It’s Saturday evening, and I’m with Antonio and Miguel, trying not to lose my mind and worry. We’re waiting for a team to arrive who’s coming to help search for Sophie.
I pick at the sofa seam in the hotel suite as Antonio paces and talks to Lok on the phone. A knock on the door sounds, and Antonio quickly says goodbye to Lok as Miguel answers the door.
Four people enter, three men and one woman. One of the guys is bigger than Miguel; he must be at least six-six, his chest is like a tank, and his arms are like pythons. His dark hair is pulled back into a man bun. Another is the shorter of the three men, leaner, and looks like a surfer with blonde hair and ocean-blue eyes. The third guy has close-cropped light brown hair, slightly shorter and smaller than the first huge guy. This guy stands close to the woman, and my eyes nearly fall out of my head as I shoot to my feet.
It’s a very bad time and poor taste to fangirl, but I’m struggling to hide my shock.
Severyn Andrews is in the hotel room… ten feet away from me.
What the actual fuck?! I eek inside with a high-pitched scream.
She’s a songwriter-musician who has worked closely with Antonio, Lok, and several A-list bands. About seven months ago, though, she fell out of the spotlight. She’s a favorite of mine because the lyrics in the songs she writes are profound. They always hit me right in the gut, and I instantly connect with them.
Her hair brushes her shoulders in slight waves, a rich caramel mixed with reds, browns, and blondes. Her gray eyes are warm and filled with concern and worry as she and Antonio hug.
“You need to rest more,” she says to him.
“I will again in a bit, mi amor.”
“Ryn,” the guy beside her says in a deep baritone voice, and Miguel nudges Antonio, inclining his head toward me.
I clasp my hands, trying not to wring them—I feel a weird combination of excitement, exhaustion, and stress while fighting the constant urge to burst into tears.
“You must be Ollie,” Severyn says, extending her hand. “You can call me Ryn. I’m Antonio and Miguel’s friend. This is Tag.” She motions to the guy, still stuck close, obviously highly protective of her. Next, she indicates the surfer-looking guy, then the behemoth, jacked guy. “This is Nexin and Rolf.”
I assume they’re her security team and force out a hello as the urge to cry hits me again.
Ryn steps closer and clasps my shoulders. “You hanging in there?”
My vision turns blurry. “I’m sorry,” I croak out.
“Don’t be sorry, Ollie.” She sits on the sofa and urges me to sit, too. “If it weren’t for you, Antonio and us wouldn’t even know anything was wrong.”
“Do you know for sure if something is wrong?” I ask with equal parts of dread and hope. I still hope I’m overreacting with all this, and I’ll gladly accept being called a drama queen if it means my friend is okay.
Nexin grabs a chair from the dining room table, straddles it, and rests his arms on the back. “How about you walk us through things, Ollie?”
I take a deep breath to calm myself, then relay the little I know—Sophie’s text, the weird messages about a girl running with maybe some guys behind her, the motorcycle guy. They all stiffen when I relay what Zac said about Theo claiming he saw the guy on the bike pull a gun.
Distress etches Antonio’s face as he nearly collapses to sit on the coffee table across from me. “Is there anything else that you can think of, Ollie?”
“Even something little can help,” Nexin encourages.
“I’m sorry.” I wipe away a tear that runs down my cheek. Suddenly, Antonio’s distress registers and hits me like a bucket of cold water. “Oh my god… I just realized that maybe I didn’t tell you earlier about the biker guy. I don’t remember. I should’ve told you right away about the gun.” My head swims with panic, worry, and exhaustion, and I choke out, “I’m sorry.”
Antonio grips my hand. “Ollie… no one is blaming you. You’ve been dealing with this on your own since it began. Take a deep breath.” He takes one, and it cues my overwhelmed brain to follow suit. “Better, cariño?”
Miguel crouches beside me, and I know it’s because he wants to stay close to Antonio. My heart squeezes at their love.
“What about whatever happened before Christmas?” he asks me. “Sophie wasn’t herself when she came home for the holidays. Do you know what happened? Maybe that plays into this.”
I chew on my lip, not wanting to out Sophie on something she wouldn’t want her uncle to know, but decide to tell everything I know, which isn’t much.
“A few months ago, at Halloween, Sophie met someone at a business industry mixer.” I glance at Antonio. “She didn’t come home that night but refused to say who she’d been with.”
“How did she seem?” Ryn asks.
“Happy. Um…” My face warms, and I avoid looking at Antonio. I could tell my girl had gotten laid and gotten laid good. “Like she had a really good time.”
Ryn’s mouth pulls slightly, like she’s suppressing a small smile, and I know she understands what I mean.
“About two weeks later, there was a week when she didn’t sleep in our room. She was at school every day, and we met up for lunch. She was on cloud nine. However, she still wouldn’t say anything about who the mystery person was.”
“Any thoughts on if that person was someone from school?” Nexin asks.
“Maybe a professor?” Tag adds.
Antonio’s face turns slightly blotchy, and Ryn leans toward him and says something. He huffs a breath, shoves his hand through his hair, and grumbles, “Damn kids.”
“I don’t know,” I answer both Nexin and Tag’s questions. “Maybe? That could be why she kept it hush-hush.”
“Do you think you could recall the date of that week?” Ryn asks.
I nod, and Nexin says, “I can get Genius Man to see what he might find out from any CCTV or campus footage from that timeframe.”
“That was four months ago.” Tag shakes his head. “Footage is likely wiped by now.”
Nexin shrugs. “It’s worth a shot.”
I’m not exactly sure who Genius Man is, but I don’t care as long as this team helps find Sophie.
“Anything after that?” Ryn asks and squeezes my hand. “Anything you can think of may be helpful.”
“After that week of happiness and bliss, Sophie was… devastated.” I think back to that time and Sophie’s obvious pain. I had pleaded with her to open up and get it off her chest, but she just said things didn’t work out, and it was for the best because her family came first. “Withdrawn and in pain, like you’d be after a really tough breakup. But she wouldn’t talk to me about it.”
“She was like that at Christmas, too.” Antonio runs his palms over his suit pants. “Both Abuela and I tried to get her to talk, but she wouldn’t say anything except that she was fine.”
“Two months ago… something changed.” I pause and frown as I try to voice my thoughts. “It’s not like she was happy or anything, but things were… better. Again, she wouldn’t say anything, but my read was that she and her mystery love were maybe trying to work things out for whatever had wrecked that insane happiness at the start.”
Rolf shifts his weight between his feet and crosses his arms. “And never any slip-ups on a name or details?” he asks, finally breaking his silence and I get the sense he’s the quiet, analytical type. “You never overheard anything accidentally?”
“No.” I look between them all. “I would tell you if there were. I’m not trying to hide anything.”
“It’s okay, Ollie.” Antonio reaches forward and squeezes my shoulder. “No one is implying you are. We’re just dotting ‘I’s and crossing ‘T’s.”
I nod, swallowing down my panic. “We have her phone. I know she at least texted with the guy.”
“I have her phone, thanks, Oll,” Nexin says. “It’s my top priority to get into it.”
“Any trouble with school?” Tag asks. “Problems with any students or professors?”
“Sophie wasn’t overly social, but everyone loved her. She’s sweet and nice, authentic. People vibe off that.”
“And the gun that someone said they saw?” Rolf circles back to that.
“The surveillance cameras didn’t show anything to support that,” I remind. “Or even that the guy on a motorcycle was on campus.”
Antonio turns to Ryn. “Where’s Len?”
“She’s reviewing the security footage again,” she replies.
I assume Len is another member of their team. I’m wondering about Ryn and her role, and my confusion must be apparent.
“I’m a close friend of Antonio’s,” she explains. “Tag, Nexin, and Rolf are my security team. They have experience in things like this and are here to help until the authorities step in.”
Tag’s brows pull together. “What organized crime factions operate here?”
“You’re thinking because of the mention of a big dude on a bike with the gun?” Nexin drums his fingers on the back of the chair. “The biggest motorcycle club in this city, I think, is a chapter of the Havoc Guardians. The mother chapter is in San Francisco.”
“In any rumors of the sighting, there was no mention of leather vests, though,” Miguel says. “Members of an MC always wear their cuts.”
Nexin nods. “It’s like a club sin or something if they don’t.”
“I can’t see Sophie running toward a biker holding a gun and willingly going with him,” I protest. None of this jives.
“What about some people saying there might have been someone chasing her?” Ryn asks.
“From the messages I’ve gotten, that sounds even more unlikely than the possible sighting of a biker pulling out a gun and Sophie jumping onto the back of his bike. And no one had any pictures. You know our generation, they take pictures of everything.” I rub my temples, trying to ease the mother of all headaches. “This makes no sense. It’s not how Sophie would act; there’s nothing on the surveillance feeds. God, I hope this is really just her going away for the weekend to get laid.”
My cheeks heat as I realize what I said in front of Antonio about Sophie—ever the goodie-two-shoes—but my distress immediately pushes the embarrassment away. “But none of this makes sense. There’s no evidence to back up the rumors, but if Sophie did go away for the weekend, I know she’d never leave her phone. She’s always there for any family member if they need anything. It hurt her to be so far from them.”
Tears burn my eyes again, and I can barely stop them. I’m on the verge of ugly crying.
“Hey.” Antonio reaches forward again and touches my hand. “How about you get some rest?”
I sniff and stare at his bloodshot, exhausted, worried eyes. “Hello, Pot, meet Kettle.”
Rolf rumbles a laugh, and Nexin smiles. “She’s got ya there, Antonio.”
Ryn looks between the two of us, frowning. “You both need some rest.” When I shake my head, her frown eases. “You’re a good friend, Ollie, but you can’t help Sophie if you can’t think straight because you’re sleep-deprived. You’ve been up since yesterday morning, haven’t you?”
I chew on my cheek as I fight another urge to cry. “I’m really worried.”
“How about this Zac guy?” Nexin asks. “How can we reach him?”
“He got an emergency call from his dad and had to go home to Tennessee. I have his number, though, or I’m sure he’ll be back by Friday. Their football team and frat house always host an end-of-spring break bash for whoever’s around.”
“Oh, goodie, a frat party.” Nexin rubs his hands together.
“We’re not crashing a frat party.” Tag frowns.
Nexin rolls his eyes. “Such a killjoy.”
My heart clenches because I always call Sophie that.
“Let’s hope Sophie is back before then,” Ryn says.
“Sylvie’s birthday is Thursday,” Antonio says, not hiding his worry.
Sophie would never miss calling Sylvie on her birthday, especially since this is the first year she won’t be physically there for it. She’s videocalled all her other cousins on their birthdays, and if she doesn’t call Sylvie on hers, that means…
I squeeze my eyes shut and two tears roll down my cheeks. Frustrated at myself, I quickly wipe them away.
“Hey.” The sofa dips on my other side as Miguel sits beside me. “How about you go lay down? You can use the bedroom.”
I shake my head, exhaustion blasting through every cell of my body. “I do need sleep, but I won’t impose. I’ll go back to my dorm.”
“I can give you a ride,” Miguel offers, looking at Antonio. “Antonio is going to lie down and rest, too.”
Antonio looks like he’s about to disagree, but Miguel levels him with what I can only call a dominant stare, and Antonio clamps his mouth shut and gives a slight nod.
“We have to play this smart,” Ryn says. “We’ll work on this in shifts, but everyone needs rest because, without it, that’s when details can be missed.”
“Or things get dangerous,” Tag grits.
“You’ll call me if you find out anything?” I glance around at them all.
“Of course,” Ryn says.
I want to hug her, not even fangirling right now. I’m just so freaking grateful they’re here to help find my friend. Nothing has changed, but I feel a little less hopeless and helpless right now.
“Come on, Ollie.” Miguel rises. “I’ll drive you home.” Looking at Antonio, he pauses and says, “I want you in bed when I get back.”
“Yes, sir,” he mutters.
I clamp my hand over my mouth to muffle my shocked laugh.
Antonio smiles, hugging me as we stand. “Get some rest tonight. If it helps you to be here with us, then come back and hang out tomorrow, okay?”
“What if I miss Sophie coming back to our place?”
“We have eyes on your dorm,” Tag states. “We’re watching for Sophie.”
“That’s sort of creepy.” I shiver. “But good.”
“Come on.” Miguel leads me to the door.
Exhaustion makes it a struggle to move my feet. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight, but Ryn is right; I can’t help Sophie if I’m a zombie. And I’ll do whatever I need to do to help my friend. I’ll even give my blood if it means she comes back safe and sound.
