“What?”
I ignored Jared’s question and pushed my chair back so I could get up. “I have to go. I need to get back to campus.” For what, I had no idea, but I was too mixed up in the head to stay there.
He stood also and grabbed my hand, stopping me from bolting out of the room. “What do you mean your brother’s missing?”
I looked up and focused on his face. “My brother. My mom hasn’t heard from him in three days.”
Jared’s face screwed up into a frown. “How old is he?”
“Nineteen.”
Jared’s frown deepened; I could tell he was wondering why we were so worried about someone who was old enough to vote. “And he lives at home?”
I shook my head. “No, he goes to Yale.”
Jared blinked several times at this. I suddenly realized how stupid it must have sounded to someone who didn’t know our whole story.
“So you’re telling me your nineteen year old brother who is at college hasn’t checked in with his mom for a few days and this is a federal issue?”
You have no idea, I thought. I swallowed. “He’s normally very in touch with my mom. He never goes off the grid.” Because it could be a matter of life and death, I couldn’t say.
“He’s probably on a bender or in Mexico with a girl or something,” Jared said casually, as though Robert was just any kind of guy and not the son of a target for terrorists. But Jared didn’t know. And I couldn’t tell him, because who my father was needed to stay a secret, even from my boyfriend, or I’d be painting a target on my back. Or his.
My father’s job usually wasn’t cause for a great deal of concern—at least for Robert and me—presuming everything was going well. We took precautions to make sure he and I were low exposure and in secure locations. But there was always the potential for stuff to get very real very quickly if there was a terrorist threat or international relations got messed up somehow. If there was a big terrorist cell uncovered in Europe, Dad was often at the center of the operation, so we’d be extra safe—no traveling, new cell phones, maybe even a new school or name change. But that hadn’t happened in several years, so maybe we’d gotten used to our new lives and had forgotten to be careful.
I swallowed, thinking about what might have happened to my brother and it was a lot worse than waking up with a hangover in Mexico.
“I have to go,” I said, slipping my hand out of his for the second time. “I’ll text you.”
He leaned down to kiss me goodbye, but I was already heading out of the student council room. A pang of guilt rolled through my stomach, but I had more important things to worry about.
Mom hadn’t told me to engage the protocol, so they obviously didn’t think I was at risk, but that could change at any time. I needed to be on alert. I needed to be ready.
I power-walked down the hall to Dean Peterson’s office and as I went in to get Dean Haywood to take me back to Rosewood, I heard them chatting and laughing, which annoyed me. That they could be having a normal, easy conversation while my brother was missing and could right now be under torture at the hands of terrorists who were using him to get to my father set me even more on edge.
I had no right to be angry at the dean, especially when I couldn’t even tell her what was really going on, but the sudden stress of my mother’s call had fired up every nerve in my body and I wasn’t feeling my normal easygoing self.
I knocked and let myself in, not waiting for the invitation to do so. Both deans looked up at me in surprise as I announced, “I need to go back to Rosewood.” And then added a hasty, “Please, Dean Haywood.”
“Sorry,” I said when they both looked at me wordlessly like I was a spoiled rich brat with no manners. “Family emergency. I...” and then I burst into tears, which I guess sold my story better than any sort of half-truths, because Dean Haywood jumped up and came over to me, muttering something to Westwood’s dean as she put her arm across my shoulders and ushered me out of the office.
Jared was waiting in the hall and I glanced up to see his concerned face before I quickly turned away and allowed the dean to lead me out of the building to the parking lot.
~ ♥ ~
As I put the key card into my dorm room lock, I realized I’d completely forgotten about the thing with Dave and Emmie. At least, until that very second, when I opened the door and heard the water running in the bathroom.
I cursed, wishing she was down the hall in the lounge with the other girls, but I entered the room anyway and headed straight to my computer on the off chance Robert forgot my cell number and had e-mailed me to get in touch.
Nothing. And I re-checked my cell to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Nothing there either.
I used the land-line to call his cell, but it went straight to voice mail, so I left a casual message saying hi and asking him to contact me once he sobered up. I even included a “Ha ha,” hoping it would sound like one very normal sibling kidding around with another.
I didn’t think Robert was one to drink, but we hadn’t really been in touch much since I’d come to Rosewood and he was deep in his studies at Yale in the accelerated MBA program, so anything was possible. But there was no way he’d gone on a bender to Mexico. Something was definitely wrong.