Page 4

Chapter

Three

GABE

I bring my dark forest green hoodie to my nose and try to find a small hint of Tara’s smell.

But there is nothing left on the material.

I don’t know why I’m even trying because it’s been a year since she tore it off in a fit of rage and threw it in my face.

But this hoodie and a blanket—that I’ve already smelt—are the only things I have left that could smell like her.

Two days after the police declared Tara dead, her bitch of a mother came to my house, packed up all of her things, and left.

I should have fought her harder and told her that this was my and Tara’s home, so her stuff was staying here.

I could have also reminded her that her daughter hated her, but I couldn’t find my voice.

I just stood there as she took everything away.

I found my voice the next day when Nick called, saying he had found a video of Tara.

Nick was following up on a tip that Tara was spotted leaving the bar with a group of people heading to a field party.

Something the cops ignored thanks to witnesses.

With some persuasion from Nick, the guy gave us the information we had desperately searched for.

A quick search of the guy’s computer led him to the video, but finding out who shot the video turned out to be trickier than we thought.

After watching the video, I had to leave.

I ran through the meeting room doors below my gym and straight through the back door into the parking lot.

A rage I had never felt before was burning me from the inside out.

Someone hurt my girl in the worst way ever and filmed it so perfectly that I didn’t have a face or even a voice to start the hunt with.

Tara shouldn’t have been anywhere but our home that night, but I had to be a jackass and let my self-doubt get the better of me.

Instead of working through the issues left over from my cheating ex, I let what she did come between what I had with my dream girl.

Everywhere we went, people stared at Tara.

I mean, who the fuck wouldn’t?

She is stunning.

Tara is perfect, beautiful inside and out.

Putting down the hoodie that no longer smells like her, I pick up the only photo her mom didn’t take and run my fingers over the cold glass.

It’s Tara standing on the back deck of this house, watching the sunset in the distance.

Her ocean blue eyes are on the sky, her silky ash blonde hair is loose, cascading down her back, and she is wrapped in the blanket she deemed hers the first time she stayed the night.

The blanket is hiding her body, but I know it as well as I know my own.

She has the perfect hourglass figure, round, full breasts, a narrow waist that leads to rounded, childbearing hips—as Grandmama calls them—and legs for days.

The first day I saw Tara, she stole my heart, and I never wanted it back.

I didn’t fucking care that she was my best friend’s little sister.

It’s not like Reed grew up knowing anything about her.

She was a surprise to both of us.

As it turned out, Reed’s bastard father was more than a dirty loan shark who abused his wife and son; he was also a cheater.

While Reed’s angel of a mother was busy trying to make sure Reed didn’t turn out to be a total fuck up, his father was out sleeping with whoever fell for his lies.

I had the unpleasant honor of knowing Reed’s father since we grew up together.

Even though it hurt Tara to grow up without a father figure, she was better off not having that man in her life.

I hoped her mother was a decent person who loved her and treated her like my Grandmama did me, but one night, Tara dashed that hope.

She told me about the woman who gave birth to her, and her story was eerily similar to my own.

A father not in the picture.

A mother who was only worried about her own needs.

The only difference is I had Grandmama who stepped up and raised me.

While Tara had no one.

I wanted to track down Tara’s mother and demand to know how she could hurt someone as sweet, kind, and loving as her daughter.

But Tara told me to let it go.

She had moved on from the neglect, and she didn’t want anything to do with her egg donor, as she put it.

That she wasn’t worth it.

Even though I disagreed, I would do anything for Tara, so I let it go and promised to make Tara’s life better.

I couldn’t keep that promise, though.

After almost a year together, I blew it all in one night.

The night Tara disappeared, we had a big fight.

A fight that I started.

We decided to get a burger and fries from a local bar because they had the best burgers.

While I was in the restroom, Tara was waiting at the bar for our food.

When I came out, there was some guy I didn’t know who had his arm around Tara’s waist. She was staring back at him with her sweet smile and big blue eyes.

At that moment, all I saw was my ex pushed up against the wall and being fucked.

I stormed out of the bar, but not before I pulled the guy away from Tara and broke his nose.

Tara chased me down the sidewalk, screaming at me to wait, but I refused to stop and listen to her.

By the time I made it to the truck, she had tears streaming down her face, but I could tell she was also pissed.

We started fighting right there in the parking lot, and I said a lot of things I didn’t mean.

It wasn’t even Tara I was seeing, it was Lindsey.

Tara took off my hoodie, threw it in my face, told me to grow the fuck up, and then walked back into the bar.

I shouldn’t have left her there that night.

I should have walked back into the bar, thrown her over my shoulder, and taken her home.

We would have talked it out, and I would have listened, but I didn’t.

It is what it is. I can’t turn back time and change what I did.

All I can do is live with the pain that my stupid ass caused that night and continue praying like hell that I get to make it up to her.

The melody of my doorbell fills the quiet around me.

I place the picture back down and head toward the front door.

On the way I pull up my security app.

A tall, massive figure is standing on my front porch hidden by shadows.

But when he turns his face toward the camera, I see that it’s Demon, the guy who is helping me in my search for Tara because I don’t believe she is dead.

I haven’t believed that in the last year, and I won’t.

I pull open the door and step back, not needing to formally invite him in.

Over the last six months, he has been here multiple times.

I don’t know much about Demon, hell I don’t even know if that is his real name.

All I know is that he has the skills my friends and I lack.

Skills that can help me find my girl.

Reed, Nick, Jessie, and I have been friends since we met in college and decided to open up a security company.

To the public, we sell and install top-of-the-art security systems. To the underground community, we provide protection, can help track down people, and will make people disappear on the occasions that call for it.

Nick is our computer guy, but all his searches for Tara have turned up nothing.

Reed is the face of the company and is currently a part-time professor at the local college.

He got that job when we learned the guys last seen with Tara were set to attend the newly built college.

Jessie and I are jacks of all trades.

I own a gym in town that we use as our base for the dirtier jobs we get hired for, and Jessie runs the security company’s offices for the other legal jobs.

We were introduced to Demon six months ago when Reed met and fell in love with Ali.

As it turned out, Ali—who was a single mother—had used Demon to get a new identity.

When her past came looking for her, Demon came out of hiding to help us protect her.

Now that Ali and her twin boys are safe, he is staying around to help me look for Tara.

He has had to go back to wherever he lives a couple of times but has made it clear that he is working while he is gone.

Reed is starting to think that maybe Tara is dead because we haven’t found anything, but the feeling in my gut still says she is alive.

I’m not giving up hope until there is some kind of evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is gone.

“Call Reed,” Demon says in the way of a greeting, and the hair on my arms stands up.

I don’t ask why. I’ve learned by now that when Demon says something, he wants us to do it without questioning him.

I pull out my phone and dial Reed.

It’s late, and I know he is going to be an ass, but he can take it up with Demon.

It rings four times before Reed answers.

He is out of breath when he says, “What the fuck do you want?”

“Demon is back, and he wants you here.” I shut the front door and find Demon setting up his laptop on my dining room table.

“On my way,” Reed says, and then the line goes quiet.

I set my phone on the table.

“Will this require alcohol?” I ask Demon.

He doesn’t answer me, but the look he quickly throws my way has me moving toward my liquor cabinet.

I pull out my bottle of Jack Daniels and three glasses.

After filling the glasses with ice cubes, I pour two fingers of whiskey and hand one to Demon.

We sit silently, waiting for Reed to drive the ten minutes to my house.

Demon constantly taps on his computer, and I do what I always do when I have downtime.

I scroll through all the photos of Tara on my phone and play with the ring I bought but never got the chance to give her.

I moved it from the drawer in my office to my pocket and now carry it around twenty-four-seven.

When Reed gets here, he doesn’t knock; all we hear is the front door opening and his loud voice yelling.

“This better be important. I swear to god if I left my naked girl for something less than?—”

“Shut the fuck up and get your ass in here,” Demon yells, his tone sharp and demanding.

Reed comes into the kitchen, pours a drink, and sits beside me.

“Why are you the way you are?” I ask him.

Demon doesn’t let him answer me before he turns his computer around to show us the screen.

Filling the small screen is an image I’ve spent countless hours praying I would see.

It’s a still shot of my girl, Tara.

Her hair is no longer ash blond but is dark as night.

She has gained a few pounds, and her face is rounded instead of thin like before.

But the most disturbing thing is her once carefree, loving ocean-blue eyes have taken on a harsher color.

They tell the story of a woman who has been hurt and abandoned and now carries the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“Where was this taken?” I ask, pulling the computer closer and running my fingers over the screen as if I could touch her.

“And when?” Reed asks.

Gone is his light, playful tone, and in its place is the dangerous tone he uses on a job.

“Three days ago. I sent a guy to follow up on a lead I found through the dark web. I didn’t want to get your hopes up, so I didn’t say anything, but I found a thread about a woman offering her services to women who needed justice. Justice they couldn’t find going to the police. It took a while to contact her but we were able to.

“My guy’s sister set up a meeting with the woman, and we got this picture.

She doesn’t give her name or any personal information, of course.

I didn’t think it would be that easy, but I knew we had found her as soon as I received this photo.

Using what she looks like now and the contact information we had, I found out more, but—” Demon’s words are cut off when all the lights go off in my house just as a clap of thunder sounds throughout the night air.