Home Ice.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Casey

12 hours. It's been 12 hours since Flowers went missing.

Morgan called her mom, who had to come pick us up at the hospital with Kenny while Finn and Morgan searched for Avery, and told us that we needed to go get them because they found the car. If I thought he was a wreck the night she was drugged, boy. That seemed like a light work compared to how he was when we got there.

He was all but curled up into a damn ball as he held onto the shirt he found. Hell, he still hasn't let it go. He was shaking so damn hard and no matter how much we tried to talk to him, it's like he was a million miles away.

After a little while, he finally came back around and we all headed to the police station. I feel like I've been on autopilot, I've just been going from one thing to the next in order to stop myself from feeling what's actually happening. If I let myself think for even a minute, I'll start thinking about how he hit my fucking wife, how he held a gun to her. I'll think about the fact that he took the closest girl I have to a sister and how he's probably doing God know's what with her. I'll turn into someone I never thought I'd become.

Grace isn't pregnant, by the way. I made her take one of the tests and it was negative. I guess they did just go for the shits and giggles of it, and I'm grateful they did and that Avery was smart enough to come up with the lie to get her out of there.

It's 3am now and none of us have left the station - besides the hour or so I took to go pick up Olive and bring her to our house, feed and let them out, and get a change of clothes for my girls. Actually leaving seems so out of the question and we didn't know what to do about Kenny, but then the detective, Andrew, offered his office to have her sleep in. There's a huge couch in there, so her and Grace are resting while the rest of us are sitting in some room that's across the station. Connor and my dad are on a flight out now and they're going to take care of Kennedy until all of this is completely worked out.

Jordan arrived not long ago and we all went over what happened for the thousandth time, but it all seems hopeless. He didn't leave any indication as to where they were going, there's nothing that leads us to them. We're all feeling incredibly discouraged.

It's so empty without Avery here. She brings such a light to every single room she enters and I absolutely hate that I started to take it for granted. A huge part of me feels like it's completely gone without her here, so I can't even imagine what Finny feels like.

"Okay," Andrew says as he walks through the door of the room we're in. We all perk up a bit, well besides Finn. He's been pacing for the last hour, at least.

Andrew directs his statement at him. "We're going to hold a press conference tomorrow - a national broadcast. We're going to plaster her face everywhere, not his."

"Why not him?" Dana asks.

"We want to draw attention to Avery, make this about her," Jordan answers now as she stands next to Andrew. They make a good little tag team. They're both kinda scary, to be honest. "We talk about her, how amazing she is and how her family just wants her home. We want to make people to relate to her, it'll make them more inclined to help if they happen to see her."

"So you're not going to show Mason at all?" I ask. That doesn't seem like a smart thing to do. But I push around a piece of rubber on ice for a living and these guys literally catch murderers on the reg, so.

"Oh, no - We're definitely going to show his face," Andrew clarifies. "We're just going to make the focus on Avery."

"Okay, fine. Whatever we have to do," Finn says instantly. Andrew opens his mouth to say something, but he stops himself. My brows twitch together and I'm about to make him spit it out, but Jordan starts talking instead. "Andrew and I aren't the ones who need to speak at it, though."