Page 160 of Headstrong Like Us
“Is it the media?” Maximoff asks me, picking up our pace.
I’m unsure. “No one is giving more intel.” I’m on the same frequency as Epsilon and Alpha too, but they’re not divulging shit.
I fit my earpiece in my ear, and we curve around a pomegranate tree.
Four men come into view, huddled together on the path.The parents.Lo, Ryke, Connor, and Garrison talk animatedly. Flashlights beam in their fists. Well, only three carry them.
Garrison is using his cellphone light.
“Moffy, Farrow!” Lo waves us over, seeing us approach.
We enter the late-night huddle.
Maximoff adjusts our baby on his waist. “What’s going on?”
Lo has a murderous gaze in the dark. “When’s the last time you spoke to Kinney or any of the younger girls?”
The girl squad.These four men are the fathers to those four girls, and they’re all protective of their youngest daughters.
Maximoff shakes his head and turns to me. “Dinner, right?”
“Dinner,” I nod.
“Fucking A,” Ryke curses.
The Epsilon lead suddenly blows out my fucking eardrum. “No one freak the fuck out! Calm your crybaby asses! We’ve got shit to sort out, and we don’t need any of you pussyfooting around!”
Fuckinghell.I spin the knob fast, decreasing the volume.
Jon Sinclair took the panic on comms from a one to a twelve. And I don’t need anyone to tell me to calm my ass.
Garrison reaches into his pocket, and Connor delivers the news. “No one has seen the girls since dinner. Rose went to check on them before bed, and they weren’t in their room.”
“What?” Maximoff says in a growl and gestures towards the sea. “They couldn’t have just disappeared.”
“Security is so fucking tight,” I tell them. “No one could’ve come in and taken them.” I hop over the wordkidnapbecause Ryke looks like a freight train about to slam into brick wall.
“We know,” Connor says.
“They snuck out,” Lo declares, his voice edged. “Do you know how long they’ve beenbeggingus to have their own villa here?Oh but I’m fourteen, Dad. You just need to trust me—what the fuck are you doing?” He cuts himself off when he sees a pack of cigarettes in Garrison’s hands.
Garrison blinks. “I’m knitting a sweater.” He puts a cigarette to his lips, and Lo plucks it out and chucks it across the path.
“Smoking’s not helping anything,” Lo snaps.
“My kid is out who-the-hell-knows-where at one a.m. on anisland,” Garrison refutes. “Smoking is helping me.”
“Fuck off, both of you,” Ryke swears. “We need to talk to security and start looking for them.” His hard eyes narrow on me and my earpiece. “What are they saying?”
Okay, as hilarious as it’d be, I’m not repeating what Sinclair shrieked. “It’s quiet, so the leads are most likely talking and waiting to tell the team.” I straddle the line between being a part of these families and being a bodyguard. And I need to join SFO soon.
Connor checks his phone. “The longer they’re in the city without bodyguards, the worse it’ll be. We have to find them as soon as possible.”
Villa doors start opening up, famous ones and more bodyguards spilling onto balconies, some onto the paths.
Everyone is waking.
* * *
