My anxiety peaks at the fifth ring. Pick up!
The line clicks. “Hi, it’s Daisy. Not Duck and not Duke. Definitely not Buchanan. I’m a Calloway. If you haven’t misdialed then leave your name after the beep, and I’ll call back when I return from the moon. Don’t wait around. It may take a while.” BEEEP.
I cut the line off rather than leave her a scathing message. She’s probably just talking to someone at the bar or something…oh God.
“She’s not texting me back,” Katy grumbles. A couple of the other girls say they can’t reach her either.
“That’s not like her,” Harper says, her brows cinching in worry. “She’s a fast texter.”
“Do you think she got Natalie Holloway’ed?” Katy whisper-yells.
“You did not just use her name as a verb,” Cleo chastises.
Ryke returns and throws a wad of bills on the table. His pissed and worried expression unsettles my stomach, a combination that I do not like right now. “Girls.” He motions for all of them to rise. “Leave your drinks. We have to call a cab.”
I shoot up from the table and walk briskly beside Ryke as we go to the street to hail multiple cabs. “What happened?” I ask. “Where is she?” Cars swerve in and out of the long, touristy strip, and yellow taxi vans pull to the side to collect us. The air is thick with humidity, and the palm trees jut up from the grassy center median, leaning crookedly. Even amid a supposed tropical paradise, something has to go wrong.
He rubs the back of his neck. “The hostess said she saw her leave with a man—”
That’s all I hear. I turn to bolt down the sidewalk, about to run and scream her name at the top of my lungs.
Ryke grabs my arm and tugs me back. “Before you go call the fucking Coast Guard,” he says roughly, “I think I might know where she is.”
“How?” I ask, fear poking me in the lungs.
He motions for the first group of girls to climb into the nearest van. “Get in,” he tells them. “Tessa, you too.” The Katy Perry girl pouts, obviously hoping to ride in the same taxi as him. But from what Ryke told me, she is the one he wants to stay far, far away from.
“Ryke!” I shout. I need answers. Daisy is my baby sister. The girl who trailed Rose and me like a little shadow. We pretended to believe in Santa Claus for five extra years just for her. I can’t lose her to Mexican drug lords or kidnappers or rapists or fucking anything. Not on my watch. I’d do more than call the Coast Guard. I’d get the Marines, the Army, the Air Force, para-fucking-troopers. I’d have twenty choppers flying around the country for her. Maybe that’s excessive and they have better things to do. But I don’t care.
“Get in first,” he tells me, motioning to the last taxi. I climb in after he gives the address to the first and second drivers. Harper sits to my left. And then Cleo jumps in and squishes to my right. How the hell did I get sandwiched between them?
Ryke takes the passenger seat by the driver. “Follow those cabs,” he tells him. “Quickly.” And the van speeds off.
Cleo leans forward, her elbow digging into my thigh. “Is she okay?” she asks Ryke, sticking her head in between the seats.
I’m wondering the same thing, Ryke. I need some info here.
“The hostess said the guy she walked out with is a local travel agent. She gave me a list of spots he takes tourists to.”
“So she hasn’t been kidnaped?” Harper says.
“Not until he realizes who she is,” Cleo adds.
I shoot them both a glare. “Not helping.” My stomach sinks and knots. I stare up at Ryke in the front seat. “How do you know which spot he took her to?”
“I have a feeling—”
“A feeling?” I snap. “Ryke, she’s missing, and you barely know her—”
“I know her enough,” he says. “She’s fucking impetuous and daring, a little too bold and way too fucking fearless.”
That sounds about right.
“Trust me, Lily.” He cranes his neck over his shoulder to look at me, and Cleo backs up a little, leaning against her seat again. “I promise that I’ll find her. I won’t let anything happen to that girl, okay?” Confidence and determination pulses in his eyes. I just hope he chose the correct place. I’d rather not chase her around Mexico to find that the tour guide had kidnapped her after all.
I nod once, and Cleo actually takes my hand and squeezes lightly. Compassion—something I’m not used to from people. Especially girls.