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“Hey, Evie! Nick!”
Suddenly out of the crowd comes Dalton, leading a pack of friendly faces. It’s the Krew! They’re suntanned from their week in Ibiza and bursting with excitement at seeing us again.
“Oh my god!” I say, hugging Tori and LaToya, then the rest of the members I’d grown to really care about in the short but life-changing time we’d spent in Europe. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Kara recruited us, of course,” Tori says.
“We heard you have a missing brother to find,” LaToya adds. “Knowing the crowds Kara pulls, we figured you needed all the help you could get.”
“You weren’t wrong,” I say.
I look up at Nick, who hasn’t said anything. He’s looking at the Krew strangely, seriously, almost sadly. But then he shakes it off and clasps hands with Dalton, slapping him on the back and whispering something in the younger man’s ear that makes him grin.
I don’t know what he said, but Dalton replies, “You know, there was a lot of downtime in Ibiza, and then one thing led to another…” He doesn’t have to continue.
Nick sends Dalton a photo of Jack that gets shared in the Krew’s group chat, and it’s in the knick of time because just then Kara’s voice shouts over the crowd, “WHAT IS UP MY DARLINGS?”
Her fans roar back and the bass drops, reverberating up through the ground as the crowd starts to jump as one.
The Krew disperses, each going to their assigned corner of the park. Nick starts to leave too, but I run to catch him, grabbing his hand.
Before he can react, I stand on my toes and kiss him lightly on the lips. “For luck,” I say.
Nick looks down at me for a long second, that same sad-serious expression in his deep brown eyes, and then, without a word, he’s gone, disappearing into the jumping, dancing crowd.
Okay. I’m on a mission, and by god I’m going to find that kid even if I get trampled doing so. It probably won’t come to that though. I’ve been given a less crowded quadrant, probably because my stature doesn’t lend itself to shoving through the thick of things.
I bounce through groups, scanning faces, looking for anyone even slightly familiar. Every person I see looks younger than the last, but none of them are Jack’s friends.
I’m moving fast. Calls of What gives? and Calm down, lady! echo after me as I fight the crowd. The world is churning with bass and noise, a sensory overload. But I’m determined. If he’s here we’re going to find him.
I run smack into a haughty-eyed teenage boy and practically fling him aside. But then I stop. There’s something about the kid that gives me pause and then the memory hits me like a thunderbolt: That’s one of Jack’s friends from the club.
I turn around and run backward, tripping over someone’s giant Doc Martens and almost bring the kid to the ground.
He’s not exactly put out by the fact. He glances down at my hands on his shirt and smirks at me suggestively.
I haul him toward me and scream in his face, “IS JACK MADISON HERE WITH YOU?”
The guy’s hair is blown back, his eyes bug. Then he looks annoyed.
“Believe me, baby. You’re not missing anything with Jack that you couldn’t get bigger and better with me.”
I roll my eyes, and then remember that I need to work with this kid.
“Look, I need to talk to Jack,” I say, composing myself slightly. “And if you bring me to him, I’ll bring aaall my friends over.”
That hooks him.
“Yeah, sure thing. Follow me,” he says.
I text Nick as he leads me toward the edge of the crowd, by the street. Found him. We’re at 4th and Sullivan.
And sure enough, there’s Jack, leaning against a tree with a knot of his friends. My guide shouts out to him as we get closer. “Hey, Jacky-Boy. You got a friend here.”
Jack’s eyes light up at the sight of me. He starts to look me up and down but then freezes when he realizes that he knows me. It only takes another second for him to place from where.
And considering that night was probably one of the worst of his life, I don’t blame him for his reaction.
