Chapter Forty Nine
Lincoln
“Come on, pick up!” I growl into the phone as the call goes straight to voicemail, Raleigh’s voice coming through the speaker causing a pang of longing followed by an even stronger pang of guilt to rush through me.
No one has seen or heard from her since she left my house on Thursday night. Thankfully there isn’t any kind of waiting period for filing a missing person’s report, like what you see on TV shows, but she had already been missing for twenty four hours by the time anyone even realized that something was going on.
*And of course, I blame myself.*
*I mean, why the hell wouldn’t I?*
If I had just followed her home, or insisted that she stay with me and that she go back in the morning instead, then maybe she wouldn’t be missing.
“Baby, please, call me back as soon as you get this message. Everyone is worried about you, *I’m* worried about you. I love you. *Please…* Call me back.” The last sentence comes out as more of a plea than a request, but then, that’s exactly what it is—me pleading with the woman that I love to let me know that she’s okay.
Pressing *‘end call’*I set my phone in the cupholder and cruise the backroads between Hawthorne and Rhydell, looking for anything that seems out of the norm. Jax sits in the passenger seat, his window rolled down and a spotlight shining out into the field next to him, doing the same.
“You don’t think she freaked out after…and is just hiding out, do you?” He asks, his attention on his task instead of on me.
“No.” Even though it’s something I’ve been asked many times over the course of the last few days, and even asked myself in trying to find *any* kind of explanation, if I’m being honest—it’s an answer that I don’t even have to think twice about. “She wouldn’t do something like that. Even if she did freak out, she would only be ghosting me, not her brothers and her best friend.”
He makes a humming sound but says nothing more.
We continue down the road, creeping ever so slowly. The silence is one of my worst enemies right now because since we realized that she was gone, I haven’t been able to get out of my own head.
“You really love her?” Jax asks, his voice breaking through and pulling out of my spiraling thoughts.
“Yeah,” I'm unable to hold back my smile, an image of her beautiful face filling my mind, my chest warming and butterflies filling my stomach and just *how much* I truly do love her. “I really do.”
“We’re going to find her,” he says, turning his attention to me. Looking from the road over to my brother and forcing a sad smile, my eyes burn as I take in the look of determination staring back at me.
“I hope so,” I murmur, nodding as I turn my attention back to my side of the road, wiping away an escaped tear as I go back to scanning the open field beside me.
“Stop!” He barks, his demand breaking the silence.
Before I even have the brakes fully engaged, Jax has his door open and is already jumping out and heading toward the side of the road.
Kneeling down, he shines the light on what looks like an oil spill. He swipes his fingers across the ground, then rubs his fingers together as I throw the truck in park and bolt out the driver side door.
“This is fresh,” he mutters, more to himself than to me. Taking the light, he moves it over the two lane highway, searching for something.
“Shit,” he mutters, making his way from where we’re currently standing, over to what’s caught his attention on the worn asphalt.
Skid marks.
“You don’t think—”
“Yeah,” He says with a sigh, cutting me off. “I do.”
“But there haven’t been any reports of any accidents. And this is close enough to our house, wouldn’t we have heard it?” I know I’m grasping for straws, but then, what other explanation would I rather have for Raleigh having gone missing?
Jax shakes his head back and forth, the look on his face bleak when he turns his attention to me, “I don’t know, you would think so... But, man, all of this is fresh—the oil, and those skid marks?” He shines his light on the pot where there was an obvious oil leak and then points to the dark tire marks on the road for emphasis, and then says, “They are too. I don’t remember seeing those a few days ago.”
Standing up, he takes his light and heads back over to the side of the road and begins looking through the grass for more evidence that his theory is correct. I stand too, but instead of helping him look for evidence, my head is spinning, mind racing. Putting my hands on my head, I lace my fingers together and pace back and forth, trying to wrap my head around what I fear to be true.
That Jax is right.
“Damnit!” Jax growls, bends over as if grabbing something. Straightening back up, he turns and begins to make his way back over to me, his long strides eating up the space between us. My pulse pounds in my ears as fear consumes me when I realize that he has something in his hand.
Although I’m unable to make out what he’s holding in the darkness, I’m unable to take my eyes away from whatever is in his hands. When he stops in front of me, my eyes are glued to a piece of metal.
The metal the exact same color as Raleigh’s car.
*FUCK!*
“I have to find her!” I shout, taking off toward the truck, desperation to know that she is okay, flooding every inch of my body.
“Linc,” Jax hollers, chasing after me. He reaches the passenger door just as I shut the drivers side door and jumps in. “You have to think this through. Where are you even going to start to look for her?”
“I don’t fucking know!” I yell as anger, fear, rage, desperation and every other feeling hits me all at once. “I don’t know. But I have to do something.”
“Let’s start by calling her brothers, letting them know what we found. We can cover more ground if we all call different hospitals looking for her,” he tells me, trying to talk rationally in a moment that I want to be anything but rational.
“Okay,” I agree with a nod. “Okay. Good idea.”
Pulling up Rowan’s phone number, I hit dial and put the phone up to my ear, my gut sinking at what I’m fixing to have to tell my girls brother.
As the line rings, my mind races.
*Is Raleigh okay?*
*Why didn’t anyone notify her brothers that she was in an accident, or that she’s in the hospital?*
*Where is her car?*
*And more importantly, where is* she*?*
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