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Instead, on the third ring, it picked up.

“Hello? Jesse?”

Silence greeted me on the other end.

I strained to listen and could hear something in the silence. It sounded like people talking, but they were muffled. Had Jesse answered my call accidentally?

There were two voices, a man and a woman, but the man’s voice didn’t sound like Jesse. Instead of the smooth, velvety baritone he spoke with, this was gruff and deep and brutal. It was also weirdly familiar, though I couldn’t place it. It was right there, on the edge of my memory.

The woman’s voice spoke again, and it seemed like she must have shifted because everything became clearer.

“…because I don’t want to, that’s why…”

“…tonight… again.”

“…. God, Oland.”

I froze.

Why would someone be talking to Oland with Jesse’s phone? And why would there be Oland and a woman talking and not Jesse? Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

They seemed to be arguing, though I couldn’t quite make out about what. Their voices were raised, and they were shouting, but it was garbled, and the volume sometimes reached the top of what the phone could make out individual sounds for. I tried to listen as closely as I could until I heard another word that made my blood turn to ice.

“… the body…”

Suddenly, the call went dead, and I sat there staring at it for a moment, trying to process what I’d just heard. I couldn’t tell who that woman was, but I had a feeling it wasn’t Trish. I could recognize her voice, and that wasn’t it. But it did sound familiar. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like it was Lacey Banks. But why would she be talking to Oland? And why would she have Jesse’s phone?

Unless…

I tried calling it again, but this time it didn’t even ring. It went right to the voicemail, which was full. I gave it a few seconds and tried again, and again, it went to the mailbox. Whoever had his phone had turned it off. They’d turned it off because they realized that I’d been able to overhear something.

I was going to try one more time when my screen lit up with an incoming call. It was Amber, which was odd. Amber nevercalled me directly. I swiped it open, fully prepared to tell her that I couldn’t talk right now and why, only to have her cut me off.

“Charlotte? Are you there?”

“Yes, Amber, what’s going on?”

“Are you still in Texas?”

“Sort of. I’m on a plane that’s landing in Dallas in just a few minutes. Why? What’s going on?”

“You need to get to Foley. Actually, you need to just get to Louisa county. As fast as possible.”

“Amber, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

“Meet me at the hospital. Text me when you are close. You need to come here. It’s Jesse. He’s alive, but you need to be here.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Jesse

Fading in and out, I was able to take some note of my surroundings as the hours passed. People came in and out of the room, mostly nurses, and it would wake me up for a moment before I went back to a dreamless sleep. Once I woke to see my brother Luke and Amber above me, talking quietly. Another time, Collin was in the room and Logan was in a corner on a chair, playing a video game on his phone. Collin made some comment about how bad he was at it, and they laughed. I tried to smile. Then, nothingness.

I slowly started to come to again, and for the first time, I could feel the soreness all over my body. Everything hurt like hell. My arms felt like hot rods had been stuck down my bones, and my legs were like jelly. I tried to clench my fingers and found that only one of them moved, my thumb on my right side. All the others were heavy as lead, and I gave up rather quickly.

The throbbing in the back of my head was almost unbearable. It felt like there was a giant hole in the center and pins and needles were sticking in it, then covered by a bandage. I was overheated too, and sweating. I wasn’t dehydrated anymore, but my throat was extremely dry, and my lips were stuck together. Not that I could open them anyway.

My eyes were heavy, but I forced them to stay open as long as I could. It must have been late at night, because the only people in the room I could see were asleep. Luke was curled up against the wall in one of the chairs, comically lanky and in an impossible position to be comfortable in. Owen was also in the room, though he was more traditionally sprawled out, his legs out in front of him and his head resting against the wall behind. Considering he was the physically biggest of all of us, he was probably the least comfortable.