Page 15 of His to Save

It felt wrong to eat it at Rand’s table. Mom sent me to the bathroom to “dry it up” and called me a brat on the way home, which really hurt. But I guess I deserved it.

If Dad would have been there, he would have said he taught me better than to be so rude. Guess I’m just a disappointment all around.

Any dreams of having a cool, older friend are out the window, too. I’m sure Atlas thinks I’m a little crybaby. I definitely came off like one. I guess the real question is which is worse—being a crybaby or being sad and socially inept?

Humiliated, Nora

CHAPTER 4

ATLAS

The sound of my phone ringing pulls me out of Nora’s despair. After two more cups of coffee, I retreated back to my room and fell face-first into her diary.

Reading our introduction, and the events that led up to it, leaves a hollow feeling in my chest. The kid’s been through more shit than anyone her age should have.

Swiping my thumb over the screen, I blindly accept the call. “Hello.”

“Atlas, man,” Ellis’s voice trickles through the line. “It’s not good.”

With those three words, he has all of my attention. “Tell me,” I demand, jumping up from my desk chair, I begin pacing back and forth in front of my window. “Just… tell me.” My voice breaks at the end, as I beg my oldest friend not to sugarcoat it.

“The place is totally trashed.”

“Trashed how?” I ask, coming to an abrupt stop. My dad’s a lot of things, but a slob isn’t one of them. He was always damn near militant in his need for cleanliness.

“I don’t know…” He pauses, and I can almost picture him surveying the space, his eyes narrowed and his feet planted wide. “Like someone tossed the place but didn’t take anything.”

“What do you mean?” My voice comes out steady, which is a small miracle given the Class VI rapids of conflicting emotions crashing against my insides.

“The furniture’s all a mess, the dressers have been ransacked. But that’s not all.”

Icy dread crystallizes in my veins. Call it a premonition or something, but I know the next words out of his mouth aren’t going to be good.

“You said Nora lived with your dad, right?”

“Yeah,” I croak, a fresh wave of dread sending acid into my throat.

“You’re sure?”

“Say what you’re going to say,” I snap, regretting it instantly. Ellis is doing me a favor and damn sure doesn’t deserve my vitriol.

“There’s hardly any food in the house. One of the spare bedrooms appears to be an office and the other is jam-packed withjunk.Boxes of paper—newspapers and shit.”

“What are you saying, Ellis?”

“I’m saying she doesn’t have a bedroom here…”

“I sense abutcoming.” I swallow roughly, trying and failing to keep my cool.

A bead of sweat drips down my spine as I try to assemble the puzzle of my dad’s disappearance with the pieces Ellis has given me.

“You ever been down in the basement?”

“Not since I lived at home, why?”

“He’s got a lock on the door.” Ellis heaves out a breath. “A lock on the outside. He wasn’t keeping someone out, man…”

“He was keeping someone in.” My knees give out and the floor rushes up to meet me as my thoughts tumble and spiral, twisting and tangling together into an undistinguishable mess of anguish and disbelief. “Surely he wasn’t keeping her?—”

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