Midnight Cherry | H.S.

Chapter 14 🍒

Mission accomplished; Louis is shocked and I think a little scared. Good.

"A-alright man, I'll fix up" I let go of him, not realising I had him pinned up so high from the floor as he lands on his feet. "I'm getting a drink, I'll meet you in the office in five" I walk off to the kitchen and Louis makes his way to my office without a word.

I go to the kitchen and pour myself a small glass of my usual neat whiskey. I lean against the counter, giving myself a few minutes to calm down. I need a clearer mindset if we're gonna get anywhere with our planning today. Eventually, I make my way to my office.

When I walk in, Louis is say down, already looking at the parts of the plan we've already pieced together. Now calm and collected, I sit down. "First of all we need to discard the now useless crap" I say and start pulling papers out the pile to read. "We gotta cross of this link" I say pointing to our link between Louis and Wolfe. He was our insight, our inside man, but that's done for. Louis pulls the string off that connected his and Wolfe's photo.

"We also gotta scrap the idea of breaking him down from the inside" Louis begins, crumpling up another piece of paper and chucking it in the bin.

"That was our best lead" I complain and roll my eyes as I shuffle more papers around the desk. "We need to find a new leverage point" I suggest.

Maybe there's another weak link?

After a while of bouncing ideas off each other, we realise a potential gold mine of an idea. Niall and Liam.

The other two who worked for Wolfe with us back in the day; though I still have my suspicions surrounding Liam being the rat from before, that means he's a good target to use against Wolfe.

That's when our new plan begins. We need to convince Liam and/or Niall to work with us, against Wolfe, which in all fairness, shouldn't be too hard; we have a great history. Niall will be harder to persuade than Liam but I reckon we can get them both on our team.

No more sandwich dropping and we should be fine.

I check my phone. It's been a while since I've had an update from Melanie. We agreed on a text every half an hour, she's fifteen minutes late for her most recent update. I hate to be so strict about it, but Zayn is crazy, Wolfe is dangerous.

Surely she's just got caught up? Maybe it's particularly busy today? I shouldn't worry but it's all I can do. Nothing bad could've happened to her in a busy cafe, fully staffed too.

She's fine, she's fine, she's fine.

I have to keep repeating it to myself in my head otherwise I'll overthink and convince myself that she's seconds away from death. Now that may be extreme, but I can't help but think of the worst possible scenario.

I decide to give her a call.

No answer.

I call again...

No answer.

I take a couple of deep breaths. She's just caught up, she's busy, it must be a full day there.

One more ring, she'll realise it's important or remember that she's forgotten to text me.

No answer.

My heart beat increases as my chest tightens. Scared of something terrible happening, I grab my keys and head straight for the door. I don't say anything but I'm sure Louis will work out for himself that something's up.

"Keep working on the plan, I'll be back" I quickly clarify just before I speed out the door and into my car. I feel like I'm not even moving fast enough.

I feel like every traffic light is fucking me over on purpose. Every single one turns red just as I get to it. Frustrated, I bang on the steering wheel several times. Finally, I get to the cafe and park up right outside the front.

I sigh in relief when I see Lana, she's acting normal which means nothing could've happened to Melanie. I can't see her though so I just assume she's in the break room or on a toilet break perhaps.

I walk over. "Hey Harry" she looks around, as if she was looking for someone. "Hey" I respond, "where's Melanie?" I ask, she's likely to know. "I was just about to ask you the exact same thing" she looks at me with a confused expression.

I freeze.

"What?" she definitely saw the change in my face.

"She's not here, I came in late today, I heard she was coming back to work today but she wasn't here when I arrived about twenty minutes ago so I assumed she was coming in for a later shift" Lana begins to explain.

Oh god. No, no, no. Please do not tell me this means what I think it means.

"You're kidding me right, this is a prank?" It has to be. It just has to be.

"I promise you Harry, I'm not joking, she's not here" Lana sounds worried.

Fuck.

How have I done it? How have I let something happen to her again? Now we don't know exactly what's happened, but she's not here - we had an agreement that she would not leave the cafe, even during her break. Between this and the lack of a recent update that she promised me... I know something's happened. Something's not right.

Well that's just great. Fucking great.

*A/N*

Yayyyy I actually didn't update super late!

This chapter is a little shorter than usual, but teaaaaa ☕️

Hope you're enjoying, any theories as what's going on with Wolfe?

Love you Fruities ❤️