Page 10 of Kidnapped

“Ever and Atlas,” I reply bluntly, knowing that I don’t need to give him any more information.

“Got it,” Cash replies immediately. The situation affects us all in different ways; he internalizes everything and checks in with our contacts daily, not that he knows that I know he does that; I get mad, and I can’t hide it. In fact, when I get like this, I usually end up in a fight.

“Get anything from them?” I ask, changing the subject and trying to distract myself from thoughts of Ever and Atlas.

“Well, they definitely know more than they’re letting on. What I can't tell is if they’re not telling us because they’re trying to protect Aurora or themselves.” Cash says, frowning.

“I’m going to guess that they’re more trying to protect themselves than they are her,” I reply, somewhat harshly but we’ve seen it before. In these situations, when something illegal is involved, most of the time, the so-called friends protect themselves before they protect their friend who is in trouble or being questioned. I continue, “Which means they most likely took whatever she took and are fucking lucky that they aren’t in the hospital with their friend.”

Cash sighs and swipes his hand through his hair, “You’re right. I’m not sure if we could maybe get them to talk individually or . . .”

“Excuse me,” a worried voice interrupts Cash’s sentence.

We both turn around, and I’m actually unsurprised to see the girl who was frowning and standing behind her friends.

“Hey, sorry I didn’t catch your name before; you’re one of Aurora’s friends, right?” Cash asks, his charming smile back on his face.

“Yes, and it’s Rachel,” she replies; she’s extremely softly spoken and obviously cautious about talking to us, but her shoulders are drawn back, and there’s a fire in her eyes that none of her friends had. She's got a backbone, and I instantly like her for that.

“How can we help?” I ask, sensing that she needs a little bit of a prompt before she’s ready to talk to us, but also aware that we’re on somewhat of a time crunch since the hallways are soon going to be full of people wanting to get to class and it’s going to make talking without being seen or listened to a lot more difficult.

I’m assuming that she’d like to talk to us without anyone else realizing that she’s talking to us. Otherwise, she would’ve spoken to us in front of her friends.

“They lied to you before, they’ve been lying since she went in the ambulance, and it’s not fucking helping anyone,” she spits, with more fire than I thought she had.

“Tell us then, all we want to do is help,” Cash replies honestly.

She nods, “Everyone knows what you do, what you’re capable of, that’s why I’m telling you. You’ll fix it, right? You’ll stop more kids from taking this drug? I’m not against having a joint or something at a party, but this drug is fucking dangerous, really fucking dangerous. The other two girls that were with me a minute ago took exactly the same thing, the same amount andeverything, and they’re here and not in the hospital. I don’t know if she had a bad reaction or a bad pill or what, but it was fucking terrifying. Almost as soon as she took it she dropped to the floor and started convulsing, and those two fucking idiots didn’t want to call for help, fortunately, I’ve never been one to listen to other people and something didn’t sit right with me, so I didn’t take it like they did.”

Chapter Eight

Jensen

Ishare a look with Cash, she obviously has a lot to say and we’re running out of time.

“Why don’t we head outside? The hallways are going to fill with kids any minute now, and then you can tell us properly what happened without being rushed and potentially forgetting something important,” Cash suggests.

She looks nervous as she replies, “Won't I get in trouble for skipping class?”

I shake my head and smile, “No, one of us will drop you back to your class; the teacher won't question you at all.”

“Sweet,” she replies, “okay, lead the way.”

We quickly make our way out of the building, and Cash leads to the parking lot. I figure it is probably because he thinks that she would feel more comfortable here rather than in the woodsor on the playing field, which are both far away from the school, this way if there was a need for it, which there isn’t, but if there was, she could run back to the school quickly and easily.

From the lessening tension in her shoulders, he picked the right place.

“Alright, first things first, do you know what they’re calling the drug?” I ask.

“Candy,” she replies immediately.

“Seriously?” I ask, “They’re aiming it at high school kids then; I mean, they’ve got to be with a name like that; it makes it seem a lot more innocent than it actually is.”

Cash

Inod in agreement, “Yeah, it looks like it. Where did you get it from?”

“There was a guy, he was a couple of years older than us, probably around your age, he offered it to us. I think he was from Tomlinson.”

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