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“Bale?” His sleep-riddled voice instantly cleared. “What’s happened?”
The words caught in my throat as I choked them out. “Phoebe’s gone.”
***
I sat for twenty minutes staring at the phone as it rang repeatedly. I knew it was Chloe. Ryker already picked Mom up from the airport. Phoebe mentioned last night her sister’s flight was arriving sometime today.
Apparently, it already had.
Tossing the phone on the bed, I shook my head. Fuck her. She hated me anyway. She’d always blamed me for anything remotely harmful that happened to Phoebe, and this would be no different. It was too much to take. I couldn’t handle her right now.
Regret killed me to the core. Lying on Ryker’s couch, I couldn’t count how many times I picked up the phone to call her. Dialed her number. Got her voice mail. Dialed it again just to hear her voice. There weren’t enough lifetimes for my regrets. Now it was too late to even try.
Throwing the phone across the room, I watched as it hit the dresser and crashed to the floor.
I refused to process anything other than finding her. Not now. Not ever. Grabbing the alarm clock off the table and ripping it out of the wall, I hurled it across the room as well. Not satisfied, I scanned the room for something else to destroy.
What had happened to my life? My career had gone to shit. My friends hated me, and the one person I loved more than my own life was missing.
A light knock on the door interrupted my self-indulgent rage. “Julian? Damn it, Julian, open the door.”
Stumbling to the door, I flung it open. My brother stood in the doorway looking haggard, with dark circles under his eyes. Pushing past me, he walked in and shut the door.
“We have to talk.” He faced me, his eyes roving over my disheveled appearance. “I mean, I have to talk, and you have to listen.”
I sank onto the bed. The look on Ryker’s face churned my stomach.
He took in the destruction I’d created. Phone and alarm clock smashed against the wall, glass everywhere. “Julian, you have to promise me you’ll listen to what I have to say before you react.” Placing both hands on either side of the bed, I braced for the worst. Ryker took a deep breath. “I just got off the phone with Jaxon Hough.”
I stared at the floor. “And?”
“The police found Phoebe’s SUV at the bottom of a ravine off Mulholland.”
I gripped the scattered bed linens in my fists and squeezed. I was on the verge of destroying everything in my line of sight, but I had to know for sure. “Is she…”
Ryker’s fingers closed around my forearm. “She wasn’t in it, Julian. They found her purse…shit scattered everywhere. The car’s totaled, but no Phoebe. It’s like she just vanished.”
As if time suspended, froze, and restarted, color filled my vision, and my heart resumed beating. Shrugging him off, I stood and started pulling clothes out of the dresser. “I have to go.”
“What the hell, man?” he called out behind me. “You need to call Jaxon and figure out—”
“I need to find my wife,” I bit out, my jaw clenched tight.
“You’re about to lose everything.”
“I’ve already lost everything.”
“Julian…” He sighed and palmed his forehead.
“Get out.” When he hesitated, I grabbed a framed picture of Phoebe at her birthday party in New York and hurled it at his head. “I said get out!”
Without another word, he stormed out of the bedroom and slammed the door. Finally, alone, I fell to my knees. Bracing my weight on my hands, I spoke no prayers—just one word repeated over and over till I was hoarse.
“No! No, no, no…”
Then the rage took over. Rage over feeling helpless. Rage over Phoebe being alone with that man. The room spun with red hot fury. One thought filled my head.
Phoebe.
I had to get to Phoebe. Fuck everything and everyone else.
Still on my hands and knees, I swore at the top of my lungs. Screams for the pain Phoebe and Iris felt. Screams for the pain I felt, and screams for the man I’d send straight to hell.
