But still nothing.
I’d called Lucian, explaining the situation, and he’d agreed to give me some time to find her before he alerted Gypsy. The last thing she needed was to add her sister to her long list of concerns. But with every hour that dragged on, my confidence that I’d even find her dwindled.
I’d fucked up. I’d fucked up beyond comprehension. And for a split second, as I sat there on my bike, I wondered if this was the best thing for her. At least when she was out there, away from me, I couldn’t hurt her. But that was just a fantasy. I couldn’t let her go. The crushing sensation I felt in her absence brought everything into focus with a certainty I’d never felt before.
I had to find her and bring her back to me. It was the only fucking way.
Kodiak sent a text to let me know he’d checked all the places on his list, and she wasn’t at any of them. Paralyzing uncertainty and one lingering question were all that remained.
Where the fuck could she be?
I MADE MYSELF AT HOME in the hospital corridor, staring at the screen of the burner phone I’d picked up this afternoon. Every several minutes, I would check it again, waiting for it to ring, but it never did. Six times I’d called Joe today. He always got back to me within an hour at the most. Always. But not this time.
I knew he hadn’t changed his number because it went to the same annoying voicemail I always heard. When my efforts to reach him didn’t work, I panicked a little and started checking the jail rosters in California to see if by some chance he’d been arrested. Although I’d love to see his greasy ass behind bars, the reality wasn’t that simple.
Gypsy and I had learned a long time ago that Ricky and his sleazebag friends had friends on the inside. Politicians, corrupt cops, even a couple of judges… they were all in on it, frequently visiting the block of horrors that I grew up on to partake in their underage delights. On the few occasions there had been raids, Ricky was tipped off by his high-ranking friends, and all the girls would disappear until things calmed down again. Turning in Ricky or Joe or anyone else wasn’t an option when you couldn’t trust authority. The two girls who tried had disappeared, and I never saw them again. Years later, California changed the laws to protect victims of human trafficking instead of punishing them as they’d done to Gypsy. But I still couldn’t trust that the corruption wasn’t alive and well. Sex would always be a thriving trade. And if Joe ever ended up in a position to barter for a deal, my name would be at the top of his list to throw under the bus.
Regardless, my searches for him turned up nothing, which left me feeling even more out of sorts than I already was. Surely, he wasn’t still pissed about our last encounter. Joe was motivated by one thing, and that was money. In the third voicemail I’d left, I told him I was prepared to pay one last large sum of cash for the videotape. More than ever, I wanted a life free from the dark cloud perpetually hanging above my head. But unless I got my hands on that video, I might as well kiss everything I knew goodbye.
Chasing down Joe kept my mind occupied, but it didn’t last for long. Inevitably, it would drift back to Ace and the things I’d discovered this afternoon. I didn’t think I could handle the details of his crimes, but the longer I kicked the scenario around in my mind, the more I realized it just felt wrong. Ace could be moody and downright hostile when he felt like it, but he would never truly hurt me. I knew that in my heart as much as I knew I needed air to breathe. He was emotionally crippled. I’d heard it and even witnessed it myself. He didn’t deal with things in the best way, but he dealt with them the way he knew. And I understood that on a primal level.
He wasn’t in prison now, so that had to mean something. His best friend was a criminal attorney, and they had a history together. There had to be more to that story. Huck might be fucked up, but I was well enough acquainted with evil to know when I was looking it in the eye. And he wasn’t evil.
“Birdie? What are you doing here?”
I looked up to find Kylie standing there in her scrubs with an expression of concern on her face. She looked worried about me, and I felt guilty for coming here, but with nobody else on my side, I was out of options.