His eyes briefly trailed to underwear and I quickly grabbed a robe out of the closet and covered myself up before I launched into the events of the last twenty-four hours. Maximus listened patiently as I went on, his brow furrowing even deeper.
When I finished, breathless, he ran a freckled hand through his thick hair and sighed.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
He shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Perry. It’s a lot to take in, and to be honest with you, I’m not sure where to start.”
My face fell. “What do you mean? You knew Dex back then, when you both lived here.”
He nodded. “It was a long time ago, too, don’t forget that. Dex was living in an apartment. I can take you there, but he rarely talked about his childhood, about where he lived with Michael. I don’t know where that is.”
“But,” I said, stepping closer to him and staring hard at his green eyes, “you do know something, you have to.”
He gave me a sympathetic smile. “New York wasn’t the best of times Perry. I’m sure you know the story by now.”
I crossed my arms. “How you were best buds and then Abby died and then he slept with your girlfriend and went insane all while you turned a blind eye? Yeah, I heard the story.”
His eyes narrowed briefly, a flash of hurt and warning. “Hey, I reckon it’s not as black and white as it seems. But either way, many mistakes were made and I gotta be honest with ya, it’s not easy for me to be here.”
“Well what the f**k are we supposed to do?” I yelled, throwing my hands up in the air.
“Perry,” Ada said gently, about to tell me to take a chill pill.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, turning away from them. Then I turned back, fueled by desperation. “No, you know what? I’m not sorry. Not one bit. I’m mad. I’m freaking the f**k out. I’m panicking. You guys don’t seem to f**king understand what’s happening. Dex is my best friend, my fiancé, my future husband,” I pointed my finger at Ada, “your future brother-in-law. He’s everything to all of us and I am not joking, I am not exaggerating, when I say that we have to get to him now. We have to or we will never ever see him again.”
Maximus studied me for a few moments and a wave of fear trickled onto my shoulders. He thinks I’m crazy. He’s regretting coming here. He’s not going to help me. He’s going to turn around and go home. He doesn’t believe me.
“Okay,” he said after a minute. “I’ll do what I can.”
I raised my brow. “So you believe me, you believe everything I said.”
He gave me a lopsided smile. “More than you know.”
I had no idea what that meant and it didn’t assuage my fears. Though Max saw a lot of the supernatural stuff when we were in Red Fox and New Orleans, I could never really forget that this was the guy that watched me become possessed in front of his eyes and still denied it.
Just then my phone started ringing, now that it was fully charged. I looked over it and at Ada. We knew who it was.
“I’ve got it,” Ada said, snatching it up from the bedside table. Before I could tell her not to answer it, before we could come up with a plan of what to do, what to say, she did.
“Hi mom,” she said lightly, as if everything was just peachy.
She immediately winced and the hotel room filled with the tinny sound of my mother yelling over the airwaves. I watched as Ada tried to get a few words in before she suddenly blurted out, “We’re in New York City.”
You could feel the silence as the truth soaked in.
Then the yelling started all over again. I let it continue for another minute until I pulled out the older sister card and took responsibility.
Naturally, it didn’t matter what I told my mother. Or my father, once he came on the line. They obviously didn’t believe a word of me when I said Dex’s brother was trouble and we had reason to believe he’d been taken against his will.
In the end, it was all my fault and I was to take Ada back to Portland. I promised them I would when we got Dex. I told them they could reach us if they we’re worried about us and gave them the hotel name too, but that this was our call and we’d come back when we could.
Obviously that didn’t go over very well and I was quickly forced to put my phone on silent, knowing that they would call again and again and again. I couldn’t be distracted by that, not now.
“All righty,” I said, fighting the urge to clap my hands together, as if this could be trivial. “Let’s get started. Let’s find him.”
“I reckon you may want to put pants on,” Maximus said. “I know anything goes in New York but that might be pushing it.” He added, with a smirk, “Not that I’m complaining.”
I gave him a look but quickly got changed in the bathroom. While I was in there, staring at the retro medicine cabinet above the sink, I was reminded of what I had done to my mother. How I had taken the pills. I wondered if she was starting to unravel a bit without them, if she’d already made an appointment to have them replaced, if she knew it was me.
I wondered if she was going to start feeling like her daughters any time soon.
But, like all thoughts that weren’t related to Dex, I couldn’t even let myself think about it. Each moment I was away from him was a moment that my heart sank deeper into my chest. I felt there would be nothing left of me if we didn’t find him soon.
It was too bad then, that even with Maximus there, we still had no idea where to start looking.
Somewhere a clock was counting down to something none of us wanted to understand.
CHAPTER THREE
Dex
I’ve woken up in some f**ked up places before. Once, on a bench in some park in Bellevue, a ritzy Seattle suburb, with happy squirrels bouncing all around me like over-caffeinated rats. Still not sure how I ended up there. Another time I was on the roof of a Vancouver hotel, rain pelting me on the face and an empty bottle of Jack Daniels beside me. I remember how I ended up there – damn stripper led me astray and stole all my money. At least I had Jack for company.
But I have never woken up in my old bedroom of my childhood home, a home I tried to erase from my memory until I was certain it no longer existed.
And yet it did exist. More than that, I was lying on my puny old bed, legs hanging off the weak frame, and the room was exactly the same as I had remembered as a child.