Ash nods and swallows hard, looking like he’s trying to get himself back under control. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Bring her back,” Priest rasps. His voice is tight and choked, as if he’s holding back a tidal wave of emotion by sheer force of will. Like he’s holding on by a thread.
I nod. I want to promise him that I’ll do it, that we won’t come back without her, but we all know there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to keep that kind of promise.
Because shit happens. Life is cruel, harsh, and unfair, and all four of us know that truth better than most people.
All we can do is hope for the best, which isn’t comforting at all.
Knox is already moving toward the front door, pausing to put his shoes on and then leaving the door open as he steps out into the driveway.
I follow along behind him, closing the door behind us.
“She didn’t take her car,” he mutters, catching my attention.
“What?”
He nods to the pile of rust and engine problems that River insists on driving, still parked in the driveway behind Ash’s car.
Shit. I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.
At least on foot, there’s a chance she might not have gotten too far, but that means she’s walking somewhere in Detroit at night alone. I’d bet on her in a fight nine times out of ten, but that’s when she’s in her right mind, focused. Now she’s out of it with exhaustion and grief, and there are too many scumbags in this city who would love to take advantage of that.
“We need to go,” I tell Knox, and he nods.
The two of us get into my car, and I peel out of the driveway, speeding down our street. Knox keeps his eyes peeled for any sign of her as we head out of the neighborhood, but there’s nothing.
“Right or left?” I ask him, pausing at a stop sign.
Left will take us toward the highway and into the nicer part of the city where all the expensive restaurants and shopping boutiques are.
Right leads toward less savory parts of Detroit, and before Knox even answers, I know we’re not turning left.
“You think maybe she went back to her old place?” Knox asks. “Her apartment?”
It’s hard to say. I don’t think she has any real attachment to that place, and from what I remember of the things River said about her past, she didn’t live there with Hannah or anything.
“No.” I shake my head, chewing on my lip in agitation. “But we can’t just keep guessing either. And we can’t cover enough ground quick enough to find her. Call Harv. Maybe he can run a sweep of security camera footage in the area and help us find her.”
Harv—Harvey Magellan—is one of our contacts, a hacker we keep in our back pocket for when we need to get into security systems or people’s bank accounts. He’s an odd guy, quiet and almost shy, but he knows his shit.
“Good idea.”
Knox calls him, his leg bouncing irritably when it takes Harv several rings to answer the phone.
Finally, he does, and I can hear the muffled sound of his voice from where I’m sitting in the driver’s seat.
“Hey,” Knox barks. “We need a favor.”
There’s some murmuring from the other end, and Knox barely lets him get through a sentence before he’s cutting Harv off.
“Don’t care. It’s an emergency, so get it done, or I’ll come over there and make you.”
Usually, I’d tell Knox that being shitty to our contacts is bad for business, but now I keep my mouth shut. The longer we don’t know where River is, the higher a chance something bad is happening to her.
We can smooth shit over with Harv later if we need to, but there will be no coming back from it if something happened to River.
Knox relays the information we have, telling Harv to check the security camera footage on the streets in a perimeter around our house. He describes River, from her hair to her tattoos, and just hearing him talk about her sends a pang through my chest.
Where the fuck are you, River? Where did you go?
Harv grumbles something, but then I pick up the faint sound of a mechanical keyboard clacking through the phone, so he’s clearly doing it.
I stop at a red light, and Knox’s leg bouncing gets even worse. I clench and unclench my hands on the steering wheel, trying to focus on breathing and not letting my irritation get the better of me.
“What the fuck is taking so long?” Knox snaps when we get moving again.
This time I can hear Harv clearly when he says, “It’s a big fucking area, and I’m trying not to miss her. Keep your pants on.”
Apparently, our usually shy hacker friend is bolder and surlier at night—probably from being woken up at ass o’clock. Knox just grits his teeth, holding in his rage better than he normally would because we need Harv’s help.
He puts the phone on speaker and settles it in the center console, and I pull into an empty lot to wait. No use driving around aimlessly until we know where to go. Several long minutes tick by, and I swear every second takes a year off my goddamn life.
If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what we’ll do.
I don’t know how the fuck we’ll find her.
“Got her,” Harv says at last. “Silver hair, tattoos like you described. She’s just… walking. She left your house on foot, and she passed by a convenience store about an hour ago.”
He rattles off two cross streets, and that’s enough of a bearing that I pull back onto the road, heading in the direction he indicated.
“Did she stay on that path?” Knox wants to know.
“Seems like it. She just kept walking… walking… walking. Ah! There. Crappy dive bar called O’Malley’s. She went in, and… it doesn’t seem like she left.”
“Got it,” Knox says.
He hangs up the phone without so much as a thank you, and I gun it down the street as he looks up the bar’s location on his phone. It’s late as fuck now, and the glowing numbers on the clock in the car tick closer to four in the morning as Knox tells me where to go.
We finally pull up outside a run-down looking dive bar. I park a few doors down, and we get out, making our way inside.
The bar is almost entirely empty, and a new wave of worry floods me as I scan the dim interior for signs of her.
Did she slip out the back? Was Harv following the wrong girl through his pieced-together snippets of security footage?
But then I spot a fall of silver hair near the back of the place.
I elbow Knox and jerk my chin toward her, and we start in that direction. Once we’re close enough, I can see that it truly is River.
She’s slumped over a table at a booth in the back, and a man with greasy hair and wandering hands is sitting next to her, trying to feel her up.
Rage lights in my soul, building off the anger that was already there. As one, Knox and I stride toward River and the slimy fucker who sits close to her.
His hand is on her side, sliding up her shirt slowly, like he’s worried if he moves too fast, she might wake up. He’s so absorbed in it that he doesn’t even notice the two of us before it’s too late.