Page 4 of Four Times Saved

"Is Lily with you?" Eric shouted in my ear.

"What? Why would Lily be with me? You know I'm still in Hawaii. Are you drunk or something?" I asked.

"No, I'm not drunk!" He gasped.

"What are you doing speaking to me when you could be..." I began to ask, but I was cut off by earth-shattering news.

"Something terrible has happened to Lily!" He yelled.

My legs stopped moving. They were frozen in place or they could've fallen off, because I doubted I was still standing on solid ground.

"What happened? Tell me what happened? Why haven't I heard from Matt and Ethan?" I grabbed my chest as the fresh air stopped reaching my lungs. Eric blubbered on. He was barely making any sense and my head was on the verge of exploding. "Slow down. Fuck! What happened?"

"I can't. I have to do something. Check the security footage." He hung up and the earth caved in on me, the buildings warped as if they were rushing toward me, ready to swallow me up. My knees knocked and my legs wobbled on the way back to my car, which I slumped against.

Searching for the next available flight out, I swore when it was almost twenty-four hours away. Booking it, I hopped into my car, taking steady breaths and mustering up some focus for the road. Thank goodness the hotel wasn't far away.

Jumping out of the rental, I headed straight to my room, unsure whether or not I'd even closed the car door on the way out, not caring if I had. After watching the security footage, I threw everything I had in my luggage and sent my employer a message, quitting in the middle of what was primed to be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

"I'm on my way, Lily." I muttered to myself and headed to the airport nearly twenty-four hours early, losing my mind with every damn second that passed.

Chapter 2

Matt

"Accusing me of putting Lily's life in danger. As if I would take that risk. Who the hell did Eric think he was talking to?" I muttered to myself while pulling into the garage.

Locking the car, I stepped through the door into the house, while bringing up the security footage on my phone.

"Ethan! You here?" I called out as I stared at the black screen.

Eric freaked me out so much on the drive over that I closed the app and reopened it several times before realizing that it wasn't just a blank screen, but footage of the house in complete darkness. What the hell? Okay, now my palms started sweating. Thank goodness for the 'Switch to Night Vision' mode too, or I'd have wasted even more time thinking that the app was malfunctioning.

A darkness, like a shadow, moved over me as the footage became clearer, in black and white. No one was home. Shit. Throat dry and fingers shaking, I tapped to view every room. Eric was right. Something was definitely wrong.

"Ethan!" I called out again without looking up from the phone. My focus was on rewinding the footage and my beating pulse swelled in my head as I sped up the feed and found hours of nothingness.

"What?" Ethan responded next to me and I yelped, almost dropping the phone. I didn't hear him enter the room.

Bringing my eyes to his, I swallowed.

His brows pinched together and he frowned. "What's wrong with you?"

My tongue was heavy and bile rose up to my throat as a wave of nausea threatened to knock me over. For a few seconds I just stared at him, screaming at him in my head, while my mouth refused to move.

Lily couldn't be missing. This had to be a sick, twisted joke.

Ethan

Matt's skin was so pale, he'd gone chalk white. I stopped drying the sweat from my chest and arms, clenching the towel in my fist. There was turmoil in his stare and my heart crashed to my feet.

"What happened?!" I barked, shaking him out of his temporary stupor.

His eyes blinked a few times before he turned on his heels and marched back into the garage. "We need to go over to Lily's place."

That's all he said before jumping in his car and I jumped in behind him in nothing but sweatpants and sneakers. There was a ball of tension lodged at the base of my throat as he reversed so hard and stomped on his brakes, our bodies flew forward into the dashboard before I could get my seatbelt on. I knew something devastating had to have happened for him to be driving like this and it had to do with Lily.

Only the worst possible scenarios came to mind and my voice left me in a shriek. "What the fuck's happened?! Tell me!"

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