until I knew what the hell I was talking about.
I tipped my head back, careful not to dislodge her hands from my shoulders. “You’re pretty smart for an older woman.”
She smacked my arm, squeaking when I pulled her down to lay on top of me. I rolled over, pinning her beneath me. “Some might even call you a cougar.”
She scowled at me. “Not funny. And don’t start something you don’t have time to finish.”
I wiggled my eyebrows at her. “Oh trust me, there’s always time for that.”
She huffed, squirming her way out of my arms. “Not when Lars needs you downstairs.”
I pulled her roughly against me. “He can’t possibly need me as much as I need you right now.”
“Wrong!” Licks said as he took three running steps and sailed through the air, landing on the bed beside us. He smirked and said, “Well, this is cozy.”
Murphy shoved at me to move, but I just grabbed a pillow and brought it over my head, slamming it down on Licks’ face.
“Hey! Tha—”
I pushed my hand over where his mouth would be under the pillow and grinned at Murphy. “Licks who?”
I kissed her before she could say anything back.
From under the pillow, Licks carried on, saying a bunch of mumbled words. Murphy took advantage of my distraction, vaulting off the bed before Licks could move the pillow from his face.
Licks snatched the pillow away, hooting with laughter, and rolled off the bed. “My work here is done. Get up, Jared. Don’t make me drag you down the stairs by your ankles.”
Murphy snorted when he walked out. “Well, at least he didn’t say he’d use you for a sled down the stairs.”
“I heard that!” Licks voice carried down the hallway to us.
I couldn’t help but think about Ace saying Licks acted just like me. There was no way I’d been that annoying, I thought with a grin. Nope, I’d been way worse. A chuckle escaped me as I thought about the day I’d walked up to Ace’s bedroom window at the cabin with a crowbar in my hands and caught sight of Riley in Ace’s arms. Their reaction… priceless.
“HOW’S THIS GONNA WORK, OLIVER? I mean, if Jared can’t be out in public, and we’re in a band, what exactly does that mean?” Lars asked, pacing the living room floor.
Oliver pushed off the wall he’d been leaning on. “It won’t always be like this. Once the issue has been handled, things will go back to normal.”
Lars stopped pacing and leaned against the back of the couch behind where Murphy and I sat. “Yeah, but how do we know this won’t happen again? This, whatever this is, is keeping us under lock and key for Jared’s safety. I, for one, would like to be told why.”
“You’re not the only one,” I mumbled, more for my own ears than anyone in the room. Unfortunately, Oliver heard me and pegged me with a hardened look.
“All you need to know is what you already know. Jared’s safety is at risk, for the moment. Once things are handled, a decision will be made about whether Jared will even be able to continue on with the band.” He crossed his arms and scanned his eyes over all of us. “Either way, Jared’s parents have final say on the matter.”
I shot up from the couch. “No, Jared’s parents don’t! I make my decisions. Me! Not you, them, or anyone. And frankly, you can keep your secrets and shove ’em up your ass. I’m done here.”
Storming off, I left the rest of the band to deal with Oliver. My decision was final. My parents weren
’t going to dictate the rest of my life because they chose to live a life of secrecy and deception. That wasn’t my path. I wasn’t going to fall into a trap well laid by them to get me to fall in line.
Jogging up the stairs, I grabbed my wallet and cell phone, and then made my way to Oliver’s room. On the nightstand was a set of keys. I snatched them up and raced back down the stairs. I had to get the hell out of that house before I went bat-shit crazy.
LEAVING THE HOUSE HAD BEEN easier than I’d expected. I had every intention of going back. I just needed some time away from all of it. Things had been great up until that point. Laying down tracks and writing music had been freeing. At least, it was up until Lars questioned Oliver about what would happen when we were finally ready to release it and start touring. I’d understood, to a certain point, about staying at the house until whatever my parents had going on was cleaned up. What I didn’t understand was the why of it. Whatever it was, it was a highly guarded secret. The part that pissed me off the most was the way they’d decided to treat me because of it. Why did I have to pay the price for their mistakes? What the hell could be so dangerous that they’d force me to sacrifice my dreams in order to stay hidden? To say safe?
The two-lane road stretched out in front of me with no answers in sight. And had I really expected some sort of epiphany while navigating my way on back roads that I didn’t even know? At some point, I’d turn around and make my way back but, until then, driving away from it all was the only thing that made me feel like I had any control.
Less than an hour later, I was forced to pull off on the side of the road. The van shuddered and swayed as something beat against the underside of the vehicle. Shifting into park, I kicked the door open and walked around the back of the van.
A flat tire. I kicked the rim with a curse, and then set out to change it. The road I’d traveled was desolate. It was one of several that I’d randomly chosen while mulling over my thoughts, and damned if I could remember how to get back.
Changing the tire had been easy. Manual labor, while tiring, at least made my thoughts focus on the task at hand. When I climbed back behind the wheel, I toyed with the decision to return to the house or to keep driving until I ran out of gas. In the end, I decided to turn around and try to find my way back. Murphy would probably be pissed because I hadn’t returned any of her calls. After my phone had rung for a solid five minutes, I’d decided to turn it off. Powering it back on, I sat on the shoulder of the road and decided to at least call her back. My phone vibrated and pinged with message alerts. I blew out a deep breath, deciding to check the ones from Murphy first. Her last message chilled my blood to ice in my veins.
Don’t come back. Men with guns. Call your parents.
What in the hell? Men with guns?
I called my parents. My dad answered on the first ring.
“Jared, where are you?”
“Dad, what the hell is going on?”
“I have four armed men inside the house you’re staying at, and I can’t get ahold of Oliver. Security feeds and GPS tracking are down. Now I repeat, where are you?” he demanded.
“I’m currently sitting on the side of the road in the van.”
“What road?”
I looked around. Trees, trees everywhere, but no way of telling what road I was on.
“I don’t know. I just got in the van and drove.”
“You just got in the van… goddamn it, Jared! What in the hell were you thinking? I need you to keep driving until you get to the next road, and then give me the name of it.”
I cranked the ignition and pulled off the shoulder. “Is everyone in the house okay?”
“I don’t know. Just… I need you to drive as fast as you can. Safely, but fast.” He sounded scared.
“I’m going fifty, the roads are shit, and there is no other road in sight right now.”
“Look in your mirror. Is there anyone following you?”
The road had been deserted except for me. I flicked a glance between the side mirrors, checking like he asked and not seeing anything. “No, I don’t see—”
The ass end of the van slid sideways. The next thing I knew, the van went into a spin, sending me off the road and bouncing into a wall of trees. I came to a complete stop, compliments of a very large, unmovable behemoth of a tree, and hit the airbag as it deployed. A fine, powdery substance billowed out, burning my face and hands.
Dazed, I tried opening the door, but it wouldn’t budge. What the hell had happened? My hand shook as I ran it over my face with a groan. The sound of my dad’s voice hollered from somewhere on the floorboard of the van. “Jared, if you can hear me, you need to run. Don’t let them take you!”
Twisting out from behind the steering wheel, I was able to make my way to the passenger seat. From there, I shoved against the door, thinking that it might be stuck too.
“Who the hell are these guys, Dad?” I asked as I fell out onto the ground, shoulder first, as the driver’s side window exploded. Glass rained out in chunks, showering me.
“You don’t have time for me to explain it,” my dad answered with clipped words.
“They’re shooting at me. I think you could at least tell me why,” I said, snatching the phone up and crab walking my way to the front of the van. White smoke billowed up from the crushed hood, and I braced my shoulder against the tree to keep from toppling over. Peeking around, I noticed that the wrecked van was the only vehicle around. Where the hell were they? And how did they cause the van to go off the road?
“They’re hired hands for a terrorist ring your mother and I uncovered. Now, please, run.”
“I can’t tell where they are. How am I supposed to run from them when I can’t see them?
“Keep the van at your back and head for cover. Keep moving and stick to the areas with the most coverage. Don’t stop. Get as far away as you can before nightfall. I’ll find you, Jared, I promise, but you need to run.”
My heart raced as the sound of my own blood rushing through my ears deafened me. The word terrorist replayed in my head over and over. I knew I had to get away from the van and do what my father had said. There was no time to lose.
TREE BRANCHES SLAPPED AGAINST MY face as I ran zigzagged through the dense forest. My side hitched with every breath until it forced me to slow down and assess where I was. At some point, I’d dropped the phone, scrambling over a fallen log, but I didn’t dare go back for it. Without a phone or a map, I was screwed. The only thing I had going for me was the sturdy rocks and thick tree cover to keep me hidden, but that didn’t mean anything to someone with an agenda.
Surely, my father would have a team of people on the ground looking for me. Oliver was close enough to start searching, but Murphy’s text had said there were armed men at the house. I could only hope he would keep them all safe. I’d royally screwed up, putting everyone in danger when I took off with the only means of transportation.
Steadying myself against a tree, I bent over, putting my hands on my knees and breathing deeply. I should have stayed at the house and dealt with my problems instead of going off half cocked because I’d been pissed. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to them.
The sound of a branch snapping somewhere off to my left made my hair stand on end. Pushing off the tree, I kept low to the ground, scanning the area around me before moving from my hiding spot. Even the birds refused to sing in the treetops. It was as if the entire woods held its breath to see what would happen.
Straining my ears, I listened for the telltale crunch of shoes against the forest floor, but all was quiet. I had to keep moving—had to put some distance between myself and whoever was hunting me. If, in fact, they were still hunting me. It’d be stupid of me to think otherwise. They’d wrecked the van and shot out the window. I highly doubted they’d just give up and walk away.
About twenty feet to my right was a copse of trees growing together, beyond that a hill. If I could get down the hillside, I might be able to find an outcropping of rock
to hide under until I could come up with a better way to put the much-needed distance between my pursuer and me.
Clenching my fists, I counted in my head. On three, Jared… one, two… I kept low as I ran. Bark exploded by my face and I dove away, blindly searching for something to cover me. There was nowhere to hide, so I made a run for the hill, hoping the trees to my right would create a big enough obstacle to keep me from being shot.
I didn’t see it coming, never even thought that someone would drop down on me from the treetops, but he did. We landed in a heap. The air rushed out of my lungs, and I fought with everything in me to get up. To keep running.
The shadow of a raised arm stretched across the ground, and black dots danced in front of my eyes. The blunt force made my head throb as the branches wavered in front of me and my legs crumpled.
I WOKE UP SOMETIME LATER, trussed up like a turkey about to be roasted. My hands and feet were tied, and my head throbbed a sickening beat. There was no comfortable way to lie with my hands behind my back. Moving, even slowly, made me want to vomit, but I couldn’t lay on my shoulder any longer.
Beads of sweat broke out along my brow with every move I made, but I wasn’t giving up until I’d pulled myself into a tight enough ball to slip my arms underneath my legs. The circulation in my hands had long since fled, leaving behind the angry throb of my blood trying to force its way down to my fingers.
Even if I could reach the rope around my ankles, I couldn’t untie it with the wave of dizziness that overwhelmed me. Forcing myself to take deep breaths to stay conscious, I assessed my surroundings. I’d been placed in some sort of cargo hold, yet it didn’t feel cold enough to be one. There was no hum of tires on the road, so it definitely wasn’t a car, yet I could tell we were moving. I strained my ears for a familiar sound that I could link it all too, but the stuffy quietness pushed back against my eardrums.
My ears popped as I swallowed the acidic bile racing up my throat. At once, my hearing cleared, and I was stuck with a moment of panic when I realized the dull quietness was just one long, continuous noise. A motor, or several of them, were working to power… a boat maybe? I waited to feel the floor roll under me. But the bob and sway of water never came. What was I on? The floor shuddered, bouncing me up and down like a rag doll. My head connected with it several times before I could roll over and protect myself.
End Note Page 23
