Page 79 of Vicious

I text Drake and Hunter quickly to let them know that something happened, but I don’t expect much. It’s too early for either of them, and Hunter wouldn’t dump his girl without notice just to come help me.

I’d be more resentful about that, except I know that if I had to choose between May and my friends, I’d pick May.

I head to the garage and get into my car, then I stare at the steering wheel for a few long moments. May must have gone to Simon. She wouldn’t have abandoned him.

I try to reassure myself that she hasn’t completely disappeared, that I know her and I understand how she thinks. I get the car moving and head towards the shitty neighborhood where they live. It’s early enough in the morning that traffic is still light, but I’m still impatient about the entire drive.

May will be there. She has to be there.

The drive is familiar, one I’ve done often enough in the past. I used to sometimes drive by the neighborhood just to stare at May through the window of her room. She’d often left the curtains and the window itself open, probably to let both light and air in, and I’d managed to observe for an hour or two before forcing myself to get back to my real life.

As I pull onto her street, though, I find dread pooling in my stomach. I can already see from here that her car is missing.

Maybe Simon sold it, I say to myself.

I’m not fooling anyone, though.

I park where her car normally is. I’m not surprised when nobody answers my knock on the door. I rattle the doorknob a few times, and on the third, the door opens.

May needs better security than this.

She needs a working lock, and at least three deadbolts, and another padlock on it besides.

Of course, none of that matters because no one’s there. I shout for May again, but it’s as useless as it had been at my house. No one’s here.

I find her phone on her desk, but it’s dead as a doornail. Of course she wouldn’t have dared to bring that with her either, though I wish she had. Drake’s tech guy could’ve tracked her down in a heartbeat.

I try to think like her, to come up with an answer to the most important question swirling through my brain: where is she?

She took the cash, presumably so she could get home, and she and her precious Baba have fled. To where, though?

I force myself to think. May wouldn’t have gone to the police. She’d know better. She doesn’t have connections like I do, either, so it’d be her and her father against the world. She’d have gone somewhere I wouldn’t expect, which leaves… a lot of places in New Bristol.

Fuck.

“Fuck!” I shout, kicking at her bed.

I’m about to turn and walk away when I see something beneath the bed—a box without a label—and my curiosity overwhelms me. I pull it out, and my breath catches as I realize it’s full of the gifts I’d sent to her.

She kept them.

Not all of them, I quickly realize. She doesn’t have any of the jewelry I’d sent her during my early days of courting her, back when I hadn’t known my Ah-May as well as I do now. She’d probably pawned it all to pay for rent or one of her precious Baba’s debts, which is a thought that pisses me off even more.

No chocolate boxes, either, but I can hope she ate those.

One thorned rose, which makes my heart thud even harder. I wish I could’ve seen the look on her face when I’d had the lavish arrangement of roses sent to her workplace, to see how she’d reacted when she’d realized I’d really just sent her the thorns.

The canister of expensive tea I’d procured from China is half-empty. The empty box for the slip-proof shoes I’d sent her from work is there, too, along with the box for the cell phone I’d sent her when hers had broken.

There are a few other things in there, but the fact that she has even one of those things is a pleasant surprise.

So why did she leave?

I let out another frustrated cry and storm out of the bedroom. The rest of the house yields no more hints as to her whereabouts. Simon’s closet is half empty too, so he must be with her.

Simon is the weak link. He’s always been the weak link.

I check my watch. It’s almost 7 a.m. now. That’s close enough to morning.

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