move. I’ll be there.”
“Cops are here. Kenzo just got here. They’re searching the vicinity for her.”
I hung up the phone and turned to the door, putting my body into action.
“What happened? Mary’s missing?” Brad said, the fear in his eyes evident.
“Yeah.” I pointed to Mason. “You get in contact with that PI and find out all we need to know about Paul. Tell him we need the info in the next hour. It doesn’t matter how much it costs to speed it up.”
“I’m going with you,” Brad said before I could give him a directive. “You don’t need the PI because I will personally find this guy and fuck him up if he has her.”
I couldn’t even let my mind go there.
I’m coming, baby girl.
We were both out the door in no time.
“Let’s go together because I want to drive Becky’s car home.”
Her nerves had been shot earlier. And so were mine now. Where could she have possibly gone? Warning spasms erupted within me, and it felt as though a hand were wrapped around my throat, preventing any air from getting in my lungs. Did he have her?
I gritted my teeth. I didn’t want my thoughts to swerve in that direction because it wouldn’t do me any good now.
“Give me the keys,” Brad said as we both approached my car.
I threw him a look, at him wanting to drive my car.
“Charles, you know me. I don’t do good sitting still, especially when some son of a bitch has my niece.”
“Don’t say that. We don’t know that right now.” But where else would she be?
A chill black silence surrounded us, but I didn’t have time to argue, so I threw the keys at him, and he caught them midair.
“Plus, instead of thirty, I can get us there in twenty.”
“We need to make it there alive to be of any help.” All of my muscles tensed beneath my suit.
He didn’t say a word, which was so unlike him, as he drove over ninety miles per hour toward the school. Right before we got there, my phone rang again. It was Mason.
“Did you call the PI?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“So, he’s here,” I said, wanting Mason to confirm what I already knew.
“Charles …” The way he uttered my name was the same way he’d uttered it when he called me years ago, telling me that our parents had died in an accident.
“What!” I found myself screaming into the phone as all of the muscles in my body tensed.
“Charles …” His voice shook with full sullen emotion.
“What? Just tell me, Mason.”
I couldn’t take any more bad news. I’d had enough bad news to last me a lifetime. We all had. Any more would break me.
“Paul’s dead.”
Impossible.
The ringing in my ears intensified.
“They did a search on him, and he’d died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
“How can he be dead?” I breathed. Goose bumps prickled the back of my neck. “Then, who the hell has my Mary?”
It happened in a split second as Brad registered my words. His eyes flipped to mine, but in that nanosecond, he didn’t brake fast enough, rear-ending the guy in front of us.
Chapter 39
Becky
“We found her backpack.” A police officer approached me, handing me Mary’s Little Mermaid backpack.
I rubbed Sarah’s back, who was sobbing beside me as we sat at the bench overlooking the swing set and slides in the back of the school. I’d never seen Sarah shed a tear, even when she fought with her sister, yet now, she was inconsolable.
“Why would she wander off? Do you think someone took her?” Sarah’s questions came at me, at the officer, at the teachers and principal, who had all tried to look for Mary. When we couldn’t give her the answer she wanted, she burst into tears again.
I rubbed her back and held her close as I glanced up at the officer. He was a taller male with a dust of red hair and sharp blue eyes. “Where did you find it?”
“In the playground.”
“But we went there,” Sarah cried out. “I would have seen it there for sure.”
The officer offered Sarah a small, apologetic smile and motioned toward me. “We are searching the vicinity, outside of the school perimeter too.”
I visibly shook. “Thank you.” I wanted to throw up from the shock of everything happening around me. The guilt I felt was overwhelming, and it left me immobile. Ice spread through my stomach, and I shriveled into myself.
Sarah hugged the backpack, the top pressing against her chin. “Mary, please be okay. I promise