Out Of The Ashes (25 page)

I sat in a chair across from them on autopilot, gripping the rose colored paper tightly in my fingers. “Last night Hannah Davis drugged me. She drugged me and got into bed naked with me and called Paige from my phone to come over and catch us together.”

I stiffened at Gillian’s gasp. I looked at her, pleading with her silently to believe me and understand.

“I didn’t do anything, Gill. I told you, she drugged me!”

“It doesn’t matter!” she hissed. “Paige doesn’t know that. She can’t handle all of this torture, Clay! She’s been through enough. So that’s why she told me she saw Hannah last night when I told her the news.”

“What news?”

She stared at me and I recognized shock covering her face. “You guys don’t know about Hannah?”

“What about Hannah?” Drew asked, his arms still wrapped tightly around Gillian.

Gillian took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Hannah’s dead. They found her body in the woods by the soccer field this morning.”

I blinked, reeling from her statement. Confusion wrinkled my features. None of this was registering in my brain as truth.

This wasn’t happening. None of it was happening. Not Paige leaving me, leaving town, not Hannah being fucking dead. It couldn’t be real.

“You’re serious right now?” I asked slowly.

“Yes,” Gillian answered me, just as slowly. “And apparently, Clay, you and Paige were the last people to see her alive.”

Drew sucked in a breath. “If that’s true, dude, you need a lawyer. Do you think it was obvious you were in her apartment?”

My mind crept back to the tumbler on the nightstand next to the bed, me sleeping on her sheets last night. Then I shook my head fervently, shaking off all thoughts of my wellbeing. This needed to be about Paige. We needed to be working to find her, not worried about whether I was implicated in a murder I knew nothing about.

“Man, I don’t give a fuck about that right now,” I said. “Where the hell is Paige?”

I looked at Gillian. “I have to find her, Gill. I can’t have her driving around, thinking I cheated on her with—“ I gulped “Hannah. She needs to know that I love her, and I want her. You don’t have any idea where she might have gone?”

“If she didn’t want me to know where she was, she didn’t go anywhere predictable,” Gillian said grimly. “It’s going to be hard to track her down. She has money and a car. She could be anywhere.”

She stopped short, the gears in her brain visibly turning.

“What, Gill?”

She hesitated, and I wanted to shake her.

“What?”

“She doesn’t have a car.”

“What do you mean, she doesn’t have her car?”

Gillian shook her head numbly. “It’s sitting in the parking lot.”

“How the fuck could she go anywhere without her car?”

Gillian shook her head again.

I grabbed my keys. “Well, us sitting here talking about it is getting us nowhere. I’m going to start looking around and asking questions. I can’t just sit here. She’d have to give notice at work, right? I’ll start there.”

Gillian nodded. “I’ll talk to Tima and Maven. Maybe one of them gave her a ride somewhere.”

I moved toward the door, anxious to start looking for my girl. The thought of her out there alone, thinking I’d betrayed her…it killed me. I couldn’t stop trembling with the enormity of it.

Paige was…gone. Hannah was dead.

But I’d get Paige back.

I opened the front door, only to find two police officers standing on the step. They were uniformed, with shiny badges glinting on their chests.

“Clay Forbes?” one officer asked in a gruff, gravelly voice.

“Yeah?”

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Hannah Davis.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Look for THE ASHES SERIES BOOK 2: Settling Ashes To be released in 2014.

About the Author

I’m a mom before I’m anything else. When I finally felt brave enough to quit working and stay at home with my oldest daughter, the idea of becoming an author was born. So now I’m a mom, a wife, AND an author. And I love being all of those things. I live in South Carolina now with my family, but I’m a Southeastern Virginia girl at heart. I love books, steak, and television, and I hate working out. My two kids are Carrington, age 3, and Raleigh, eleven months. We also have a four-legged family member of the doggie variety, whose name is Landis. I am also the author of the Young Adult Contemporary Romance novel Color Blind.

Please visit my website for future releases, info, and giveaways: www.dianagardin.com

Tweet Me: @DianalynnGardin

Facebook: www.facebook.com/authordianagardin