Tethered Hearts | ✓ | Books 1 & 2

Episode 31| Big Whoop

Bryce's P.O.V.

At nine o'clock, there was a knock on my door.

Carefully without waking Sophia up, I got up from the bed and headed downstairs to see who was there. I peeked through the peep-hole and saw Conner, Anthony, and Ernie circled around the door. Behind them, four of my other guys stood along the wall. I had expected Conner to come alone.

I went out into the hallway to speak to them, knowing that our talk could take long. I didn't want our conversation to be overheard by Sophia.

I turned to Ernie. "Did you find Audrey? You said you had a lead on her location."

"It ended up being a false lead." Ernie replied. "We had to go back to square one."

I swore, annoyed at the circles we were going in with this Audrey girl. If felt like each day we were getting further and further away from her. I looked at the guys and saw one face was missing from the group. "Where's Grayson?"

"He's not answering his mobile phone. I think he's trying to cope with everything that happened." Conner said. "I called him when I found out about the cops at Mary Warner Hall."

"Was it Sophia's roommate?"

Anthony exchanged a look with Conner, and then nodded his head. "Yeah, it was a girl named Lora. She shared a room with her. There's going to be a press release held by the LAPD at noon."

My back met with the wall as I pushed my hands into my pockets. "Do you know anything?"

"The most we gathered was that she wasn't killed there. Her body was found west of the campus. There's a security video tape of her leaving, willingly, with a guy and then going into a car. The cops where at the dorms because there was some evidence of who the guy was."

I squinted. "There was a guy?"

"Yeah. But they haven't identified who it was. I think they'll release that at noon with a sketch." Conner further explained. "We came back to your place to discuss what our next move will be. I don't think the cops have anything to link Mister Santiago to murder, but it wouldn't be out of character for him to pin this on his enemy." He gestured at me. "His enemy being you."

I huffed, crossing my arms. "He's not going to put this on me."

"You don't know that." Anthony chimed in. "We need to be in high alert until we can deal with the Mister Santiago issue. Why is he even against you to begin with?"

"Because Bryce has been too busy spending his time with Sophia instead of locating Audrey and his dope. He went to a party - when he should've been searching for Audrey." Conner judgmentally scanned me up and down, narrowing his blue eyes. "She's becoming more of a problem than I thought she would be."

"Shut the fuck up, Conner," I snarled. "I'm the one who calls the shots. Remember who's pulling the strings around here."

"Lately, it hasn't been you," he snapped back. "I've been the one carrying your dead weight around, doing jobs you should be a part of. But no, you're too hung up on her."

"He's got a point there, boss," Ernie threw in his two cents, winning him a glare from me. "I'm sorry, it's true though. You haven't given us many orders on how to locate Audrey. It's mainly been-"

"Enough from you," I barked. "You want some orders? Alright, first official order is to create a party of four. The four that's chosen will rotate positions on watching over Sophia to make sure there isn't any visible threats. She can't always be here, so I need people to be there when I can't be."