Page 156 of On the Double

Three months.

Three long fucking months with no sleep and even fewer answers. I was losing my fucking mind, desperate to find Harper. Was she okay? Was she safe? Had she made it to wherever she was going without getting in another accident? How was her neck?

Fuck, I couldn’t stand that I didn’t even know if she was eating enough. I was going out of my mind with worry, and my teammates were really starting to look at me like I’d lost my mind.

I slumped in my chair and rubbed my hand over my eyes. I was fucking tired as hell. I needed sleep, but it wouldn’t come as long as she was out there all alone. What I needed was another fucking cup of coffee. Then I’d clean up the mess and start over.

I was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter as I waited for the coffee to brew when I heard the front door open. When that first started happening—when my teammates would let themselves in without knocking—I hoped and prayed it would be Harper. That shehad come back to me. But I stopped wishing for that after the first month.

“Did you sleep at all?”

I scrubbed a hand down my face and turned to Lock. “Another dead end.”

He looked at the papers on the floor and whistled. “Did a tornado come through?”

“I lost my last lead. I don’t know how to find her,” I admitted, my voice coming out as nothing more than a rough croak.

“Well, you’re not going to find her with that attitude,” he said, bending over to shuffle the papers around. He stared at one in particular, then added it to the stack. “When was the last time you slept?”

“Three months ago.”

He shot me a sardonic look. “Seriously.”

I shrugged. “I fall asleep every now and then.”

“Cash is wondering when the hell you’re getting back to work.”

I turned back to the pot and poured a cup of coffee. “There is no work. Not until I find her. There are no fucking jobs—nothing as important as finding her.”

He didn’t have to say a thing, but the look on his face clearly expressed what was on his mind. If I hadn’t fucked it all up that night, I wouldn’t be in this position now. I took a sip of coffee and slumped down in the chair at my table. I had a map on the wall of the United States and I’d crossed out all the locations I’d tracked down and failed to find her.

A filing cabinet was set up off to my right, filled with color-coded file folders of all the searches that had ended in no-man’s land. I was quickly losing my shit, snapping at anyone who looked at me the wrong way. But worse was the utter failure I felt on a daily basis in my gut. I had let her down in the worst way, but my biggest fault was that I wasn’t able to do the one thing I was trained to do.

“When was the last time you ate something?” Lock asked.

I frowned, trying to remember. Coffee had become the only thing I consumed most days. In fact, if I didn’t have it, my hands shook from the withdrawal of caffeine.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

I shook my head. “I should really…try and figure something else out.”

“What you need is breakfast. How can you think when there’s nothing in your stomach?”

I didn’t want to leave, but when he hauled me out of my chair, I didn’t have much choice but to follow. I walked out to the truck with him, allowing him to drive since I was barely able to walk anymore. The second I got in the truck and relaxed back in the seat, I felt my whole body start to shut down. I didn’t want to allow it, but I didn’t know how to prevent it.

The soft rocking of the truck soon lulled me to sleep and I didn’t wake up until Lock shook me awake at the diner in town. I looked at the clock and then at him with a raised eyebrow. An hour had passed.

He just shrugged it off. “You needed some sleep, even if it was only an hour.”

I got out and made my way into the diner, surprised when Brock and Scottie were already waiting. I immediately grabbed a mug for coffee, but Lock snatched it out of my hands.

“I think you’ve had enough of that for now.” He signaled to the waitress. “Orange juice for this one. Keep ‘em coming.”

“I need fucking coffee,” I said, yawning wide.

“What you need is something other than caffeine running through your veins.”

He sat down in the chair beside me and watched me like I was going to break at any second. In fact, they were all staring at me.

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