Page 37 of Undertow

“Oh, my god. Hayden. Something happened. Something’s wrong. I have to go home right away. Oh, my god,” I say, my heart nearly giving out when I get to the one that reads, “Mom, I think there’s someone in the house.”

“Hayden,” I scream, finally getting his attention.

He’s still on the phone, but he looks at me, wide-eyed.

“We have to go. Something’s wrong, something happened. Parker—I missed a million messages from her. My god, I should have been home.”

Helpless tears spring to my eyes. I haven’t even finished reading the texts. Illogically, I’m too afraid to. Too afraid of what they’ll say. I don’t even know if she’s okay.

“I’m going tokillthem,” I growl, choking on sobs at the same time. “Please, we have to go now.”

Hayden must see how panicked I am as I push up off the beach and shakily get to my feet. He stands, too, but he’s not in enough of a hurry.

My leg muscles have melted again, making it hard to move quickly, but I’ll crawl to the car if I have to. “Please, hurry, we have to go.”

“Gemma.” He grabs my arm to steady me, but I try to shrug him off so I can run up the beach toward the car.

“We have togo. Parker thinks there’s someone in the house. I have to—she called me. I need to call her back. We need to call the police.”

He hasn’t moved. He’s still holding the phone in one hand, my arm in the other. “Gemma, calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down! Let me go. My daughter needs me, and I’m not there!”

“Parker is fine,” he promises.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

His voice is so calm while I’m so frantic. It takes a few seconds for that to register and for me to notice the grim look on his face.

Any other time, I would care enough to ask, but if Parker might be in danger, or if she was in danger before and I’m too late to help her, then nothing else matters. Nothing else will ever matter.

“Please,” I say tearfully. “I have to get to my daughter.”

“Parker is okay,” he assures me. “I’ll take you to her right now.”

“Why are you so calm?”

Dread darkens his features. He looks down, swallows, then looks back at me, but something is different. He no longer looks like a man confident anything in the world he wants will be his. He looks like… like he understands what I’ve known all along.

We areimpossible.

My stomach rocks, but I don’t understand why. My instincts click the pieces together before my tormented mind can. “Who was on the phone?”

“The first call was Landon.”

“And the second?”

“A friend of mine at the station.”

“The station?”

He closes his eyes and nods.

“The… police station?”

He nods again.

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