The Silent Sounds of Chaos (14 page)

Angered by his own reflections, Finn searched the passenger side for the bag he’d dropped there before peeling out of his friend’s driveway. He knew there was a bottle in there somewhere. He needed a drink, something to take his mind off Charlie’s phone call and the reason why he was heading home.

Finn? Maybe you should pull over and call a friend to bring you home so you aren’t driving drunk.

The voice in his head interrupted his move to grab the bottle. It was like she knew every goddamn time he was doing something wrong.
Snow, just shut the fuck up, okay?
The words slipped in his mind before he could filter them. He could feel the hurt they caused, but was too worked up, and a little too drunk, to care.
You live your perfect little life in your perfect little college and be a perfect little girl. Some of us have real life to deal with, and real life ain’t so pretty.

It was a good minute before she responded.
Okay … I’m sorry, Finn. I just … I just want you to be safe.

Stop worrying about me
.
I got a mother, useless as she is. I sure as hell don’t need another one.

I’m not trying to be your mother
. There was an edge to her voice now, one he hadn’t heard before.
I’m trying to be your friend. You’re my best friend whether you like it or not, so you have to put up with me telling you to stop being stupid and grow up already, got it?

Anger seeped into his thoughts, a cold kind of hate, and for once he didn’t care if he let those feelings transfer to Snow.
If that’s all you got to say, then you shut the fuck up and‒‒

Finn, wait.

Don’t pull that shit with me. I got something to say and‒‒

Finn, I think I’m in trouble.

He hesitated, hands gripping the steering wheel as he wondered if this was a trick.
What do you mean?

There’s this huge guy coming toward me and he’s holding something but I can’t tell what it is. He’s wearing a mask but I can see his arms. They’re covered in tattoos. I don’t know what to do.

What?
Worry overtook anger in a heartbeat.
Where are you?

Walking home from the library.

In the middle of the night?
He cursed inwardly to himself.
Snow, tell me exactly where you are. No bullshit.

The campus library
, she replied, her words laced with panic.
He’s calling to me. He knows my name. Finn, there’s another one behind me.

His breath caught in his throat and the road in front of him tunneled.
Snow, get the fuck out of there. Run. Drop everything and run as fast as you can. Scream for help.

His heart began to race, hands trembling. With a gasp he realized he was feeling what Snow felt ‒‒ panicked, out of breath, heart pounding in tune with racing footsteps. He heard her panting breaths in his mind. His foot slammed on the brake, the car sliding to a stop in the middle of the street, the squeal of tires on pavement mixed with pumping bass rising higher than her cries.

Finn! They’re chasing me! Finn!

“Snow!” His shout filled the Mustang—a flustered and pointless attempt at help. He stumbled out of the car, needing to get away from the distracting music, needing to hear her, help her. In his head he heard her heavy panting as she ran, in his stomach he felt the nauseating fear.

Run, Snow. As fast as you fucking can. Just run!

Finn! I can’t‒‒There’re too fast!‒‒Fi‒‒

Her words cut off, ending in a high-pitched scream that drowned out his surroundings. Finn dropped to his knees on the pavement, hands pressed to his temples.
Snow! Snow, talk to me! Where are you! Can you see their faces?

Finn! He’s got a gun!

Where are you!
he repeated, desperation shouting across his mind.
Tell me something, Snow! What do they look like!

Tattoos on his arms!
Snow managed between shrieks that were starting to sound more and more muffled.
Skinny guy, dark hair gelled back! Tech—

Snow screamed, the sound filled with fear and pain and desperation. There were no more words now, only yelps and cries, gasps brought on by painful blows, screeches that brought tears to Finn’s eyes as he experienced the attack with her. He felt every punch to the face, every kick to the ribs, his insides churning and clenching and pleading for escape.

In the middle of the road, Finn rocked, the grip on his head tightening. In some far-off place he realized he was screaming too, a throaty howl that matched the wailing voice consuming his mind, despair overtaking his spirit as he realized he could do nothing but listen as his counterpart was beaten, battered, brutalized.

And then the world went silent.

HE DIDN’T KNOW how long he sat there in the road, rocking on his knees, whispering pleas to himself to hear her voice again. It wasn’t until a horn blasted through the early-morning air that he moved, falling back against his car. Whoever had approached wasn’t concerned enough to stop and kept driving. Finn was grateful. He wasn’t sure he could speak right now, let alone even get up off the road.

She was gone. He could feel her absence like a shovel digging out parts of his soul. The normal dull hum of chatter was gone, replaced by the drone of frogs and crickets that surrounded him. Was she dead? Did those men, whoever they were, did they … He couldn’t even think the word, let alone fathom its reality.

“Snow?” Finn whispered, his voice cracking. “Snow, are you there?” He sniffed, realizing hot tears had fallen down his cheeks. Quickly he wiped them away with the sleeve of his leather jacket, then dragged himself into the driver’s seat of his Mustang. For a moment he simply sat there, not knowing what to do.

He could go to the police. And tell them what? That a girl he’d talked to in his head since he was seven was attacked? That he didn’t know her name, but she lived somewhere in the south and went to college? They’d laugh him out of the station or lock him up in the closest crazy house.

He could go to the college himself, wherever it was. And do what? Walk down every street in every town in every Bible Belt state searching for a huge guy with tattoos on his arms and a skinny guy with dark hair? He’d get nowhere, fast.

He could do some kind of online search for kidnapped women. Or … murdered, he finally thought with a hard swallow. But it just happened. There wouldn’t be any news about the attack yet, and even if there was, there wouldn’t be enough details to figure out a starting point.

He could…

Finn didn’t know. There was nothing he could do except sit in his car and mourn the fact that the last thing he’d ever said to Snow was to shut the fuck up.

The sun was just starting to rise when he finally stumbled home, a bitch of a hangover starting to take hold and his body begging for sleep despite rushing with adrenaline. Finn only stopped long enough to take a drink of water straight from the tap before racing to his room.

Piles of clothes, some dirty, others clean but unfolded, lined the floor, along with discarded pizza boxes and soda cans. Charlie harped on him about being a slob, but Finn could never be bothered to clean. There were more important things to worry about. In this moment, he wished he’d listened, because somewhere under that mess was his laptop.

“Goddamn it,” he grumbled as he tossed clothes all over the place. “Where the fuck is it?”

After a few minutes of searching Finn finally found the slim black computer beneath a heap of shirts and all but slung it on the scarred wooden desk. His fingers twisted a rusty paperclip as the old laptop booted up, knee bouncing, eyes a little blurry and head spinning. Part due to alcohol, part at a loss to this foreign feeling of complete nothingness inside him.

He had to find her.

Finally online, Finn prepared to search the web … then paused, fingers hovering over the keyboard, not having any idea where to start. In the thirteen years he’d been talking to Snow, they’d never once said where they lived—him because he was embarrassed of where he came from, her because of some irrational fear of strangers. Now he realized how foolish, how incredibly stupid, they had been.

Why wouldn’t you just tell me who you are, Snow?

No response. Not even the hint of her aura. How the hell was he supposed to find her when he couldn’t talk to her anymore?

He had only one clue to go on. “Bible Belt. She said she lived in the Bible Belt,” he muttered, his mind racing to think of a search that would make sense. “What states is that … shit.” Finn sat back with a sigh when his search yielded a map covered by far too much red. She could be anywhere in the southern United States.

“No.” Continuing his one-sided conversation, Finn thought back to all the conversations he’d ever had with Snow. There had to be something,
anything
, to narrow it down. “The beach. She went to the beach a lot.”

That cut out the landlocked states. “It was the same time there as here.”

He did a quick search on time zones, narrowing down his focal point a little more. But there were still so many places to search. The Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana … assuming he was even on the right path. What if she moved away from the beach for college? Was she now in one of those landlocked states he’d just disregarded?

Stuck, Finn shook his head to wake himself up as his mind continued to race, thoughts and ideas fizzling before they could form actual plans. “There’s got to be something.” Desperate to find even the tiniest bit of information, he typed in
southern states kidnapping college campus
then waited to see what results popped up.

News of several abductions filled the page, all from previous years. “Shit.” There was nothing from today. No updates of a young woman kidnapped in the middle of the night on her walk home. “Because they don’t even know yet,” he said to himself, hands starting to tremble and his eyes drooping in surrender to the defeat filling his heart.

Forcing his body to steady, Finn took in a deep breath and rubbed his eyes, trying hard to focus on the computer, on Snow, on what he could possibly do. It never felt this hard before, thinking and analyzing and coming up with a plan. Snow was always there to help him, if not directly than with the inspiration her presence gave him. Without her, without her spirit filling all the empty parts of him, he couldn’t even see a way to take his next breath.

As though his body understood such a despairing thought, Finn slumped over the desk, alcohol, exhaustion, and utter confusion overtaking him. As he drifted into unconsciousness despite the anger and fear pulsing through him, all he could think was that, once again, he had failed Snow.

A heavy pounding behind his eyes woke Finn from a heavy sleep. Grogginess clouded his vision, nausea churning in his gut, as he pushed up from his desk and struggled to remember where he was, how he got home, why it felt like he’d slept hunched over all night.

The pounding came again, and he realized it wasn’t just behind his eyes—it was also at the front door. With a garbled curse, Finn pushed up from the desk and stumbled down the hall to the door, wrenching it open.