Page 50 of The Moments You Miss
No.
Zack
It’s not as if I’m not used to Cameron going off grid. He’s done this before, and we’ve always had a plan in place for when he’s going off radar. I know the two of them were heading off the grid, and that’s all I know. I hardly sleep as it is these days, with everything going on with Sam– but that’s neither here nor there.
I scour my computer for something, literally anything. His fucking obsession with his old ass car, not having a low jack on it. His phone is dead, even his emergency phone. Leyla was with Cameron, so I know that he’d fucking cover his tracks, and all this is doing for me is fucking with my already fucked sleep schedule. I even scour Hazel’s phone; she hasn’t heard a single thing from Leyla or Cameron either.
I try to make my way into Leyla’s phone to see what was going on before she turned it off, or it died. The two of them last pinged in Pittsburgh. Their last known location was the last fucking thing onmy mind, thinking that something could happen to them, but I won’t let myself go there yet. I’m shocked out of my thoughts by the buzzing of my personal phone.
An unknown number.
Except if it’s Cam or even Slice now, I never answer it on the first call. The phone rang once. Then again. And again. I let it go to voicemail.
A bell chimes on my computer. I broke through her phone’s wall at last, and I immediately begin to scour through it, raking through the information. A shallow intake of breath sounds from me when my phone starts to fucking ring again. I open her messaging app, that’s when it blinks onto the screen—
Leyla’s last message was just three words:We’re not safe.
“Hello?” My resolve is set in place, unmoving as I keep things one level. “Who is this?”
“Hi there, my name is Detective Hall from the Pennsylvania State Police. I’m sorry to call so early, but— is this Mr. Blake? Zackary Blake?” The woman’s voice on the other end is clipped, short, but professional. Clearly not the first time the woman’s making a phone call like this.
My stomach drops. I fucking know that something is wrong, and I damn well know what this woman was about to say. I let my guard down just slightly. “What happened?”
There is a pause. She is carefully deciding her words. I could hear it. I could fucking hear it in the way her voice softens slightly, like that made anything she was about to say easier.
“There was an incident reported earlier this morning,” she says. “A vehicle matching the description of the car registered toCameron Curtis was found abandoned and burned off a rural road outside Fox Chapel Cliffs.”
My entire world tilts.
“Burned?” I repeat to the woman like I didn’t understand English.
“Yes,” she says hesitantly. “I’m very sorry to inform you… there were human remains inside. A male and a female. Both burned beyond visual identification. But the license plate matches the vehicle registration for the vehicle Cameron Curtis and Leyla Clarkson were last seen in.”
I can’t speak. Can’t breathe. What the fuck did those two get themselves into this time? I told them not to fucking do anything stupid, not to attract any unnecessary attention to themselves.
“I know this is difficult,” the woman on the other end of the line continues, “but we’ll need someone to provide dental records or DNA, in case the medical examiner can’t make a definitive match.”
“No,” I say. It comes out fast. Reflexive. “It’s not them. You said you couldn’t ID the bodies.” As Leyla’s last messages come back to the front of my mind.
We’re not safe.
“Seeing as you were listed as Mr. Curtis’s next of kin, and Leyla had Mr. Curtis listed as hers, we aren’t sure of who else to contact. We are very sorry to tell you this, but Cameron and Leyla are dead. We will be investigating, but it just seems as though the two of them were in a car accident, and the car itself caught fire. If it’s any consolation, it doesn’t seem like either of them had survived the initial crash before the fire.”
I don’t think I am actually hearing a fucking word this woman says to me. She continues with things that I probably should be paying attention to. My world begins to fragment, and I don’t know what comes over me, the man of logic and data.
“They’re not dead.”
Silence.
“They’re not,” I say again, because if I stop saying it out loud, the truth might start to take shape.
Another pause from the woman on the other end. Then as if realizing then and there I am not going to accept her spewing bullshit: “We’ll keep you updated.”
The call ends. I stay sitting there the phone cold in my hand, disbelief burns through me like acid. My computer screen still blinking updates in front of me. The clock on my microwave is flashing at 10:21. The world doesn’t fucking feel real. I feel myself slipping into that dark place I so often visit.
Leyla.
Cameron.
Dead?
No. No fucking way.
If this was over, I’d feel it.
And right now? All I felt was a lie.
