Tormented (Evolution Series Book 2) (7 page)

Taking a step back, I said, “Thanks.”

She then closed the door without so much as a goodbye.
 

“Wow,” I mouthed to Aiden as I turned my back to the house.

“That so wasn’t the reaction I was expecting either,” Aiden said in disbelief, as we headed back to his car.

I opened the passenger door and got into the car. Aiden took his seat beside me and started the car.

“I don’t get it. Why would she think we just disappeared?” I asked as he pulled the car onto the road. I knew the only reason why everyone would think that we had done a runner would be if my mother’s body hadn’t been found.

“I think you’re right in thinking that they mustn’t have found her. There’s no other explanation.”

“So what do we do now?” I asked, wondering if going over to see Chelsea and Ben might not be a good idea.

“You know Marie will tell her that we dropped by,” he said.

I sighed. “So let’s go to Ben’s.”
 

CHAPTER 8

The road diversions were already in place for the Gold Coast Indie, which made the drive take longer than the normal fifteen minutes. The Indie carnival hadn’t started yet, but the preparation in the weeks leading up to it caused almost as much traffic congestion as if it had. And unfortunately, there was no getting around it on the drive over to Ben’s because he lived in a unit halfway between Surfers Paradise and Main Beach.

He had an awesome view of the race from his balcony, and every year, there would be so many of us piled onto it that I was certain it was going to collapse one year.

Once Aiden had parked in one of the building’s guest car spaces, we got out of the car and made our way to the entry doors. The only way into the building was through the intercom, and by the reaction from Marie, I wasn’t so sure that Ben would be willing to buzz us in.

“Well, maybe he won’t have to,”
Aiden said silently to me, just as a couple in their early twenties stumbled up the driveway. They were clearly too smashed to notice we were unable to get in without them. All they could both think about was how much they wanted to get their rocks off. And in the back of their minds, they both had a niggling guilt over what they were about to do. But neither of them wanted to acknowledge that guilt; they were more worried about getting caught.

“
Holy crap! She’s sleeping with her best friend’s fiancé!”

“You’d be surprised by just how often that sort of thing happens,”
Aiden said, with a hint of disgust in his tone.

We jumped in the same elevator with them. The mirrored walls did nothing to hide the love fest heating up the tiny box.

“Crap! We need to swipe to get to his floor.”
I wondered if maybe that was another sign for us to turn around and head home.

“Actually, we don’t
.
We’re getting off with them.”

The slutty best friend fumbled around in her bag without tearing her lips away from her lover’s mouth. A moment later, she took out her card and swiped it, then pressed the button for Floor 24.

The couple was
too busy rubbing up against one another to notice we hadn’t pressed a floor ourselves. I was actually more surprised they had enough restraint that they weren’t ripping each other’s clothes off right there. They were both thinking it, but thank God, neither of them acted on it. All I could do was look at the floor, waiting for what seemed forever before the elevator gave a small ding, and the doors opened.

We made a dash out of the elevator, not turning around to see whether the two still had their clothes on as they made their way down the other end of the hall towards the slutty best friend’s love nest. Aiden stopped outside the emergency exit.

“Won’t it trigger the fire alarm if we open it?” I asked.

He shook his head. “The fire alarm will only be set off when someone opens the door on the ground floor.” He turned the handle and stepped into the stairwell.

Taking my hand in his, he bounced us down fourteen flights of stairs until we reached the tenth floor. It would have been so much easier if I could have just transported us to Ben’s front door, but because of all the cameras in the building, I couldn’t. The only reason Aiden could bounce us down the stairs was because the stairwell was camera-free.

We quietly made our way out into the hallway,
then
stood outside the door to Ben’s apartment, bracing ourselves for what they were going to say. Before I could come up with any more reasons as to why we should just turn around and get the hell out of there, Aiden gave three quick taps on the door.

My heart was
pummelling
my chest when the door swung open. Ben was laughing about something until he saw our faces. His expression immediately went to one of shock.

Once he got over his initial shock, his face lit up with a grin. “Holy shit! Where the heck have you guys been?”

He pulled Aiden into a
blokey
-bloke hug,
then
it was my turn. Ben wrapped his arms around me, and called out, “
Chels
, come here. You’re not going to believe who’s here.”

A moment later, Chelsea appeared at the door. She lunged at
me,
squeezing me so tightly I thought my head might pop off.

Her initial excitement over seeing me for the first time in weeks didn’t last long, though. She was pissed. “Where the hell have you been? And why the hell didn’t you even say goodbye?”

I opened my mouth to say something, but she continued in her good old Chelsea rant. “You were like a sister to me, and you didn’t think I even deserved to know that you were leaving? All you left me was that stupid note. And I suppose you want me to say thanks for the car.” Her thoughts went to the day when someone had slipped a note under her front door. It read, “Sorry, I couldn’t say bye. Here’s the
cheque
I got from the insurance company for my car. I want you to have it. I’ve signed it over, so you should have no problems banking it.”

“Okay, so that explains why nobody went looking for me,”
I said to Aiden.

"Whoever is doing this to you must have written the note.”
Aiden said what I was already thinking.

Chelsea was still going on. “So where did you all go? No, don’t tell me because I don’t want to know. You can just turn around and go back to wherever the hell you two have been.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

Why was it that guys could just get over things so easily, welcome you back with open arms, not abuse you for not being there, but just be glad you’re back, whereas girls were the complete opposite? Girls would hold a grudge to the end of time.

When Chelsea saw that we weren’t going anywhere, she turned around and went back inside without another word.

“Come inside,” Ben said. When I didn’t move, he added, “Don’t worry about her. She’ll get over it. She’s been missing you like hell.”

Aiden and I followed Ben into his lounge room. The place was a decent sized two-bedroom apartment that he lived in with his parents, who weren’t home at the moment. One good thing about being able to hear people’s thoughts was that I always knew who was around without having to see them. Unless of course I was dealing with people like me who had put their damn mind blocker thing up, which was really starting to annoy the crap out of me because I still couldn’t seem to get the hang of it.

Chelsea sat with her legs up on the chaise part of the black leather sofa. As soon as she saw us, she picked up a pillow and held it in front of her chest. I felt so bad for making her feel the way she did. I knew I hadn’t had a choice about the saying goodbye part, but I could have at least called her. I guessed what was always stopping me from picking up the phone and calling her was that I was scared shitless about having to talk about my mother’s murder, which for some reason wasn’t on anyone’s mind.

“Sit down,” Ben said when he saw that I was a little standoffish.

Chelsea was still refusing to look at me, so rather than sitting down beside her, I chose the other end of the couch, letting Aiden and Ben be the fillers between her and me. I really wasn’t good with emotionally strung people, even though lately I seemed to have become one of them.

“So where have you been?” Ben asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “
Rumour
has it that you guys were expelled from school for all the days you missed.”

How were we supposed to answer that question? We couldn’t exactly say that we had to do an emergency departure from Australia because of my mother’s murderer, who had been hanging around, waiting for me to come home. And since then, we’d been laying low in Thailand until a room full of people and I
were
shot at, but I somehow managed to save everyone from being slaughtered. But of course, I couldn’t say any of that to a ‘normal’ human.

Aiden put his arm around me and laughed. “Nah, we didn’t get expelled. My sister sprang for an all-expenses-paid vacation for us. But the thing was, we had to leave that night. It was some last-minute business thing they had to go on, and they thought we might like to join them after everything that happened.”

“So you guys would have to repeat year twelve, wouldn’t you?” Ben asked.

“Nope. They’re letting us sit the test later because of ‘special circumstances’—you would’ve been able to do that too,
Chels
.”

Chelsea didn’t answer. She wasn’t going to back down on the grudge she held against me, and Aiden was unfortunately in her firing range too.

 
“So where did you go?” Ben asked, without a thought going through his head that we would be
lying
. Guys took things on face value. I wondered if maybe we girls should take a leaf out of their books.

“Thailand actually,” Aiden replied.

“Awesome. I so want to go there one day,” Ben said. “Where
abouts
?”

“A remote island south of Phuket. There was no phone signal there, so we weren’t able to call you guys,” Aiden replied.

“
Phff
.” Chelsea finally spoke. “If it was so remote, then why was your mum still able to do her work over there?”

I was too stunned to answer. Mum was a reporter for The Gold Coast Bulletin. If she was dead, then how could she still be submitting her work? Maybe she wasn’t really dead. Maybe someone had found her and been able to get her to the hospital before it was too late. All of those thoughts were filling my heart with hope, but my head was saying something wasn’t quite right.

Without caring about sounding like an absolute idiot, I turned to face Ben and Chelsea and asked, “Around the time we left, did my mum have an accident by any chance?”

They both looked at me with confused expressions. “What are you on about?” Chelsea asked, scrunching her nose in confusion.

Obviously, neither of them had heard anything about my mother being shot in the head, which only left me with more questions. But neither Ben nor Chelsea could answer any of them.

Their faces went blank. Although I couldn’t hear either of their thoughts, I knew what was happening to them. Aiden was erasing what I had just said from their memories. He didn’t perform that trick very often. In fact, he would try to avoid messing with people’s minds wherever possible. But I didn’t give him much choice.