She put one picture down to pick up the other. Natasha’s face drew her attention. There was something … almost familiar about it. And it was more than just having seen it in the photo with Chan and her aunt.
The sound of Chase opening drawers and rummaging through things behind her called her attention. She got a big sensation that they were intruding on the parents’ personal shrine to their daughter, and she put the picture back down, almost wishing she hadn’t even touched them.
She glanced back at Chase. “Don’t move things around too much,” she said, sensing the mom or dad came in here often and had memorized the placement of all their daughter’s things. Things that told of her life.
“I’m just looking for anything that might give us something to help find her.”
Della didn’t know what that something would be, but being here felt right, almost as if the ghost had led them here. On top of a dresser was a picture of a man. Dark hair, slanted eyes. Della was almost certain it was the same man in the family photo that hung in the hall.
Funny how Natasha looked more Asian than her own father. Luck of the draw, Della thought, remembering how she hardly looked Asian.
All of a sudden, behind the soft music and lyrics, came the sound of a car moving down the road. “Someone’s coming,” she said.
“I know,” Chase said.
By the time they got to the window, the car was pulling into the drive. “Shit,” Della muttered.
“No problem,” Chase said. “We’ll wait until he unlocks the door, then we’ll jump out this window. It’s going to be okay,” he said, as if sensed her near panic.
Sensed it correctly. Della’s adrenaline pumped like crazy. The thought of being caught sent bolts of fear coursing through her veins. And then she heard it. Not the driver in the car outside who had cut the engine off. The car was the least of their problems. What Della heard were footsteps. Footsteps moving up the steps from inside the house.
Someone was already inside the home. Had been there the entire time. Had they heard them? Were they coming to check?
Chase, obviously hearing it as well, looked back out the window.
“He’s not out of the car yet.” His voice barely reached her ears.
“So what do we do?” she replied in the same low voice.
“Plan B,” he said.
“What is it?”
He paused one second. “I don’t have a friggin’ clue.”
“Shit,” Della whispered again.
The footsteps thudded closer, down the hall, almost in front of the bedroom door. Nothing but a thin piece of wood stood between them and being caught as intruders.
Never had Della been this envious of Kylie’s gift of turning invisible. But wishing was going to get her nowhere—she needed a plan. She needed one fast.
“The closet.” She latched her hand around his arm and pulled him inside.
They had barely gotten the door closed and sunk down amongst a few shoes and clothes that had fallen on the floor, when the footsteps stopped. Stopped right outside the bedroom door.
Della pulled her knees to her chest. Darkness filled the small space. Her shoulder pressed against Chase’s. Needing more air to attempt to deal with the panic gripping her lungs, she took fast, and hopefully silent, breaths. The smell of perfume and shampoo, obviously Natasha’s, filled the air. Then Chase’s scent, spicy male soap and outdoors, filled Della’s senses. While she could barely see anything, she still shut her eyes. Tight. And prayed.
Don’t let them come in here. Don’t let them come in here.
The door clicked open and the footsteps entered into the room. Soft footsteps sounding like a woman. What came next? If the person belonging to the footsteps had actually heard them, wouldn’t she check the closet? Oh no. Why had Della chosen the closet?
Della’s insides knotted with the thought of having to explain to her parents why she’d broken into someone’s home.
Damn! Damn! She and Chase were going to get caught and this was going to be bad. Really, really bad.
The footsteps came farther into the room. Eyes still forced shut, she heard the person inhale, deeply. Chase’s lips came against her ear.
“If they open the door, we fly right through the window. Just keep your head down and watch out for glass. If we go fast, they won’t be able to describe us to the cops.”
Della opened her eyes. Light snuck through the small space where the door didn’t meet the wood floor. That, or her vision had adjusted to the dark and she could make out things—the clothes on the floor, the pair of worn tennis shoes in the corner. She shifted her gaze back to the door, preparing herself to run like hell if it opened.
She counted to three, thinking that was about the time a person would need to decide to check the closet.
One.
Two.
Three.
The door didn’t open.
The sound of the bed’s mattress sighing with weight added another layer of sadness to the song playing in the background.
Then came the heartfelt sob. A feminine sob. Not part of the music, but so much more emotional. It sounded like pain. Pure. Raw.
“Why do I keep hearing you?” the woman said. “Are you here, baby? Why can’t I accept that you are gone? Can you hear me? I love you. I miss you. Miss you so much.”
She’s not gone, Della wanted to say. Tears filled her eyes. While she ached for Natasha and her mom, Della couldn’t help but wonder if her own mother missed her.
Did her own mom ever walk into her room and cry?
Della didn’t realize she still held Chase’s hand until his fingers, laced with hers, gave her a light squeeze. Was he hurting for the woman, too? It felt as if he was trying to communicate to her that it would be okay.
But how could it be? The woman’s grief grew thicker, the air, even in the tiny closet, felt heavier. The feeling of injustice, of grief, wiggled its way into Della’s chest and made her insides feel crowded.
The music suddenly stopped and the sound of a phone ringing piped over the intercom.
The ringing became replaced with an electronic voice announcing: Call from Miao Hon.
Della’s breath caught. Surely she’d heard it wrong. But the message repeated. Call from Miao Hon.
Why was her aunt, Chan’s mother, calling Natasha’s mom?
Della let out a shuttered breath. She cut her eyes toward Chase, but he hadn’t seemed to put Chan’s last name together with the person who was calling.
The slight sound of the mattress rising filtered through the door. Then footsteps left the bedroom. The click of the bedroom door shutting reached Della’s ears, but it somehow sounded different. Distant. Too distant. Immediately, the closet seemed to grow darker. Instead of a hiding place, it felt like a prison.
Della turned to tell Chase she wanted to leave—she wanted out of there, away from the pain—but it wasn’t Chase sitting next to her.
Chapter Twenty-four
Fear was her go-to emotion, but when she went there, the fear faded into a whole different kind of feeling. Something that gave her butterflies in her stomach. Good butterflies.
With her shoulder against his, she stared at the guy, trying to understand. He had dark brown, almost black, almond-shaped eyes, smooth skin the color of coffee with lots of cream. His short hair was black and hung in loose curls over his brow. His features were … perfect, except for a scar that was still red over his left brow. Something about him tickled her memory bank, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. Yet she had the oddest desire to run her finger over the healing wound.
All of a sudden, another recollection whispered across what little brain power she had. She didn’t see everything, but had vague flashes of a fight, and she knew he had gotten that wound trying to protect her.
He stared at her with warmth and passion. She wanted to close the distance between them, but then she didn’t have to. He leaned closer, his mouth a whisper from hers. His light breath touched her lips.
He was going to kiss her.
Correction. He was kissing her.
No, not her. He was kissing Natasha.
He was Liam. And Natasha was kissing him back.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, pulling back from her mouth, running his finger over her lips, moist from his kiss.
“I am not. My hair’s caked in mud, I need a shower.” She chuckled.
“That’s not what I see,” he said.
“Then good thing it’s dark in here,” she countered.
He kissed her again, and this time the kiss went from soft to hot. His mouth tasted so good. Sweet and tangy like blood. Her blood. His blood.
They must have just fed off each other again. But this time she wasn’t repulsed. She was too into the kiss, too into Liam, to care.
She may be facing death, but right then she wanted to feel alive. To feel passion. To touch. To be touched.
The next thing she knew, they were lying on their sides. The hard dirt beneath her didn’t even feel bad. All she cared about was Liam. He rested beside her. His shirt was off. She traced a tattoo of an odd-looking cross symbol on his shoulder.
His hand slipped under her shirt and the kisses grew hotter, sweeter.
Natasha moved her hand down his abs and around his waist.
They should stop before it went too far, but then logic intervened. All they had right now was each other. How could it be wrong to cling to that?
His fingers slipped beneath her bra and brushed over her nipple. It felt heavenly and so real. Even more real than before.
She turned her head, let her eyes drift open and saw a tennis shoe. Natasha’s shoe. Natasha’s closet. The she felt a hand again, on her breast.
“Shit!” Della muttered, snapping out of it. “Get your hand off my—”
“Shh.” Chase’s other hand, the one that wasn’t fondling her boob, pressed over her mouth.
Della instantly remembered why they had to be quiet. But his hand, still gently cupping her breast, stayed where it was. And while she hated admitting it, it felt heavenly. But also wrong. Crazy wrong.
“Move your other hand, now,” she whispered through his palm in a voice low enough he couldn’t complain, but he must have heard her deadly intent, because his eyes widened.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t … I wasn’t.” His voice came lower than a whisper, for her ears only. “Oh, hell, I’ll move my hand if you move yours.”
My hand? Still struggling to connect with her own body and to leave the vision, her breath caught with the startling realization. Chase wasn’t the only one getting touchy-feely. Her hand was down the back of his jeans, under his soft cotton underwear, and gently caressing his butt. Blood rushed to her face instantly.
She yanked her hand out of his pants.
“Easy,” he said again, slipping his hand out from under her shirt and pulling her against him. She started to struggle and he whispered, “You’re going to hit the wall and we’re going to get caught.”
Caught making out in Natasha’s closet while her parents were downstairs, a voice inside her said. She listened, not to the voice, but to what was happening in the house. Sure enough, she heard voices, a male and female.
She took a deep, sobering breath and slowly shifted away, getting a few inches from Chase. But it didn’t make her feel better. How could it?
She’d just gone to second base with the Panty Perv. Unintentionally. But it still counted, didn’t it?
She tried to remember anything about it—him touching her, her touching him—but all she could remember was being Natasha and being high on Liam’s kisses.
That’s when she knew Chase had been inside Liam, just as she’d been inside Natasha. Did that mean she couldn’t get mad at Chase? Probably. Somehow, she got the feeling he hadn’t been the one to slip her hand in his pants. She’d done that all by herself. Or with Natasha’s help.
Oh, but she still wanted to be mad at Chase.
And when he looked at her, she glared at him. It might have been wrong, but it still felt good.
He frowned. “I think we can leave … quietly. They both seem to be downstairs. We should be able to open the window and jump without them seeing us.”
She gulped tension down her throat. Two kinds of tension. The one she felt low in her belly from Chase touching her, and the other kind. The kind that said they weren’t out of the woods yet—they could still get arrested for breaking and entering. It didn’t matter if the window had been open.
On her hands and knees, she followed him out of the closet. As she rose up, her gaze shifted up to his butt, his cute muscular butt, and she blushed again.
He carefully and quietly lifted the window then looked back at her. “Jump to the right, out of view of the front window. Stay behind the trees, and head to the car. I’ll be right behind you.” His words came so low she barely heard them.
She did as he said, and landed to the far right of the window. She made it to the line of trees. The sun had already started to rest in the west. The golden light caught on the red and yellow leaves and made them look even brighter.
Adrenaline took her another few steps, then she stopped. She hadn’t heard him land. She looked back. Chase wasn’t there. Where the hell was he?
One. Two. Three. She was giving him to ten, then she was going in after him.
She got all the way to nine when he finally appeared at the window and leapt out, landing on his feet a good ten feet away from the view of the window.
Together, they made their way through the small patch of trees to the road. When Della spotted the blue Camaro, she could almost breathe.
“What took you so long?” she asked.
“Get in, and I’ll tell you.”
And that’s when Della noticed the bulge under his shirt. “You took something!” she seethed. “They’ll know, damn it. They probably have everything in that room memorized.”
“It was in the closet, behind some shoe boxes. I don’t think they even knew it was there.” He pulled out a small book. “I think it’s a diary.”
Della instantly thought of Miranda and her diary. Sure, Della had teased her about wanting to read it, but she wouldn’t have. Those were private.
“That wasn’t yours to take,” Della said.
“If it helps us find Natasha and Liam, I’ll gladly take any hell you want to give me for stealing.”
Della fought with her conscience, debating if he’d been right or wrong, then decided she probably would’ve done the same thing. But for some reason that didn’t stop her from feeling as if Chase had done something wrong.
Maybe she was just still angry at him about other things. Things that involved them on a closet floor. Oh, yeah, that had been so wrong.
They got in the car and Chase raised the top to make them less noticeable, and took off. As they passed the house, a man and woman were outside the house looking up at the open window. They zipped past, but Della did notice the man standing beside Natasha’s mom wasn’t the man in the family picture. Nevertheless, seeing them outside told Della just how close they’d come to being caught.
Too close.
* * *
“You getting anything helpful?” Chase asked fifteen minutes later, She hadn’t spoken since they’d left Natasha’s neighborhood as she read through the diary.
“No,” Della said. “It’s normal stuff, and it dates back almost two years.” She looked down at the handwritten notes from Natasha’s diary.
Another two minutes passed when he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“The diary?” she asked, but she honestly knew what “it” was. Or at least, she feared she did.
“You’re giving me the silent treatment. So let’s just talk about it.”
She hadn’t purposely not spoken to him. She’d been busy reading Natasha’s diary, and feeling guilty for doing it. And then, trying to figure out why her aunt had been calling Natasha’s mom.
There was a connection. One she’d assumed had just bee
n Chan. But if Chan’s mom was calling Natasha’s mom, it had to be more. Della was going to have to figure out what that was. But how, without going to see her aunt? Without making her father furious at her?
“Did you hear me?” he asked.
“Yes and no.”
“What?” he asked, confused.
“Yes, I heard you, and no, I don’t want to talk about … ‘it.’”
“You can’t be pissed at me about that.”
“Sure I can,” she seethed in a low voice.
“You’re not being fair.”
“Where did you get the idea I was fair?”
He chuckled. “Hey, you had your hand on my ass and I’m not mad at you.”
“Well, that just says which of us has a better handle on this. Because you should be pissed. Fondling strangers isn’t—”
“We aren’t strangers.” He glanced back at the road, but not before she saw the laughter in his eyes. A few seconds later, with his humor gone, he added, “We’re bonded. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to accept that.”
She started to tell him she’d never accept it, but she didn’t even know if it was a lie. So she just kept her mouth shut. Oddly enough, that seemed to bother him more than anything. She tucked that info away for another day.
“Look,” he said. “It happened because of the vision. And instead of being worried about it, we should be trying to figure out if maybe we got anything from the vision to help us.”
“You’re right,” she said.
“Wow, can I have that in writing?” he asked with sarcasm.
She frowned and closed the dairy. The entries were about a boy she liked and what her girlfriends did. And it sort of broke Della’s heart because the relationship between Natasha and Amy and Jennifer seemed so special. Special like her relationship with Miranda and Kylie.
What had happened to these girls? Were they still missing Natasha?
“I don’t remember much of the vision,” Della said.
“I could see better this time,” Chase said. “I don’t know if that means there was more light in there, or if the ghost let us see.”
“I could see better, too. And I guess it could be either.” Della tried to remember details. “Liam had a cut over his brow.” She let her mind go back to the vision, trying to put the pieces back together. “He got it defending Natasha.”