Page 2 of Lost
Chapter One
Sixteen years later
MALCOLM
She’s gone.
Snow crunches under my boots as I walk down the quiet sidewalk. There’s black tire marks on the street from where a vehicle must have screeched away, and blood in the snow.
“I found her knife,” Felix says softly, gazing down at the half hidden knife on the ground.
The only reason we’re here is because whoever took Hollis threw her purse out the window, and Felix was able to track her to downtown. Her purchases from today are strewn all over the ground, the bags trampled from the struggle.
My omega fought.It looks like she put up a big fight, yet no one witnessed it, because she’s gone. Surely, someone would have helped if they’d seen her?
“Where is she?!” Caleb screams, slamming out of his vehicle with Lars.
I have to tell her best friends in the world that she’s gone. When the screaming started in our heads through the bond, they were our first call.
Breathe. In and out. Don’t stop.
“It’s my fault,” Nova whispers, tears rolling and freezing on her face as she looks down at the blood. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think…”
“Think what, Nova?” Lars growls, stomping into her space with Caleb. I want to tell them to lay off, but I’m frozen in despair.
“That they’d take the wrong person,” she says. “I stayed away from the video cameras, having no real connection to this city outside of my clients. I didn’t think they’d take her!”
“Nova,” I rasp, forcing the ice around my heart to thaw. If she’s Hollis’ twin, the person that she’s sacrificed her entire fucking life for, then I need to be nice. Even though it feels like I’m dying. “It’s not your fault they took the wrong sister.”
Caleb drops his head back as he closes his eyes, his chest heaving.
“We’ll find her,” he growls. “She’s a fighter. Lars, call Cian. This will not go unpunished. They’re all dead.”
Brice is a sea of quiet desolation, but his blue eyes swing toward Caleb. Punishment sounds like music to my ears too.
“I can’t hear her screaming anymore,” Remy rasps. “Can you?”
“No,” I respond. “That doesn’t mean anything, though. If they knocked her out, we wouldn’t hear her. Add the distance, it makes sense. Who do you think took her?”
“My father,” she says, her gray-blue eyes desolate and stormy. “He’s been calling me, and I’ve been hiding in Minneapolis.”
“Why are you hiding?” Caleb growls, sending off a text to someone.
This means help. Hollis is important to more people than just us. Help is coming.
“He hurts me,” she says, shaking her head. “I have to be perfect, or he hurts me.”
“Fuck,” I say, though I don’t mean to. “If you’re Hollis’ sister, then he’s not your father, Nova.”
“Which means all the times that I’ve wished someone would save me from my life aren’t because I was being overdramatic,” she mutters.
My heart clenches for the girl who should have had a different life, but we have so many more things to worry about.
“How long until he realizes that Hollis isn’t you?” I ask.
“I’m constantly changing my appearance,” Nova explains. “Growing up, I had to wear contacts to cover my natural eye color, and they dyed my hair blonde as soon as they could. I never… I didn’t realize that it was because they needed to hide a stolen girl.”
“Nova, you’re Hollis’ sister. The eyes don’t lie. You could change everything else, but I would still know who you are,” Caleb says. “Shaw wants to come check the area. Is she wearing any type of tracking device that you know of?”
