“Where’s River?” I ask him, hoping like hell he has an answer for me.
Priest looks to the side of the bed we laid River on when she passed out and then back to me. I can tell from the expression on his face that he doesn’t know, and something drops into my stomach like a lead weight.
Dread. Worry. Fear.
Maybe some cocktail of all three.
She’s not here.
“Fuck,” Priest mutters, dragging a hand down his face.
Then he leaps up and comes around the bed, passing me so he can step into the hall. I go with him, and we make an unspoken plan to search the house, starting with the bedrooms.
Priest goes to peer into Knox’s room, to see if she maybe went to curl up with the tattooed teddy bear if she couldn’t sleep or something, and I crack Ash’s door open to check the same thing.
I’m not really trying to be quiet at this point, spurred on by the worry churning through my gut. I’m more concerned with making sure River’s here in the house somewhere and okay than making sure my brothers don’t get woken up.
They’ll forgive me for it, and if River is alright, we can all go back to sleep eventually.
Ash is alone in his bed, and he yawns and rubs at his eyes when the sound from me stepping inside wakes him up. He’s a light sleeper for the most part, and he sits up, squinting through the darkness without his glasses on.
“What’s going on?” he mumbles, fumbling in the direction of the nightstand at the side of the bed for his glasses. “Jesus, Gage. People generally like to sleep at this time of night.”
“River’s missing,” I tell him shortly, ignoring the sass and getting right to the point.
“She’s—? Fuck.”
Ash curses with feeling and pulls himself out of bed, shoving his glasses on his face as he goes.
In the hall, Priest has clearly had a similar conversation with Knox, because he’s standing there too, his dark brows furrowed and his arms crossed.
“What the fuck do you mean, she’s gone?” he demands, glaring at Priest like that’s going to make some more answers magically appear.
Priest gives him a flat look. “We have to search the rest of the house.”
Even though his voice is steady as usual, I can sense the agitation there—the worry that she won’t be here, that something happened to her while we were all sleeping.
It usually falls to me to keep a level head when it comes to this kind of shit. Although we function as a team, I often step into the role of leader of our group, so I take a deep breath and try to push away my worry until I know for sure that there’s something to worry about.
I need to keep a clear head, and panicking won’t fucking help.
“Split up and keep looking. We’ll cover more ground that way,” I say curtly.
No one responds or even nods. They just do it, striding in different directions to search the house as they call out River’s name. Knox heads down to the basement to check, and Ash even looks in all the closets just to be on the safe side.
But when we meet up again downstairs, no one has anything good to report.
“We’re sure she just… left?” Ash asks. He’s standing in the middle of the hall downstairs, running a hand through his hair.
Priest shoots him a look, his carefully controlled emotions obviously close to snapping. I step in before he can go off on Ash.
“What’s the alternative?” I ask. “That someone kidnapped her?”
“No,” Priest says sharply. “No. We would have woken up if someone had broken in here. The dog would have lost his mind. That didn’t happen.”
He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as he’s trying to convince us.
There’s a flare of possessive rage in me at the thought of someone breaking in and taking her, but Priest is right. There’s no way they would have gotten in and left with River without one of us knowing.
“We keep looking,” I tell them. “No one took her.”
She’s not in the living room or the kitchen or the piano room or the library.
Every time I open a door or step into one of the rooms and find it empty, something winds tighter in my chest. I keep hoping to see River, curled up in a corner in a blanket. Asleep or not, angry or not, at least she’d be here.
But that doesn’t happen, and my heart beats more frantically the more places we check off with no sign of her.
The air in the house is thick with the worry and the possessive need to have her back with us.
All of us are feeling it, and I silently swear to myself that when we find her, I’m going to hold on tight and refuse to let go.
She’s ours.
She belongs with us, no matter what she might be feeling right now.
Knox comes back from the basement as we regroup in the living room, and for a moment, the room is totally silent.
“Goddammit!” Knox explodes, cutting into the quiet. “Where the fuck is she? What if she’s hurt?”
“Don’t fucking say that,” Ash snaps back. “She’s fine. She has to be fine. Shit.”
Knox doesn’t even answer him. He grinds his teeth and clenches his jaw, and then when the anger gets to be too much for him to hold back, he hauls off and punches right through the living room wall, leaving a hole where he hit.
Ash just keeps muttering to himself, cursing under his breath like that’s going to do something to help. Maybe it helps him, since his hands are empty and he doesn’t have anything to fidget with while we try to get to the bottom of this.
Priest looks fucked up, standing still as a statue and not really paying attention to the rest of us. His eyes snap with anger and pain, and his face is set in harsh lines. For once, he’s not making any effort to control himself, just letting the pain practically surge out of him.
It’s gotta be hard for him right now. We talked about Jade earlier, and now River is missing. I can imagine the places his mind is going to with that worry for River and the feeling of letting her down.
I’m only just barely keeping my own rage under control. I want to hit something, but that won’t really help. I’m not even angry at River for leaving.
No, this rage is at the world that hurt her.
The world that will still hurt her if it gets the chance.
She’s a warrior through and through, and I still believe that, even if she’s hurting right now. But it’s also true that she’s in a vulnerable state and not thinking clearly. Probably unarmed and dazed, wherever she is.
It would be easy for someone to hurt her like this. Easy for anything to happen, and I don’t want to take that chance.
“We’ll find her,” I tell them. “We’ll go find her.”
I’m not about to sit around and wait for her to come back when there’s a chance that maybe she won’t.
“Knox, come with me. Ash, Priest, you two stay here in case she comes back.”
If the other two want to argue that they should come too, they at least don’t waste their breath. They know it’s more important for people to be here in case River comes back on her own.