Page 14 of Surge

Chapter Four

"Three days to get your father to contact you? Who the fuck does he think he is, a capo?" Ivy was pacing in my bedroom as I typed an email to my father's company email address.

I didn't know what else to do since my calls to all the corporate offices went unanswered and my mother was still not contacting me. I felt so alone, even with my friends having my back.

My mom had always been there for me when I needed her. It wasn't often I had to turn to her, but this entire situation warranted the intervention of a parent.

"I just want to wake up from this nightmare." Tears filled my eyes. "What if they did something to my mom? Why would he ask where she was if he didn't know?"

Ivy sat down on the edge of my bed. "I don't know. If he's looking for your father for whatever reason, maybe he tried calling her, or showed up here looking for her?"

I shook my head and stood, going to the window. "Maybe I should call the police."

"They can't take you away and put you in foster care or some shit, can they?" She came to stand next to me at the window. We could see a faint sliver of ocean between the townhouses. "You're almost eighteen."

"I don't know." I knew deep down that I should call the police, but my mom had said she'd be back next week. There was a multitude of reasons she might not be responding to my texts and calls. She could have poor reception or lost her cell phone. She lost her phone at least once a year.

Going to the police would make it all too real.

"Have you looked in her office and room for numbers? She has to have documents somewhere since he's giving her money, right?" Ivy's face grew determined and she went to my door. "If you aren't going to look, I will. I don't like this at all."

I had already thought of snooping, but was putting it off. I wasn't the type of kid that went through my mom's stuff when she wasn't around. Just like she wasn't the type of mom that went through my stuff.

Of course, I never gave her any reason to snoop. Not that she'd find anything she didn't already know about if she did take a look around my room.

We started in the office that she seldom used. I sat down in the desk chair and looked at the photos of us over the years adorning the surface. I pulled open drawers and rifled through the contents, not finding much.

The files were filled with bills, receipts, and past tax returns; nothing with information about my father or his payments to her from what I could see.

"Did your mom have a recent boyfriend or anything?" Ivy finished opening and looking through some lower drawers on a bookshelf.

"You know how my mom is." Natalia Hernandez Moreno doesn't need a man. In my seventeen years, she hadn't brought any men home.

We left the office and entered my mom's bedroom. I didn't want to look in her nightstand drawers because I knew what I kept in mine, but we needed to look everywhere.

"Ew." Ivy slammed the drawer on the other side of the bed shut. "Do not look in this bottom drawer."

"I knew this was a bad idea." I opened the bottom drawer on the side I was on and frowned at the handgun and knife. "I didn't know my mom had a gun."

I picked up the knife and examined it. It looked like it was made of steel and the hilt had a swirling design made of abalone shell. It was gorgeous and should have been displayed, not shoved in a drawer.

"What was your mom going to do with that thing? Shank someone?" Ivy peered into the drawer. "Damn. Your mom doesn't seem like the type to shoot a gun."

I was too scared of accidently shooting myself to pick it up to see if it was real.

"Is there a type to own a gun?" I shut the drawer and set the knife on the top of the nightstand to grab later. "But you're right, I can't imagine her using it."

The closet was clean and organized. At first glance, nothing seemed amiss. I pulled on the top drawer of my mom's jewelry cabinet, not expecting it to open since it was usually locked. It was empty.

I frantically pulled out the other three drawers, finding all of them devoid of the extensive jewelry collection. A lot of my mom's jewelry had been semi-precious, but she did have diamond pieces passed down to her.

"All of her jewelry is gone."

"Did your mom take the shoe boxes with her?" Ivy had her back to me and was staring at the empty shelves.

I hadn't even noticed when we walked in. I rushed to the corner of the closet and knew as soon as I pulled the first container from the shelf that it was empty. I opened it up and confirmed that all of her purses were gone.

My mom had sold everything.

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