Secrets Left Neglected

Chapter 63

Nick

"Hello," Emilia mumbles in bed next to me. "Who's-wait-What? Caoilainn, what's wrong? What happened?"

When she gets up and starts rushing to get dressed, I stumble out of bed and move next to the phone Emilia is holding to her ear so I can listen. Then I look around for my pants while Emilia keeps talking to Caoilainn.

I bend over and pull my sneakers out from under the bed. "What happened?" I ask Emilia as she hangs up and runs into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

"It's Tadhg," Emilia mutters between brushing. "He's missing."

I stop what I'm doing, popping my head through the hole of my shirt and look at her with surprise. "What do you mean he's missing, Emilia?"

She spits into the sink and uses her hand to cup some water into her mouth. Spitting that out too, she turns to look at me before answering. "I mean," she says, grabbing the deodorant off a nearby shelf, "he's gone. Caoilainn doesn't know where he is. She woke up and he was gone. Just gone."

Emilia runs back into the bedroom and fishes her pocketbook out of the bedside table. Some random foil wrappers are stuck to the side of her bag and she laughs out of nervousness, shaking her head. She raises her eye brows and looks up at me, pointing down towards her bag. "Cute. Very cute," she comments, before plucking them off and tucking them back inside the drawer.

I dash around the room to finish getting myself ready. Picking up my cell, I call in some reinforcements. I know the guys at the club are going to want to know what's going on; they'll want to help.

"Cian," I say when he picks up. "It's Nick. Listen, we need your help, man. Yes, yeah it is. I know. I'm sorry, but here's what's going on."

I begin filling him in and then both of us start a phone chain to our friends.

In no time, we're all at Caoilainn's, each trying to figure out where to look and what to do. Jenny's doing her best to console Caoilainn while Siofra and Courtney try to organize the helpers. There are a lot of tears and it's a crazy, emotional roller coaster ride kind of a day.

Despite our best efforts, including calling the police, at the end of the day we're no closer to finding out what happened to Tadhg than we were in the morning. It's as if he's vanished into thin air.

"What could've happened to him?" I hear Caoilainn cry to Emilia, who has come back from a recent search of the woods with Ruari and I. "I don't understand. Where is he? How did I not hear him getting up in the night?"

Mr. Gibbons, the owner of the I-S bar and grill is sitting with Maebh who looks as torn apart as Caoilainn does. Naimh is sitting next to them both, trying to figure out who to comfort first. She's nervously bouncing from her daughter, to her friend and then her husband in random succession. I can only imagine what they're all going through. I'm a wreck myself, and Tadhg's only my friend. He's their family, though, and they have no idea where he is, if he's ok or if he's hurt.

What an ever-lovin' mess.