Page 57 of Unmask (Crew of Elmwood Public #2)
KREED
I woke up cold.
Not just physically, but the type of cold that sinks into your marrow and tells you something’s wrong before your brain has even caught up.
The taste in my mouth was wrong, bitter and chemical, like I’d been sucking on pennies.
My arm stretched across the sheets, my fingers searching through the rumpled fabric for her.
Empty.
No Kaylor.
The realization hit me like a physical blow.
I sat up fast, the sudden movement making my head whirl as my chest already began compressing with a familiar panic.
The bedroom was still dark, pale moonlight trying to bleed through the heavy curtains, casting everything in shades of gray and shadow, but all I saw was the twisted bedding where she should have been and the gaping absence of her presence, no indent in the pillow, no lingering warmth, nothing.
Where was she? And how the hell did I get upstairs? My thoughts moved through thick fog, memories fragmented and unclear. I vaguely remembered Kaylor helping me as I stumbled around in the middle of the night, legs heavy as lead, and falling into bed with her.
It was unusual that Kaylor woke before me, mostly because I hardly seemed to sleep these days. My internal clock had been shot to hell for weeks, hypervigilance keeping me on edge even when exhaustion threatened to drag me under.
A part of me longed to roll back over and continue sleeping, to sink back into the merciful oblivion that had claimed me.
God knew I freaking needed it, every muscle in my body aching with a bone-deep fatigue that came from running on fumes and adrenaline, but there was this whisper in my ear, insistent and urgent, urging me to find her.
I was never one to ignore those little nudges of intuition; they’d saved my life too many times to count.
Something felt off, and I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep until I knew she was safe.
I shoved off the covers with more force than necessary, the fabric tangling around my ankles as I swung my legs over the side of the bed.
I yanked on a hoodie from the chair nestled in the corner, the soft cotton still carrying the faint traces of her perfume.
I glanced at the bathroom, but the door was wide-open, darkness yawning beyond the threshold.
No water running. No shower steam. No little raven.
“Kaylor?” I called out, my voice bouncing off the empty walls as I moved into the hall. The sound came back to me hollow and unanswered, making the house feel even more cavernous than usual.
I wandered from room to room, poking my head into each doorway before trotting downstairs.
The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked with metronomic precision, each second stretching like an eternity.
Nothing. Kitchen—empty, coffee maker cold and unused.
Library—empty, books sitting undisturbed on their shelves.
The air itself felt different, charged with an absence that made my skin crawl.
Family room.
Not empty, but no freaking Kaylor.
My gut twisted like someone had reached in and grabbed my intestines with both hands. Two of my brothers were sprawled across the couches in various states of unconsciousness. Something was very, very wrong.
I kicked the couch Maddox was sprawled on, my foot connecting with the leather hard enough to make the whole thing shake and squeak. “Get the fuck up,” I growled, my voice rough with sleep and growing unease.
Maddox groaned, the sound coming from somewhere deep in his chest. His dark hair was plastered to one side of his head, and there were pillow lines pressed into his cheek. He blinked slowly, pupils dilated and unfocused. “The hell, man?” he mumbled, squinting up at me through barely open eyes.
“She’s gone.” My voice sliced through the drowsy atmosphere. “Kaylor’s gone.”
That got them moving… Or trying to.
Raine was already up, his legs swinging over the side of the other couch with the fluid motion of someone whose body was used to snapping to attention, but even he moved slower than usual.
He ran his fingers through his disheveled onyx hair, the strands sticking up at odd angles, as Mason stumbled into the room.
His eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, and he kept blinking like he was trying to clear his vision, one hand braced against the door frame for support.
“What is all the fucking ruckus?” Mason mumbled, rubbing sleep from his face with the back of his hand. “It’s the damn middle of the night.”
He wasn’t half wrong. A quick glance at the TV showed the time in glowing blue digits—4:47 AM. We were teetering between really late or really fucking early, depending on your outlook. But the wrongness in my chest told me this wasn’t about inconvenient timing.
“What do you mean, gone?” Maddox asked, pushing himself up to a sitting position. His movements were sluggish, and he gripped the couch arm for leverage.
“I can’t fucking find her. That’s what I mean. She isn’t anywhere in the house.” The first tendrils of real fear began to wrap around my heart.
“Did you check with Evan?” Raine asked, already reaching for his phone. His fingers fumbled with the screen, taking two tries to unlock it.
“Not yet, but my guess, they haven’t seen her.” I watched as he scrolled through his contacts, fighting against the sluggishness that seemed to have claimed all of us.
“I’ll check the security footage,” Raine stated, steadier now, falling into the familiar rhythm of problem-solving mode.
“You don’t think they were ballsy enough to come here and take her, do you?” Maddox asked, and the question hung in the air like smoke, heavy with implications none of us wanted to consider.
Raine shook his head, his pale eyes moving from the mugs on the coffee table to mine. The empty ceramic vessels sat there like evidence, chocolate residue still clinging to the bottom of each one. Four mugs. Four of us. But only three had been drained. “No.”
We were thinking the same thing.
The realization hit us simultaneously, settling over the room like a shroud. The way we’d all fallen into such deep sleep. The chemical taste still coating my tongue.
She wouldn’t have. Would she?
But even as the thought formed, I knew the answer. The cold certainty of it settled in my chest, heavy and undeniable. She would. She had. To save her friend.
And we’d let her.
“We were drugged,” I whispered, the truth tasting bitter on my tongue, matching the chemical aftertaste that still lingered in my mouth.
“She spiked the drinks. Look around. Do you feel rested? That wasn’t fucking just hot cocoa.
” I gestured wildly at the room, at their sluggish movements, at the way we were all still blinking like we were trying to clear fog from our vision.
“No way.” Mason shook his head. “Kaylor is too…naive for that shit. Besides, where would she get the stuff to knock us out?” Disbelief warring with the mounting evidence.
“I believe it,” Maddox said, sitting forward now, elbows on his knees, staring at the empty mugs on the coffee table like they held all the answers. His jaw worked silently, grinding his teeth as the pieces fell into place.
The four of us stared at each other, sharing a holy-shit look that spoke volumes.
“That little minx,” Raine murmured.
“I’m going to kill her,” I muttered. Right after I kill whoever had her.
I turned and stormed back into her room, my bare feet slapping against the hardwood with each furious step. I was retracing every inch, every clue, my eyes scanning the pristine surfaces like a crime scene investigator.
That’s when I saw it.
The burner phone.
Sitting right in the middle of the bed like a final goodbye, its black screen reflecting the pale morning light filtering through the curtains. The sight of it confirmed every terrible suspicion that had been building in my chest.
I snatched it up, my fingers flying across the screen. There was only one message.
Tomorrow. Midnight. The old train yard off Route 19. Come alone. No Crew. No Corvo. No Cops. Or Kenny dies.
“Fuck.” The word exploded from my throat as I punched the headboard hard enough to feel it crack beneath my fist. Pain shot up my arm, but it was nothing compared to the agony tearing through my chest. Wood splintered, and a sliver embedded itself in my knuckle.
“She went alone,” Raine muttered behind me. I hadn’t heard him enter the room, not over the roaring screaming in my head, but suddenly he was there, his light-green eyes scanning the same message over my shoulder.
“She was never supposed to go at all,” I ground out, pacing now like a caged animal. My feet wore a path in the hardwood, back and forth, back and forth. “I promised I’d keep her safe. I vowed I would get her friend back, but she didn’t trust me. And now she’s fucking gone.”
Every step sent another jolt of adrenaline through my system, but there was nowhere to channel it, no target for the rage building inside me like a nuclear reactor about to melt down.
My phone vibrated in my back pocket, the sensation cutting through my spiral of self-recrimination. I whipped it out, studying the number with narrowed eyes. It was local but not from anyone I knew. The digits stared back at me, anonymous and somehow ominous.
“Are you going to answer that?” Raine prompted.
I swiped to accept the call and put it on speaker with mechanical movements. “Who is this? And you better have a damn good reason for calling me.”
“Kreed?” The voice was frantic.
It took me a heartbeat to connect the voice, to place it among the chaos of my thoughts. “Carson?”
“I—I have Kenny,” he rushed out, the words tumbling over each other in his haste to get them out. “She’s here. She’s safe.”
I didn’t give a shit about Kenny. It was Kaylor I was out-of-my-ever-loving-mind concerned about. I froze, my pacing coming to an abrupt halt as I already knew where this call was going. “Where the fuck is Kaylor?” I prompted.