After the team defeats Traeger, Kota can't bring herself to go give her mech-link back to the team, especially since she and Kendall are wanting to leave. She leaves a note a runs.
(Ryan's POV)
"She never came, huh?" Spyder says. The four of us had met at the robot after we had defeated Harper, just to spend the rest of the night together after finally taking down Harper. I wanted Dakota there, I knew she hadn't unblocked my number, but I texted, called and left a message anyway.
"She was never going to come." I said sadly, "Even though I asked her too. I don't know what I was expecting."
"She'll come back." Mark tries his best to be 'comforting'.
"Yeah, sure she will."
—————
"Mark?" I say as we rounded the corner towards out house. I looked past it, over to Dakotas. "Something looks wrong."
"What is it?" Mark asks.
"Their house, looks, dead in a way?" I noticed the car was gone. The welcome mat, gone. Blinds were all shut, every single one. Which was very out of the ordinary, Dakota loves the natural sunlight. We got out of the car, I just stood outside the passenger door, looking over across the lawn.
"You don't think... she left?" Mark wonders from the other side of the car.
"She might have." I say before speeding to the front door and up the stairs to my room, Mark followed me. I open my blinds to look across to her room. The window was open, blinds too, but there was nothing on the other side. "She did." Mark stood over my shoulder, looking at what I saw. I powered up the gravity shoes I was wearing, stepping up on the window sill.
"What are you doing?" Mark asks, grabbing my shoulder.
"She left her window open for a reason, I know it." I shrugged him off, "I'm going over there." I glanced between our two houses to check and make sure the coast was clear, before pushing off to the other wall, crawling inside. The other window was shut, blinds close so was the door and the light was off. Everything was gone except her mech-link, a small piece of paper, laid in the middle of the room. I picked them up, just holding them in my hand, Mark yelling from my room,
"What did you find?" I jumped back to through my window holding the note and mech-link.
"All that's left of her." I say, showing him the stuff.
"Well geez, don't say it like that." Mark says. "That doesn't mean she's like, actually gone."
"Sorry Ry that you had to find out this way. (Assuming you're the one who found this) It's best for me, in the long run best for all of us. Love you guys -Kota." I read off the note. "Sure about that? This is insane. For her to leave this quick."
"Maybe she's not gone forever?" Mark suggests.
"She was never going to be here forever." I remind him. "They weren't moving here, that house was never theirs, they rented it. The plan was always to go back to South Carolina."
"We don't know that's where she went." He continues.
"Where else could she have gone?"
—————
A couple of weeks had passed, nothing had happened. Dakotas social medias went dry again, she wouldn't answer a phone call or text. Harris had been hard at work trying to find anything, anything at all. All this tracking Seth Harper and Grey was coming in handy. He was just trying to figure out where she went.
"Ryan!" Harris screams from his lab. The other three boys were lying around the X-Deck when Harris screamed. "I got her! I really found her!"
"You said that last week when it was really someone in China pretending to be her online." I yelled back.
"No I'm serious! I have pictures of her!" Harris yelled again.
"Really?" I sat up from the couch running into Harris's lab, Spyder and Mark followed me.
"Yeah, look at this." Harris points to his computer screen. "This group of people took a selfie in downtown Los Angeles, look who they caught in the background." It was hard to see her face, but it was her. Confirmed by her sister standing next to her. "This was posted two days ago."
"So she could still be in LA, still be in the state!" I said, relieved. "Good work, Harris."
"Hold on, there's more." Harris clicks on his computer. "Four days ago, also accidentally popped up in the back of someone's picture, also in downtowns LA. But this was yesterday. Some paparazzi saw her, her sister, and two unknowns at the Santa Monica Pier."
"Who are those guys?" Spyder wonders out loud.
"I don't know, but if I can find out, I bet we can find Kota." Harris says.
"Wait go back," Mark waves to Harris. "Back to that last picture, look at that." Kendall was walking hand in hand with one of the two guys.
"I can work with that!" Harris scribbles some things down on a notepad.
"What about that!" I pointed to the other guy. "Look at his shirt." Harris clicked a key a couple times on his computer to blow up the image.
"Ramón C. Cortines School of the Visual and Performing Arts." Mark read.
"I can work with that too!" Harris says.
—————
"Okay, after some digging, I think I got this figured out." Harris had called us all back to lab after a hour or so. "The guy in this picture holding hands with Kendall is Lucas West. And according to his Instagram, he and Kendall had been seeing each other for a couple months. As for the other guy, his name is Jackson West, Lucas's younger brother. And, he's a junior at Ramón C. Cortines School of the Visual and Performing Arts. It's a private boarding school in L.A."
A/N - It's really a public school, but this is what we're going with.
"So that's where we start." I nod.
"Wait what do you mean by start?" Mark asks. "You want to go there?"
"We know she's in L.A, we know where the guy goes to school, they have to be staying with Kendall's boyfriend, and I need to talk to her again." I answer. "So, yeah I want to go there."
"She left for a reason." Harris adds. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"I'm the reason she left." I remind everyone. "Her note said it was best for all of us that she leaves, and I just know that's not true. We gotta try and get them to come back."
"I agree, we gotta at least talk to her." Spyder nods. "Don't worry Ryan, I miss her too."
"I mean don't we all?" I ask.
"I don't." Mark shrugs.
"Dude."
"I'm sorry, I know you miss her, but I enjoy the peace and quiet around here." He says while Spyder pushed a book of the table onto Marks foot. "Ow! Mostly quiet at least."
"Well, I'm going." I say.
"In what car, I'm driving you all to Los Angeles." Mark crossed his arms.
"I don't need a car." I looked around at the robot we were standing in. "I have the robot."
"You want to take the robot to L.A?" Mark asks. "What, park it on the Hollywood sign?"
"That's actually a really good idea..."
"I was joking! You can't take the robot to L.A." Mark says.
"Well, I'm going. So you either drive down there, or I take the robot."
"Fine." He unwillingly sighs.
"Yes! Thank you!"
"Only one issue." He adds. "What are we going to tell our parents? We can't tell the truth, at least not the whole truth. We can't tell mom that Harris has been trying to track Dakotas phone."
"Well, we just tell mom that we saw an instagram post that Dakota was in the background of and we want to go find her."
"You really think even if you tell her that she'll just let us drive to L.A?" Mark asks.
"Maybe we leave, then when we're an hour down the road we tell her that we left because we wanted to get there ASAP," I answer.
"She's going to kill us. And what are they going to tell their parents?" Mark points to Harris and Spyder.
"That Harris is trying to tutor me." Spyder says.
"That I'm trying to tutor Spyder." Harris follows.
"Whose side are you guys on?" Mark asks.
"The side of the person who's trying to get our best friend back." Spyder nods at me.
"Thanks guys."
—————
After school the next day, we did what I said and took off towards Los Angeles.
"Did you ever think about what we're going to do when we get there?" Mark asks when we're about and hour away with Harris and Spyder asleep in the back seats of Marks car. "Like how are you going find her? All we know is where the younger brother goes to school, we don't know where they actually are."
"I- hadn't thought all that far." I answer. "Look I don't know if she left with the intentions of never coming back, but that can't be the way I leave things with her. I know you two didn't always get along, and you didn't really like her, but I did. And I need to try and make things right."
"You like her?" He side eyes me with a smile.
"No- not- not like that. I just mean she was my best friend, I can't just leave this alone." I said.
"I mean that would make sense why you're so crazy about trying to find her." Mark continues. "Because you like her."
"No I don't." I denied.
"Make's sense." Harris says from the back seat. Apparently they weren't asleep
"Look at us, fighting for love." Spyder says.
"That's not what this is." I laughed along with the three of them. "More than anything I do want to apologize."
"So you do like her." Mark says again.
"That's not what I said."
"But it's what you meant."