Chapter Forty-Seven
Kegan
Present day...
Things back home were not good. Everyone in the house was always lost in their own thoughts and I felt responsible for all of it.
I shouldn't have let her out of my sight. What was the point of bringing her to a party if I was just going to fall asleep anyways?
A small voice in the back of my head disagreed with me. I knew that I had truly been trying to cheer her up and get her mind off of Jaxon breaking up with her.
I hadn't allowed myself to think of it, but I was beyond angry with him.
I didn't understand why he broke up with her over a magazine he knew wasn't true.
He knew how much Grace loved and adored him and yet he had betrayed her trust in him.
I had tried calling him on my phone to tell him what happened to Grace, but he had declined my call. The police had her phone in custody just in case it presented some sort of evidence so it wasn't like I could call from hers either.
I decided to leave a voice mail, figuring it was better than nothing.
When it signaled me to start talking, I decided to keep it simple.
"Jaxon, it's me Kegan. Something has happened to Grace. I need you to get back to me as soon as you can." I paused, and then added, "She needs you."
I sighed in frustration.
The cops hadn't found any new leads. They had tracked down the van that Grace had been taken in and even concluded for sure that it had been the creep, Tristan that had taken her.
But they had hit a dead end. And people were starting to lose hope.
Kelsey came running through the door unexpectedly.
"I've had it with waiting around. I'm going to Grace's old group home to look for answers myself. Are you going to come with me?" She asked breathlessly.
Kelsey had been taking Grace's kidnapping just as hard as me. She felt partly responsible for letting her get out of our sight.
I nodded, "I agree. I can't just sit here and wait anymore. We don't know how much longer she has with someone as unstable as him." I shuddered and was hit with a wave of nausea at the thought. We would find her if it was the last thing I did.
Kelsey and I got into my car and programmed our GPS to direct us to the foster home. My foot was heavy on the gas pedal as we sped towards our destination.
When we arrived, we noticed that there was a car in the driveway.
"Is that woman back from the hospital now?" I wondered aloud.
Kelsey shrugged, "The woman who got attacked by Tristan, right? I think her name was Petunia?" She wrinkled her nose.
We walked up to the front porch and knocked.
We waited a moment but heard no movement from inside.
I knocked louder this time and Kelsey moved to look through the window.
"I guess no one's home," She murmured after a minute.
I frowned, staring hard at the door in deliberation.
"I'm going in anyways. You should wait outside in case someone comes back." I said, rubbing my thumb over her hand.
She shook her head furiously, "No. Where you go, I go. I don't want to be alone." She said quietly. I knew she had been suffering from nightmares the past week, and I didn't deny I had had a few as well.
"Alright, let's find a way in." I sighed; partly glad she wanted to come inside with me.
We found a window at the side of the house that had been left open and pried it open further. I climbed in first then helped Kelsey through as well.
"Do you have any idea which room was Tristan and Grace's?" Kelsey asked me.
I shook my head no, momentarily blinded by fury that she had been forced into sharing a room with him in the first place.
"I'm sure it won't be hard to figure out," I murmured, "I think Grace mentioned it was on the first floor once, so that she could move around easier when she couldn't see."
Kelsey nodded in determination, looking down a hallway to our right.
I took the opposite hallway and noticed a door that was slightly open.
I pushed it open further and my eyes went wide.
"Kels! I think I found it!" I called, making sure I wasn't too loud. I motioned for her to come over and she joined me at the doorway.
"Creepy..." She said quietly, rubbing her arms.
I nodded in agreement as we walked through the doors. There were two beds in the room, on opposite sides. One side was bare and neatly kept, the other was cluttered with belongings that looked like they could have belonged to a teenage guy.
But that wasn't what we were staring at in horror.
It was the writing on the wall above his bed.
It said,
'Monsters don't sleep under your bed they sleep inside your head'.
He must have written that before he assaulted Petunia and kidnapped Grace.
I shivered, prying my gaze from the wall as I moved around his room. There had to be something here that would give us a clue to where Grace was.
Kelsey was still staring frozen at the wall. I called her softly.
"Kels, we have to get this done quickly." I reminded her.
She snapped out of it, walking to his desk that looked like it had been looked through already-probably by the detectives.
"They had to have missed something." I murmured.
Kelsey sorted through the papers, looking at each one closely.
"Where would you hide something if you were a psychopath?" I wondered.
Kelsey pursed her lips in thought. "This house is pretty old. Maybe there are some loose floorboards?"
I had to smile at that, "You've been watching a lot of detective movies, haven't you?"
She shrugged, continuing to immerse herself in the papers.
I started to look in weird places that he might have hidden something in.
A half an hour later, we were standing in the middle of the room, frustrated to the point of tears.
"There's something we're missing, I just know it!" Kelsey cried.
I tried to focus, "Okay. What looks out of place or suspicious here?"
Kelsey scoured the room, her eyes landing on a poster in the corner.
It was crooked, while the others were impeccably straight. The tape seemed to be coming off one corner.
She walked over to it, desperate. She stared at it for a moment and tugged the corner.
It fluttered off the wall easily and I gasped in surprise.
There was a large hole behind it. It looked like it had been a storage place for his personal belongings.
I ran over to Kelsey as we began taking them out of the hole.
He must not have had time to grab his things.
There was a box with pictures inside. There was one of who I assumed were his parents in front of a large estate. They were smiling down at Tristan lovingly.
Kelsey gasped in horror, "That's him! That's the guy!"
I nodded, not being able to imagine Kelsey's horror of coming face to face with the guy she had seen take Grace.
I rubbed her back as we continued to look.
There was a paper from the bank. I took it and gasped.
"This is where he took Grace!" I cried, grabbing the rest of the items.
"What was it?" Kelsey asked desperately.
"It's the estate that's in the picture! It was left to him, but Tristan is only his middle name. It was done privately. The records of it are sealed. That's why the police can't find anything!"
We ran back to the car as fast as we could, leaving the front door wide open.
Kelsey was already on the phone with the police.
My phone rang and I read the caller ID. It was Jaxon.
We were going to bring Grace home.