He looked back at her indifferently, like he was going to shrug it off, pretend he had no idea who Violet was talking about, so she decided to jog his memory. “You know? Cute girl, short skirt, foul mouth? She was checking you out when I left.”
He grinned slightly. “Yeah, I saw her. But she was more interested in that other dude.”
Violet glanced questioningly at Rafe, but he just lifted his shoulder. “What other dude?”
“Dude she left with.” His grin grew, knowingly. Leeringly. “She was pretty hammered though. You probably shouldn’t’a left her alone. She could hardly walk—he practically had to carry her.”
Violet’s heart started pounding, beating at least five times its normal speed, and she felt like she was sweating through her skintight T. What was he talking about hammered? Chelsea hadn’t been drinking.
She scrambled for a way to make sense of his words as she searched Rafe and then Jay for an explanation.
Her tongue was thick and dry, and she thought she might be sick.
She heard Jay asking the guy, “What did he look like, the guy she was with?”
“Like everyone else, man. A little on the short side. Black hair.” And then his eyes widened. “And a neck tatt. One of those cross things.” He pointed toward the band. Toward the stage. “Like on the drums. Big black one.” He traced his finger down the left side of his neck, showing where it was. “From his ear to his shoulder.”
The brimstone cross.
The guy Chelsea had left with—had been carried out of here by—had a tattoo of the brimstone cross.
Violet lifted the root beer, her hand shaking so violently she could barely get the straw to her lips. Just as her mouth closed around it, just as she was going to take a long pull from the straw to quench her parched throat and hopefully soothe her stomach, she felt it being jerked from her hand.
“Don’t drink that!” Rafe shouted at her, and Violet blinked back at him, wondering what the hell had gotten into him.
And then she saw what he was pointing at, what he’d been scraping into a small pile on the marred wooden tabletop.
Fine white powder that could barely be seen between the flashes of light coming from the stage. Not much, but just enough to be noticeable. Just enough to make Violet take a second glance at the glass that was sitting on the table between them now.
At the bottom of the brown liquid, she could just make out a few of the same white granules settled in the base of the glass. Almost invisible. Almost all liquefied now, save those remaining few.
“That’s not sugar, is it?” Violet asked.
Rafe shook his head, but it was the look on his face that made the knot in her chest tighten. It wasn’t the look of someone who didn’t care. He looked scared. “We have to find her,” he told Violet.
Behind Rafe, she heard Jay talking to the other guy at the table, while her heart struggled to find its rhythm. “Did you see which way they went?”
The guy, who hadn’t been paying attention to them as they’d figured out what had happened to Chelsea, turned back to them and pointed toward the exit. “They went out that way,” he said. “But I doubt you’ll catch ’em. That was a couple’a songs ago.”
That way, Violet thought, thinking of the way she’d felt when she’d been standing at the exit.
She’d followed the imprint to that door, knowing he’d gone out there. The killer.
The guy with the brimstone cross tattoo.
And he had Chelsea.
They were running by the time they reached the door, and didn’t stop as they burst through it. The cool night air was refreshing after the stifling atmosphere inside the club, and Violet hadn’t realized how hard it had been to breathe in there. How suffocated she’d felt.
She hadn’t stopped to think about what she’d do once she was out here. Where they were going or what their plan was. All she’d thought about was Chelsea.
Saving her.
“Call Sara!” she screamed over her shoulder as she reached the small lot behind the club. “Tell her to call my uncle. To call everyone. We need help.”
On the road in front of them, several cars zipped past and she was forced to slow down, to consider her next move. She had no idea which way to go next.
Spinning to face the others, she saw that Rafe already had his phone out and was dialing.
“What if it’s too late, Vi?” Jay asked. “He’s probably long gone. We don’t even have a description of what he was driving.”
Violet couldn’t even consider that possibility, not when they had so much at stake. When she answered him, her breath came out in a wheeze. “If, Jay. If he was driving. We don’t know he had a car. They could be on foot.”
“Violet.” Jay’s voice tried to be placating, but Violet could hear the disquiet behind it.
Beside her, Rafe hung up.
“What’d she say?”
“She’s calling the local police, and your uncle, and she’s on her way now. She said to stay put.”
Violet shifted nervously, barely able to stand in one place now. It didn’t matter what Sara said, she couldn’t just stand here. “I think we should split up. We can cover more ground that way.”
She didn’t have to convince Rafe—he was already nodding.
“But, aren’t we supposed to stay put?” Jay countered. “Isn’t that what you just said?”
Rafe grinned at Violet. “I said that’s what Sara told us to do. I didn’t say that’s what we were gonna do.” His attention shifted to Jay then. “You stay with Violet. Don’t let her outta your sight.” He started walking away from them, leaving them to decide which way to go, when he called back. “And keep your phone on!”