Missing Hart (33 page)

Me: I agree. Today?

Dillon: It’s a date. Meet you on my bed at noon for a picnic talk. I’ll bring drinks and dessert if you stop and get sandwiches.

Me: Consider it done. I’ll see you there-can’t wait!

I was surprised by a knock on my door twenty minutes before Delilah was due to arrive. She tended to always be right on time, so I assumed that she was here early because she was hungry. Swinging the door open with a smile I said, “I guess my niece or nephew is hungry…”

My words came to a halt when I saw that it was Tally on my doorstep and I realized that she had a gun.

Waving it in a gesture that told me to step back she smirked at me. “That’s right bitch, it’s time to pay up. Turn around and walk to the couch.”

I was shaking like a leaf but I wasn’t stupid or crazy enough to argue. Turning slowly I made to go to the couch, but then I felt an explosive pain on my head and I was falling toward the floor as blackness overtook me.

Delilah

I was almost to Dominique’s when I felt her panic take hold of me and my heart started to race. Something, or someone, was scaring my sister and I pressed the accelerator to the floor and drove as if being a racecar drive were my job.

She had been hiding something from me lately, but whatever it was, it wasn’t bad. She was happier than I’d seen her in years and Spencer and I both were thrilled to see it. I couldn’t hone in on what was wrong because I couldn’t feel anything else other than panic and darkness. It scared the hell out of me to have the connection go dark because it reminded me of how I’d felt the when she had been hit by a car the night of our high school graduation. One minute I had known that she was happy, the next I felt terror and then there was nothing. Other than the moment that I had woken up in the hospital believing that my baby was gone, the night of Dominique’s accident was the worst experience of my life.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I pulled into her apartment complex and saw her car at the curb. She was close enough for me to help and that was all that mattered. I ran to her door, twisting the handle to find it unlocked. She was passed out on the floor a few feet inside the door and I was in the process of going to her when I was pushed from behind. I fell unsteadily to the floor.

When I turned to see who had pushed me I found myself looking at Tally… and Spencer’s mother.

I saw that Tally had a gun and I saw her raising it over my head to hit me, and then there was nothing.

• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty-One
  
• Part Two:
  
• Chapter Twenty-Two
  
• Chapter Twenty-Three
  
• Chapter Twenty-Four
  
• Chapter Twenty-Five
  
• Chapter Twenty-Six
  
• Chapter Twenty-Six
  
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
  
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
  
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
  
• Chapter Thirty
  
• Chapter Thirty-One
  
• Chapter Thirty-Two