Page 63 of Tangled up in You

TANGLED IN THE SHEETS

PIPER STRICKLAND

PROLOGUE

AIDEN SINN

6 Days Earlier

Kicking in the door of the tiny trailer did little to quench the anger inside of me. The smell hit me before anything else. Stepping inside, I found the conditions of the mobile home deplorable. I wouldn’t have let my dog live in such filth.

“What the fuck?” Micah, one of my best friends, said as he looked around the house in disgust.

“Laylah, baby?” I yelled as I kicked some trash aside.

“Baby?” I called again. Still we were met with silence.

“You’re sure this was the right address?”

“Yeah. 162 Second Street. She has to be here. I’ll go to the right and you take the left,” I ordered.

“There’s nothing outside. I couldn’t even find her car,” Justin, my other best friend, said as he stepped into the house. “Shit.”

“This is bad,” Micah voiced.

I rubbed my forehead. “If we don’t find her here, we’ll go to the police again.” Not that the police had been helpful. They’dbrushed us off since our first call six days ago when Laylah had gone radio silent. Justin placed his big hand on my back. “We’re going to find her, Aiden. It’s going to be okay.”

His words were the balm my weary soul needed. I was so thankful for him and Micah. Laylah too. The four of us had been inseparable since we’d all landed in the same foster home as kids and the last week without Laylah had shown us we were only operating at seventy-five percent without her.

“I’m going to go down the hall and toward the back, you guys check that way,” I said, walking away. Swallowing the emotion in my throat, I looked through the piles of trash, hoping to see any sign of her, and beating myself up as I searched.

We should have tried harder to stop her from coming to this hellhole. We should have come with her.

It took me far longer than it should have to navigate down the cluttered hall. Each step brought more and more anger. How could anyone live in such filth? How could anyone expose their daughter to such filth? I scoffed to myself. Probably with the same audacity her father used when he called her and begged her to come back home and help him. He’d sworn he was doing better and in a twelve-step program.

He’d fucking lied. Laylah had arrived a week earlier and immediately told us she was cutting her trip short. She didn’t tell us why, just that her Dad wasn’t doing any better. She’d begged us not to come get her, and promised us she’d be home in forty-eight hours. She just wanted to leave some flowers on her mother’s grave. We’d agreed against our better judgment.

Seven days after that phone call, we still couldn’t find her. We’d gone to the address he’d originally written her from. Apparently he’d never lived there. After talking to over a hundred people in the small town and checking several other locations, we’d finally gotten a break.

“Laylah?” I flipped over a desk chair.

“Laylah?” I heard Micah yell.

“Baby?” I pulled back a computer desk. It broke in my hands as roaches scattered everywhere.

Thud.

I froze.

Thud.

“Laylah?”

Thud. Thud.

“Baby, do it again for me! I’m coming!”

Thud.

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