Sempre: Redemption (Forever Series #2)(9)

He heaved the duffel bag over to the passenger seat and sped off, wanting to get away from there. A few miles away, he glanced in the bag curiously and saw it was full of guns and ammunition. Slamming the breaks, stunned, he whipped the car into the parking lot of a nearby restaurant. He stared at the bag, wondering what he was supposed to do. He wasn’t sure if Salvatore had told him, considering he hadn’t paid attention, and he suddenly worried he was missing something.

Carmine grabbed his phone and scanned through the list of contacts, stopping at his father’s name. He hit the call button and waited as it rang.

“Carmine?” Vincent answered, sounding concerned. “Where are you? I saw your car was gone this morning.”

“I, uh . . . I think I need some help.”

“With what?”

“I’m in Charlotte,” he said. “I got a call this morning to pick up something from some guy. He gave me this bag and said he wanted his money by tonight, but I don’t know what the f**k I’m supposed to do about any of it. What money?”

“You must’ve met Jay,” Vincent said, sighing. “Just pull some cash out of your account and pay him for it. We have a set arrangement, fifty grand each visit.”

“And what about the damn bag?”

“There’s a storage unit here in town, at the place beside the grocery store. I’ll leave the key for it at the desk. Unit nineteen-B.”

* * *

Carmine stood in front of the storage unit, the duffel bag the only thing inside. He stared at it for a moment, shaking his head, before slamming the metal door and putting the lock back on it.

He pocketed the key and strolled next door to the grocery store for something to drink, the place empty except for the lone cashier. She barely looked at him, her nose stuck in a cheap gossip magazine as he tossed her some cash for a bottle of Cherry Coke and a Toblerone.

On the way back out, Carmine’s footsteps faltered when his eyes fell upon the crinkled paper taped to the glass near the exit. He snatched it off, studying it as he strolled through the parking lot in the dark. The word MISSING was written along the top, ominously black and bold, while a familiar picture of Nicholas Barlow covered most of the page. He was wearing his favorite camouflage cargo pants in the shot, his baseball cap pulled down low.

Carmine could remember the day the photo had been taken. Straining his eyes, he could even faintly make himself out in the background. They had been out at Aurora Lake a mere few days before their friendship had fallen apart . . . before their lives took a dramatic turn. They had both ended up in the emergency room later that day after roughhousing—Nicholas with a sprained ankle and Carmine with a gash in his eyebrow. It was the day Carmine had dared his best friend to sleep with the nurse at the hospital, Jen.

The only dare the boys had made that they never saw through, since Nicholas was dead now, and the nurse was, too.

The subtle glow from the streetlight illuminated Carmine’s car in the back of the lot. Sunset had come and gone, the entire day fading away. He had missed Christmas Eve with his family.

Climbing into his car, Carmine turned on the interior light to get a better look at the flyer. Guilt nagged him when he saw they were offering a reward, Haven’s earlier words running through his mind. How much more is going to happen because of me? she had asked, but Carmine wondered exactly how much more hurt he would cause. How many more families would he ruin, how many more lives would he f**k up? He felt like a curse, devastating anyone who dared to get close to him.

He had gotten his best friend killed. Who would be next?

Sighing, he tossed the paper onto the passenger seat and grabbed Haven’s notebook, hoping to put those thoughts out of his mind. After the day he had had, he just wanted to forget for a while. He glanced through the scribble, looking for a distraction, but the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach only grew as he took in Haven’s frenzied words. She wrote a lot about the pain she had been through, the writing growing more frantic the further he got. There were dozens of sketches accompanying her words, some so vague he couldn’t tell what they were, while others were so in depth it was like seeing it with his own eyes.

Turning to a page about halfway through, Carmine’s name jumped out at him, and his eyes cautiously scanned the surrounding paragraph. Haven mused about what kind of future they would have together, disheartened by their situation. He read it all with anxious eyes, tensing when he came upon the very last sentence: What do you do when the thing you want most suddenly feels like it’s beyond your fingertips?

As much as Carmine didn’t want to let that get to him, her question stung. After giving her freedom, he had yanked it back away. He hadn’t meant to, but she was right . . . as long as she was with him, she would never be in control of her life.

He flipped through a few more pages, barely able to pay attention to them, and was about to toss it aside when a drawing caught his eye. It was startlingly in depth, the man’s features perfectly detailed. One side of his face was pristine, while the other half was severely disfigured. His skin appeared to be made of melting candle wax, drooping and dripping from his grotesque face. The word monster was scribbled along the page, the handwriting frantic and barely legible.

It may not have been as horrifying had Carmine not recognized the man.

* * *

The house was silent when Carmine made it home, the notebook tucked in the crook of his arm. He headed upstairs, mentally exhausted from the day, and hesitated on the second floor when he saw the door to his father’s office open. Carmine strolled over to it, curiously pausing in the doorway.