Page 80 of Vicious

I go back to May’s room, sit down on her bed, and dial Hunter’s phone. He picks up after only two rings.

“What?” Hunter snaps.

“Hey, so. Remember how I did you a solid several months ago?” I say, ignoring his tone. “I kind of need your help now.”

I can tell Hunter is seriously debating hanging up on me, but Hunter also has exactly two friends. After a few beats, Hunter says, “Fine. What do you need?”

“May is missing,” I say, trying to remain calm. “She took my cash and bailed. She’s not at her old house either.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Hunter asks curtly. “I’m a doctor. I don’t find people.”

I laugh bitterly, because he’s right, of course. “I don’t know. I wanted to call somebody, and Drake is definitely still asleep.”

“Call Drake anyway. If you or May need medical attention, call me.” Then Hunter hangs up, because he can’t be normal about anything.

I sigh and call Drake. The call rings long enough to go to voicemail, but I dial again anyway. When he doesn’t pick up, I dial his landline instead. That rings, too, and I growl as it goes to voicemail as well. What’s the point of having two lines if you aren’t going to answer them?

I try his cell phone again, and he answers on the fifth ring. “Someone better be dead,” Drake’s sleep-roughened voice snarls at me.

“May is gone,” I say. “I need help finding her.”

He’s silent for a moment as the words get through his thick skull. Sounding more awake, he grumbles, “Why can’t you two just chain your girls down? I swear, if I get one, she’s never going to have the chance to get kidnapped or whatever. Ever.”

“She wasn’t kidnapped.” I rub my temple to stave off the growing annoyance. “She ran away. She packed up her stuff at her old home too and ran with her Ba—with her father.”

I hear rustling, then the quality of the call changes as he puts me on speaker. “I’m getting dressed,” he tells me. “I’ll call my tech guy and see if he can track them down. You think they have their phones on them?”

“May doesn’t, but I didn’t see Simon’s phone lying around.” I look around the room, hoping to find some sort of clue. “If you get on the phone angle, I think I can try to track her car. I just have to wait for my contact at the force to actually get to work.”

“Yeah, text me his number and I’ll get on that,” Drake says. He goes on to gripe more about how Hunter and I don’t know how to control our women, but I ignore his diatribe.

Part of me wonders: what the fuck will I do once I find her? Drag her home, tie her down, whip her and punish her—and then what?

I don’t want May to grow despondent again. I want her sassy and fighting me. I want the fire that she’d had the previous night, when I’d paddled her and made her come just from the pain.

It’s something to worry about once I get her back.

CHAPTER 22

May

“This coffee is still awful,” Baba says as he takes a sip of the motel coffee. He keeps drinking it despite his warning. “I could go out and try to find better coffee for us?”

After two days of drinking motel coffee, he should have been used to the flavor.

“We don’t have the extra money for that,” I tell him. “Baba, we have to save every penny we can. Okay? If we’re going to get out of New Bristol?—”

“We aren’t leaving New Bristol!” Baba interrupts me, scowling at me. “This is where we live, May May. I don’t know what has you so spooked, but we can’t just up and leave the city.”

We’ve been having the same argument over and over. If I could tell him the truth, things might be different, but I can’t tell him what really happened to his baby girl. I know he sees worse cases in his job as a public defender, but it would break his heart to know that I was one of the victims he sees all too often.

No.

I’m not going to let him look at me with pity, or with self-loathing, or guilt, or anything else he might come up with if I told him the truth.

“I told you,” I say, trying not to lose patience. “The people—” I throw my hands in the air, beyond exasperated at going through this yet again. “I need to shower.”

Really, I just need some space, but there’s nowhere else I can go. I wish we were at some fancy hotel with a pool or even just a lounge to be miserable in, but that’s impossible. Maybe things will be better if I can get my father to agree to leave New Bristol. Maybe we can have a better life.