Like I’m drowning. Like I have a gun pressed to my forehead, but there isn’t anything I can do about it. I gotta try, though. For her.
Rocking back on my heels, I announce, “I’m gonna go see what I can find.”
Kingston steps in the way and forces me to look at him. “We’re gonna find her, D.”
I nod, then step around him and walk down the silent hallway, lost in my thoughts.
He’s right. Even if it’s the last thing I do, I will find her.
I just don’t know if it’ll be too late by then.
32
Ace
“Hey,” I greet Regina and Will as I enter the kitchen. His hair is still wet from a shower, but his eyes are wide with fresh fear.
He looks like a different kid than the one I’d slowly been growing accustomed to. Hell, he looks like the one that showed up on our doorstep, cradling his arm to his chest like an injured animal.
Q’s missing. And the only witness we have is the scared little boy in front of me.
Regina sets a warm glass of milk in front of him before acknowledging me. “Hey.”
“How are things down here?”
“About as good as can be expected.” Her fear is simmering just below the surface. I can see it. I can feel it. I can almost smell it. She’s just as terrified as the rest of us.
“Any luck upstairs?” G asks, trying to keep her tone even. It’s funny. She might be Regina to everyone else, but she’ll always be G or Gigi to me.
I shake my head. “Nope. Hey, Will, I was wondering if I could ask you a few more questions?”
“I don’t know anything. I swear!” he bursts out, his lower lip quivering.
“I know,” I answer carefully. “And that’s okay. But sometimes we know something, and we don’t even know that we know it. Crazy, huh?”
His little eyebrows pinch in the center as he stares at his glass of milk. “Then how do we find out if we do?”
“We talk about it. Even when it’s hard,” I tell him before inching closer to him. The chair next to him scrapes against the hardwood floor as I pull it out and sit down.
The defeat in this kid breaks my heart as he drags his finger up and down the outside of the glass like a nervous tic while staring blankly at the white milk it holds.
“I don’t know what to talk about,” he whispers.
“Maybe you can just tell me about how long it felt like you were driving when you were blindfolded.”
“You mean when I was with him?”
“Yeah. When he brought you here from the apartment,” I clarify.
“I dunno. A while?”
Well, that’s useless.
I try again. “Okay…what about your room? What did it look like?”
“My room at home?”
“No. The one at Sei’s place.”
“Oh. It was nothing special. Just a bed and a brown thing to hold clothes.”
“A brown dresser?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Okay…were there any paintings? Anything unique about the room?”
“Not really. I found a baseball bat under the bed, but he took it out of the room.”
“Keep going.” Regina encourages him. “You’re doing great.”
With his head in his hands, he closes his eyes. “Umm…the kitchen was small. There wasn’t a lot of food in the cupboards. It looked like no one had lived there for a long time. There was some broken glass next to the fridge, but Sei never cleaned it up or anything.”
“What about outside? Was there a window or anything?” I press, trying to hide my disappointment. I have no freaking clue where she is. All I’ve learned so far is that Sei doesn’t mind living in abandoned apartments and doesn’t like to clean or hang up paintings.
Will shrugs. “Yeah. There was one in my room and another one in the main area where Sei would sleep.”
“So, Sei would sleep in the family room?”
“Yeah,” he answers.
I look at Regina. “So, it’s a one-bedroom apartment.”
“Sounds like it.” Her eyes glimmer with hope as she stands on the opposite side of the island and leans on her elbows.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath and turn back to Will. “Did you usually walk up the stairs? Or take an elevator?”
“Stairs. They smelled funny,” he adds as his nose wrinkles in disgust.
I laugh. “That makes sense. Were you blindfolded in the stairwell, or would he take it off by then?”
“He’d take it off.”
“Okay.” Grasping at straws, I try another question. “What was outside? Do you remember anything?”
“There was a fence around the parking lot. You know, the ones made out of chains