I suppressed a groan. I was exhausted and wanted to get home to my fiancée.
“We already have three units at the scene, and I’ll be following you there.”
Ramirez was a K-9 unit; why did they want his dog, Crush, there? And what scene? “Wha—”
“I know you’re anxious to get there, but you know we’re doing everything we can for this.” The elevator was already moving but Ramirez kept stabbing at the ground-level button. “How are you holding up? You look really calm, are you in shock? Maybe you should let Gates drive.”
That seemed to snap Mason out of his thoughts. His head jerked up and his eyes widened. “Why would I need to drive?”
“And why would I be in shock?” My heart started racing as Ramirez started hitting the Open Doors button.
Ramirez gave both of us an awkward sympathetic look before ushering us out to the underground parking lot. “You weren’t informed?”
“Of what?” I was supposed to be the one in shock. So it had something to do with me. My parents, my— Oh God . . . “What happened?!”
“I’m sorry, I thought someone already told you, you were supposed to be informed already. I didn’t understand why I saw you two walking down the hall. I figured you would have already been there.” He mumbled to himself as he kept walking toward the lot. “Look, I’m sorry I’m the one who has to tell you this.” He stopped walking abruptly and turned to look at me. His expression was one I had seen so many times and had even had to use myself. My stomach dropped and it felt like time slowed as I waited for him to tell me one of fifty scenarios that were flashing through my mind. “A call came into dispatch about an hour ago. It was your fiancée, Ryan. The only thing that came from her end of the call was her saying her name, that someone had broken in—”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest. I took off running for my truck and had just gotten to the driver’s door when Mason slammed me into the side and ripped the keys from my hand. After barking at me to get in the passenger seat, he fired up the engine and peeled out of the lot.
“This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening, Mase, tell me this isn’t f**king happening!”
“Kash—”
“Damn it!” I roared, and punched at the dashboard. “I don’t even know if she’s okay, Mason! What was Ramirez saying, did he say if she’s okay?! Is she—oh God. Rach, baby, please be alive,” I whispered, and slumped into my seat, raking my hands over my face.
I heard Mason on the phone calling into dispatch and asking questions about what happened, but I couldn’t focus on his exact words or the muffled response coming from the dispatcher. I just kept praying over and over again that she was okay. I could deal with our place being broken into. I could replace our things. But I couldn’t replace Rachel. Ramirez came up next to us running code three and pulled in front of us so we could follow him safely with his lights and sirens going.
Mason nudged my arm and I snapped my head to the left to look at him. “Sorry, you weren’t responding.” He looked quickly back and forth between me and Ramirez’s Tahoe in front of us, his face solemn. “They don’t know if she’s alive.” I sucked in air quickly, and Mason continued, loud enough so I would listen. “But there’s no blood. So just focus on that, Kash.”
“W-what?! No . . . what do you mean?”
He took a deep breath and gripped the steering wheel. “From what units at the scene—uh, your place—are saying, whoever broke in . . . they, uh, they took Rachel.”
Mason was saying something else, but I couldn’t hear anything past the blood rushing through my ears. This had to be a nightmare. There was no way something like this was happening to us again. I grabbed my phone and called her number, praying that all this was a misunderstanding and they had the wrong girl, the wrong address. It rang until her voice mail picked up. I quickly hung up and called again with the same result.
By the time her voice mail came on the second time, we were pulling up to our house and I didn’t wait for Mason to stop; I threw open the door and sprinted past the neighbors standing around in our cul-de-sac and ducked under the crime-scene tape before rushing into the house. The front door was hanging like it had been kicked in, and my first thought was, No one heard that happening and came to help her? It had been barely eight in the morning when Mason and I had started to head home; someone had to have been awake, or at least woken up when all this happened.
Officers were trying to talk to me, but all I could see was that other than the front door being kicked in, the front of our house looked completely normal. Save for the dozens of officers and detectives who were walking in and out of it. Someone tapped my shoulder but I walked quickly to the hallway, barely paying attention to the other officers taking pictures of our bedroom, which looked like a hurricane had just gone through it. I turned into the bathroom and went to the large closet. We had a faux wall set up that was really just flimsy material. But with all the clothes around it, it looked legit, and I’d put it up for times just like this. Rachel had joked that I was going overboard, and at the time I’d agreed I probably was. But now, I hoped like hell she’d used it and that I would find her behind it. Alive.
Opening the closet door, I flipped on the light, and my heart sank when I saw the drag marks on the carpet. I called one of the officers over to take pictures before I walked in there. The female officer snapped photos and I stepped in cautiously.