Deacon closes the lid of the toilet and leans back against the wall. He shuts his eyes, the taste of vomit sour in his throat, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
She's been gone for twelve hours.
Twelve hours of not knowing where she is, not knowing what happened. Not knowing if she's been hurt.
Twelve hours of fucking torture.
He feels bile rising again and throws the lid back up, and wretches into the bowl but there's nothing left in him to come out.
"You okay in there buddy?" Vince calls gently from the other side of the door.
Vince is wrecked with worry too. Neither of them have slept - the notion hasn't even occurred to them. They've spent all morning calling every friend they can think of to see if anyone has seen Rayna or heard from her, anything at all that might help answer where the hell she is.
But no one has.
They'd alerted the bar staff at The Underdog after finding her purse, and one of them had searched the yard with Deacon and Vince but two frantic hours of combing through bushes and dumpsters and underneath cars had yielded no clues, other than some tyre tracks in the mud that the rain washed away quickly. When closing time had arrived they'd ripped the inside of the bar to pieces, but there was nothing there either. Not a single trace of her.
Deacon had driven straight to the police station after that, but the solitary cop on duty had told him, patronisingly and with infuriating boredom in his voice, that there was nothing they could do - she'd probably just come home in the morning.
"Deac?" Vince calls again. He knocks on the door when he still doesn't get an answer.
"I'm here," Deacon manages. He flushes the toilet and drags himself to his feet.
He cannot crumble into the pit of all-consuming despair he feels trying to swallow him. He needs to summon every bit of strength he has - Rayna needs him. Wherever she is and whatever's happened to her, she needs him.
The thought of someone hurting her threatens to knock him back to the ground again, and he feels winded, like he's been kicked in the gut. He holds onto the sink for a moment and forces himself to breathe deeply. He can't stop thinking about it though; someone took her, the Mötley Crüe girl, someone else, and whatever their intention, it can't be good.
He opens the door. Vince is standing on the other side, his brow creased. He pats Deacon carefully on the shoulder.
"Come on. We gotta get some food in us, it's gonna be a long day."
"I can't eat anythin'," Deacon says, but Vince takes his arm and leads him into the living room, and sits him down on the couch. He doesn't have enough energy to protest.
"Here," Vince says, handing him a mug of coffee and a plate with a couple of slices of toast on it. Deacon tries to say thank you but all that comes out is a choked sound and he has to focus on his breathing again to calm himself.
He wants her to walk through the door so badly it overwhelms him. He drops his head into his hands and doesn't feel Vince sit down next to him but a strong arm grabs him around the shoulders and holds him while hot tears fall from his eyes.
There's a knock at the door. "It'll be Watty," Vince says, and gets up to answer.
He's right - Deacon hears his concerned voice and rubs his face, trying to pull himself together.
"Deacon," he says, rushing over to the couch and sitting beside him. "What on earth's happened?"
"She's gone, Watty. She was there and then she just… vanished."
Vince explains everything Deacon can't, how she'd gone to the bathroom with the girl who'd come up to their table, how they'd found her purse, and her necklace on the truck's windshield. Watty listens, increasing alarm on his face.
"It's my fault," Deacon croaks when Vince is finished. "I lost her. She's gone because of me."
"How could this possibly be your fault?" Watty asks.
"Some stranger came and took her to that bathroom and I didn't do anythin'. I just watched - she walked away with that girl and I just watched."
"What were you gonna do, tell her she couldn't go to the damn bathroom? That ain't you, and it ain't Rayna either. Deac, man, this ain't even close to bein' your fault," Vince insists.
"He's right. This isn't on you, son. You couldn't have known anything would happen." Watty fixes him with a steady look and he feels like a little kid, scared and lost and like he wants Watty to hug him. "We have to keep our heads and get to the bottom of whatever this is so we can find Rayna, and quickly."
He's worried, very much so - there's fear in his eyes, but Watty is the most unshakeable person Deacon's ever met and he's relieved to have him here to help. He throws Vince a grateful look for calling him.
"Eat the toast," Vince says, and pats him on the shoulder again. He shoves a piece at Deacon and he manages a small bite, but it gets stuck in his throat and he has to wash it down with the coffee. The last cup of coffee he'd had was the morning before, with Rayna. He clenches his jaw and breathes through his nose. In, out, one, two, three.
"We need to start from the beginning, Tell me everything you remember about the girl."
Deacon braces his hands on his knees. "I'm not sure that's the beginning. I thought I was just bein' paranoid, but now…" He looks at Watty. "I'm pretty sure we were bein' followed."
/
"What time was this?"
The policeman on the end of the phone is barely listening. Deacon is trying his best not to get frustrated, and Watty nods encouragingly at him.
"It was around midnight, like I said."
"And was your girlfriend drinking?"
"What the hell does that matter?" He stops short and huffs. "A little, yeah. Look, she's missing, somebody took her - she could be anywhere right now and this is just wastin' time."
"Had you had an argument?"
"No!" Deacon rubs his temples with the hand that isn't death-gripping the receiver. "No we hadn't had an argument - she hasn't just gone off by choice."
"But she was drinking and she willingly went with a girl you've never seen before to the bathroom of this bar, and she isn't home yet - is that what you're telling me?"
Deacon grits his teeth. "Yes. That's what I've told you three times now. That and a man's been followin' us, and I saw him last night right before she disappeared."
The policeman sighs, as though he's about to reason with a petulant child. "Sir, it sounds to me like your girlfriend made a new friend and is probably sleepin' it off somewhere. Give it another twenty-four hours and see if she comes home."
The phoneline goes dead before Deacon can rip the guy a new asshole, and he stares at it in disbelief. "He hung up on me. Rayna's missing and this sonofabitch hung up on me."
Vince takes the phone from him and puts it back on the cradle. "Forget the police. We'll call them again - we're gonna have to figure out whatever we can without them right now."
"They're expecting us at The Underdog, so let's start there," Watty says. He's known the owner for years and he'd called as soon as the initial shock had settled, and arranged to meet him there before they open for the day. "I hate to say this, but we're going to need to get in touch with Tandy."
Tandy. Deacon knows they'll have to tell her, he'll have to tell her - her sister has gone missing on his watch. Her dislike of him is about to be taken up one hell of a notch. He's been putting it off, but it's looking more and more inevitable.
"Do you think we gotta tell Lamar too?" Vince asks gingerly.
Watty stands up. He walks around in a wide circle, his hands clasped together in front of him. "Lamar would use this against Deacon, I'm sure of it. He'd find a way to pin this on you, son, and stop you getting anywhere near Rayna, even when we do find her." He looks at them both. "We need to be strategic here."
"Won't the police contact him to tell him his daughter's missing?" Vince presses.
Watty thinks for a moment. "So far they haven't taken this seriously, so it's unlikely it would get back to Lamar just yet. We need to make sure we get some leads on Rayna before that happens."
Deacon frowns. "But how are we gonna find her if gettin' the police involved could make it harder for us?"
"I'm not sure. For now, they're not helping anyway, so let's see what happens today and we can come up with a solution to that by tomorrow."
They drive to the bar in silence, Deacon in the backseat. Flashes of the night before rush to him in a slide show: the same route, Rayna beside him. Her hand in his. Her soft voice singing along to the radio. He's holding it together with a thread that could snap at any moment.
The parking lot is empty, and they go straight inside. Billy the bartender and Johnson, the owner, are sitting on stools by the bar. They scurry towards them when the door opens, but Deacon barely registers what they say - this is where it happened, and that's all he can think about.
"She still ain't turned up?" Johnson asks, but he knows the answer - they wouldn't be here if she had. The flicker of hope on his face drains away as Watty shakes his head.
"Damn," Billy says. "It's Rayna, man, this can't be one of those missing persons things - not Rayna. I seen that shit on TV and it never ends well."
Johnson gives him a furious look and a sharp elbow to the ribs, and Billy shuts up, but not before Deacon thinks he's going to throw up again. He puts his hand in his pocket and closes his fingers around Rayna's necklace; the cool metal calms him a fraction.
"We're here to help," Johnson tells them, and motions for them to follow him into the back.
"It's gonna be okay," Vince says quietly, taking Deacon by the arm and helping him forward. "C'mon - we're gonna find her safe and sound."
One foot in front of the other, Deacon thinks, just one foot in front of the other.
The small office is more of a junk room, but it has a TV monitor on a desk and Johnson pulls some plastic chairs around one side of a table for them to sit on.
"We pulled up the CCTV," he says.
"You have CCTV?" Deacon asks incredulously. "We can see what happened?"
Johnson gives him an apologetic look. "Not exactly. There aren't any cameras in the bathrooms, or in the corridor outside. There aren't any out back either, only around the front." Deacon's heart sinks, but Johnson pushes a tape into a VCR player and picks up a clunky remote. "We can't see what happened once Rayna got to the bathroom, but we can see what happened before…" He looks around at them. "We think we've found the girl."
He hits play and after a few seconds grainy black and white footage fills the screen: the bar, busy with people. Deacon can make out their booth on the right hand side, not quite fully in shot.
"Right here," Johnson says, tapping the TV. "Watch now…"
A figure blocks the rest of the table from view and a minute or so passes. It moves back, and a second figure gets up and stands with its back to the camera, but then it turns, and Deacon can see - it's Rayna.
Fire shoots through his heart. He doesn't realise he's doing it but he leans closer, trying to get to her through the screen. He wishes with every fibre of his being that he could rewind to this moment and stop it - stop the girl from leading her away, stop whatever the fuck happened after she did.
But he can't.
"That's her," Watty says, and he sounds like he's struggling to keep his emotions in check himself.
"And that's the girl," Vince adds as the second figure turns around too.
There she is. She's platinum blonde, in a metal kind of way, in jeans and ankle boots. She looks completely normal. There's something about her face though, something in her expression that's off. Deacon curses himself for not picking up on it at the time.
"She took Rayna," he rasps, and it feels like there are razorblades in his throat.
"Not necessarily." Watty is scrutinising the image, his eyebrows furrowed deeply. "But at the very least she would know what came next."
"If someone did take Rayna it's possible they took this girl too," Johnson says. "She isn't on any of the footage from the rest of the night." He shrugs. "Or she was involved in it, and that's why she wasn't here afterwards."
"How do we track her down?" Vince asks. "She ain't a regular, right, you don't recognise her?"
"I don't. But Billy does."
Deacon stares at him with his mouth open. "He knows who she is?"
"He doesn't have a name or anythin', but he's seen her before. We've called the rest of the regular staff down here to look at this footage and tell us if they can identify her. They should be here any minute. We haven't told them why - we figured you'd want to keep this private for the time being, we don't want to jeopardise any investigation there might be."
Investigation. Rayna. None of it feels real. The plastic chair is hard under Deacon's ass and he grips the sides of it.
They go outside to look around the back lot again. It looks different in daylight, and Johnson tells them he's held off on inspecting it again until they arrived, knowing they'd recognise anything that might belong to Rayna and not wanting to disturb the area. It's almost like he's done this before, Deacon thinks.
They don't find anything. Whatever unknown event took place in this lot has turned Deacon's whole life upside down and there's not a single sign to indicate anything untoward happened here at all.
The regular staff arrive: a girl who'd been behind the bar with Billy the night before, a couple of guys Deacon recognises and an older woman he doesn't. They file into the back room and Deacon, Vince and Watty stand behind them while they crowd around the screen. Johnson gives them a rundown of what they're looking for on the tape, but he says nothing about Rayna being missing.
"Jolie, I know you were on last night - if any of this jogs your memory whatsoever about anythin' that might've felt amiss, speak up about it," he says. "The rest of y'all, if you've seen the girl on the right before, I want to know who she is. It's important we track her down to help with somethin'."
"I recognise the blonde," one of the guys says straightaway. "She used to be in a band with one of my buddies - her name's Lacey. Lacey somethin'..."
Deacon looks at Vince and Watty, his heart leaping.
"Lacey what, Mark?" Johnson urges.
Mark thinks for a few seconds. Deacon wants to grab him and rattle his brains until the recollection falls out of him. "It's somethin' that sounds kinda Scottish - McDonald, McDougal. What is it you want her for?"
"We need her to help us with some information about an incident here last night. She's not in any trouble, we just need her to fill us in to get a full picture."
Mark goes to call his friend, and comes back a few minutes later with the girl's name and an address a couple of neighbourhoods over. It's like a golden nugget and Deacon has to stop himself running out the door to go straight over there.
Lacey Maclean. 1301 McGavock Pike.
"Let's pay her a visit," Watty says, and Johnson grabs his jacket and offers to go with them.
They don't call first, fearing she might run if they give her any idea they're coming, but Watty floors it anyway on the way there, just in case Mark's buddy might have given her a heads up. When they get to the house it looks like any other, a regular two-storey on a regular street.
Deacon jumps out before Watty has fully stopped the car, and Vince does the same and races around to him.
"Hold up, Deac," he says, "we gotta pace ourselves. If we scare her off she won't help us."
"What if Rayna's in there, Vince?" His head hurts. "What if she's in this house, bein' kept there?"
Vince puts his arm around Deacon's shoulders and steels the both of them, looking down the path to the front door. "Then we're gonna get her out. And if she's not here, then this girl might be able to tell us where she is."
Watty and Johnson catch up to them and together they walk up to the door and ring the bell. No one answers, and Deacon is starting to lose his battle not to put a brick through the window and get in that way when Watty rings again and a figure appears in the hallway, just visible through the curtain that hangs over the back of the door.
"Someone's here," Vince says, and Deacon holds his breath.
The door opens. It's her.
Watty puts a hand on Deacon's arm to keep him back. "Lacey Maclean?"
Her face turns white. She's in a robe and her hair is a mess, and she looks rough, like she hasn't slept. She locks eyes with Deacon and visibly panics.
"Hey!" he yells as she tries to close the door in their faces, and he gets one foot in and pushes it back open, stepping forcibly into the house. "I don't fuckin' think so, Lacey. Where's Rayna? What the hell have you done with her?"
She backs away. "I'm sorry," she says, her voice wobbling. "I didn't know. I didn't know what they were gonna do."
"What did they do? What did who do?" Deacon roars, everything in his vision spinning as he lurches towards her.
"Deac, Deacon," Vince shouts firmly, and he feels several hands on him pulling him back.
His eyes are bulging, his nostrils flared, and he can barely get a breath into his lungs. What the fuck has happened to Rayna?
"Do you know where she is?" he pleads, tears stabbing at his eyes. He's desperate, and he sounds it, and Lacey starts to cry.
"No," she tells them, shaking her head. "I don't know where she is. I don't know where they took her."
He starts to hyperventilate. Where they took her. He needs to sit down or he's going to fall down, and Vince and Johnson try to hold him steady.
"Listen, just tell us what happened," Watty says, trying to sound measured. There's a crack in his voice though and Deacon knows - he's terrified. He steps in front of Deacon and lifts both hands in a surrender gesture, moving towards Lacey who's cowering in the corner. "Start from the beginning."
"Okay," she says, wiping her eyes, "okay."
She points towards a living room off the hallway and they all follow her in and sit, and it's the weirdest fucking situation Deacon could imagine - sitting on a couch about to have a conversation about who the fuck has kidnapped his girlfriend. Somewhere in the part of his mind that is rapidly shutting down to protect him from the acute terror of it all, he pictures Lacey asking if they want tea.
She sits with her knees up to her chest on a chair opposite them, like a kid in trouble. Deacon feels heavy like a stone on the lumpy couch, squashed between Vince and Watty.
"They came up to me when I was parking," she starts. "Two men, I'd never seen them before. I was scared at first but they were in suits, they looked official or somethin'."
"What did they want?" Watty asks.
"They said they'd give me a hundred dollars if I helped them." She looks ashamed, full of regret. "I can barely make rent, and I got five roommates - we're always this close to bein' kicked out of here." She looks at Deacon, her eyes red and wide, like she's begging him to understand. He bites down to keep his mouth shut. She'll make rent, alright - at what cost?
"If you helped them do what?" Johnson asks, stunned. Whatever went down, it went down in his bar.
Lacey hesitates. She stares at the floor. "Get the girl from the band to come out to the back parking lot." She says it in a quiet voice, meek, and hugs her knees tighter like she wants to make herself as small as she can. She's nothing like the confident girl who'd come up to their table the night before. "I asked her to come to the bathroom first, I said I couldn't get the zipper on my jeans undone, and she helped, and then I gave her some bullshit about a guy breakin' up with me and said I needed a cigarette." She shrinks further into the chair. "She agreed to come out back with me - she was so sweet, and so trusting. I really wish she hadn't been."
With that she breaks down, her face in her hands, shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.
"What did they do?" Deacon asks, completely breathless. "What did they do once you got her out there?"
Lacey picks her head up. Her lip trembles as she looks at Deacon. "They took her."
Everything is blurry after that. He feels as though he's been plunged underwater into a brutal icy lake that steals his breath, nothing to grab onto to get back to safety.
"There was a car by the gate with the engine running, and one of the men was in it. The other one must have been hiding behind a dumpster - he jumped out and grabbed her." It tumbles out, like she can't get away from the words fast enough. "He put something over her mouth, a cloth - I think it must have had something on it that drugged her, 'cause she tried to fight back at first but then she went really limp, like a ragdoll. It was horrible, he threw her over his shoulder like she weighed fuckin' nothing." She sucks in a rough breath. "He carried her over to the car and put her on the backseat, and then she was gone. They just drove off with her. It all happened so fast, she couldn't have done anythin' to stop them."
She looks distraught, and for a second Deacon is paralysed, staring at her aghast. When she starts to say she's sorry he can't take any more. He gets up and stumbles through the door back into the hallway, no idea what he's doing. He finds himself in a kitchen and grabs blindly at a tap, and water rushes into a sink; he throws handfuls of it onto his face, gasping for air.
Hands grip him and Vince's distorted voice manages to permeate his consciousness. Vince and someone else help him get onto the ground and put his head between his knees, and somewhere Lacey is still saying she's sorry, over and over again.
When he can finally lift his head he sees her, on her knees before him, her face red. He wants to strangle her.
"I didn't know," she whispers, but it doesn't fucking matter what she didn't know. She set Rayna up. She set Rayna up and now she could be anywhere. He can't say anything. There are no words in him for Lacey fucking Maclean.
The dread of the worst case scenario he's been trying desperately to keep at bay comes rushing at him with the force of a high-speed train, and he lets out a noise like a wounded animal. "What if she's dead?" He feels like he's going to break into pieces. "What if they took her away and killed her?"
It's the worst thing he could ever imagine. He doesn't know what he thought had happened but hearing Lacey's account is chilling beyond belief - two men, Rayna unconscious, driven away without a trace. His whole body starts to shake violently, like he's freezing, but he's dripping with sweat, overheating with the intensity of his panic.
"No," Vince tells him, "no, Deacon. We're not goin' there - we're gonna find her. She's gonna be okay." He taps his cheek hard but Deacon barely feels it.
Lacey is wailing, and mumbling about it being her fault, and he wants to scream at her that it is, it is her fault.
"What direction did they go in?" Johnson asks, the only one of them who can form a coherent thought.
"Down the dirt track. They sped off down there, they were in a black car, a nice one. It had tinted windows."
The one Deacon and Vince had seen in the main parking lot. The one trenchcoat man had gotten into. They'd seen the car. It must have driven around to the back to lay in wait for Rayna.
"I took off after that," Lacey continues. "I was scared they'd come back and take me too because I'd seen their faces, so I went around front and got in my car, and came straight here. I hid in my room like a coward, I just hid. I kept thinking all night that they'd show up."
"They're long gone," Watty says. "It wasn't you they wanted - it was her." He sounds bitter, and Lacey cries harder.
"What did they look like?" Vince asks. "They were in suits - what else?"
She splutters, almost choking, and takes a few deep breaths. "One of them was shorter, kind of slim. He had a long coat on, and an umbrella. He's the one who grabbed her - he held the cloth over her mouth. The other guy stayed in the car."
Vince closes his eyes for a moment as the confirmation of trenchcoat's identity rolls over him, his face turning ashen. Deacon sees the man sitting in Arnold's diner, broad daylight, watching. Watching Rayna. He sees him sitting a few metres from the pool table days before that, watching her then too. The uneasy feeling, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck - it was all real. They were being followed.
"What about the other guy?" he asks, barely able to get the words out. "What did he look like?"
Lacey swallows. She's afraid of Deacon. She should be. "He was taller. Really tall, actually, and stockier. He had a grey suit on and his hair slicked back. He didn't say much - the other guy did the talking, but he had a really unnerving stare." She shakes herself, obviously picturing him. "He kind of looked like Lurch, you know from the Addams Family?"
It hits him like a tonne of bricks. He snaps his head up to look Lacey directly in the eye. "Lurch? Did you say he looked like Lurch?"
"Yeah," she replies, unsure what the relevance is. She looks from Deacon to the others.
"Fuck," Deacon spits, jumping to his feet. "Fuck." He turns urgently towards Vince and Watty. "Albert."
"Who?" Vince asks, confused, but Deacon sees the moment it clicks for Watty. His face changes completely.
He shakes his head at Deacon the tiniest fraction. His meaning is immediately clear - not here.
"Lacey," Watty says, "you've been very helpful."
She gets up too and looks between them all. "Do you know who it is? Do you know who took your girlfriend?"
Deacon presses his lips together. "I don't know."
He starts for the hallway and the others follow him, Lacey running after them.
"Wait," she says, but he's already out of the house, and he doesn't hear what else they say to her. She stands at the door, and her robe has come undone. Deacon notices as he waits for Watty to get to the car and unlock it that she's still wearing the Mötley Crüe t-shirt underneath.
"I really am sorry," she calls, staring at him. It's just loud enough for him to hear. He turns away from her and gets into the car.
/
Watty pulls over a few streets away in the parking lot of a disused Wendy's.
"Who the hell is Albert?" Vince asks. "What's goin' on?"
Deacon jumps out of the car and paces up and down beside it, hands on his hips, his mind running at a million miles an hour. He spins around when Watty comes up behind him.
"It's Lamar," he breathes, wild now. "Lamar did this."
"Let's just calm down a minute," Watty says, but it's obvious he's thinking the same thing. "The second man might not have been Albert. There could be plenty of tall stocky guys who a young girl would describe as looking like that - it isn't necessarily a defining feature."
"We saw him," Deacon says. "We saw Albert. Rayna and I, in Franklin last week."
"Maybe he was just out for the day. Franklin's not so far."
"We were at a craft fair, Watty. Can you picture Albert at a craft fair?"
Watty stares at him. "Who was he with?" he says after a moment.
"He was by himself. At a record stall. Right next to us."
It's Watty's turn to pace. Johnson and Vince stand beside the car, waiting for someone to explain, and Watty stops and looks at Deacon sharply. "Did he know you saw him?"
"Yeah. It was pretty damn obvious he didn't intend for us to though. Rayna quite literally bumped into him - let's just say he didn't look happy to see her." He tips his head back and looks up at the sky for a moment. It's about to rain again. Clouds threaten to spill over and he welcomes them to - he wants to feel something, anything but this. "He had him follow us, Watty. Him and that dick with the coat. It has to be him. It has to be Lamar."
Watty glances at Johnson. "We'll drop you back at the bar."
Johnson agrees, baffled by whatever the development is, but he's an old friend of Watty's and he knows better than to ask questions.
"Wait," Deacon says, "you said the front parking lot has CCTV, right?" He nods. "I'm gonna need to see it."
They go back to The Underdog and gather around the monitor again, and Johnson pulls another VHS tape from the top of a pile. Deacon and Vince work out between them that it would have been around 10pm when they saw the car, and he fast-forwards it to the right time stamp.
They see themselves, small figures weaving through cars to Deacon's truck. The side of the building where the man had been standing is out of shot, but the car that pulls up isn't. The sleek, dark-coloured car with the blacked-out windows. They see Vince point, and Deacon turn around. He starts to move forwards and a dark figure comes into view beside the car. One of the doors opens and the figure gets into the passenger seat.
"Well I'll be damned," Watty breathes. They all lean closer.
There, just visible in the driver's seat, his face turned to the side, is Albert.
"Holy shit," Deacon says. "I can't believe this."
They leave Johnson with no further explanation, and he gives them his word that he'll keep his eyes open for any sign of Rayna or either of the men, and an offer of help with whatever they need.
They drive to Watty's house. The tiles in the vast entrance hall echo under their boots as they pass through it, conjuring a surreal rhythm, and for a moment Deacon is absolutely sure he's dreaming - it's the worst fucking nightmare he could ever come up with. The exhaustion and the emotion are piling up on him, straining him to the limit, and he wishes desperately that it was a dream, that he'd wake and Rayna would be in his arms, safe and warm and fast asleep.
They go into the music room. He's been here before - with Rayna, always with Rayna. She usually ends up playing about on Watty's grand piano, her sweet voice filling the room all the way up to the vaulted ceilings. The silence bleeds with the absence of her.
"We need to think very carefully about what we do here," Watty tells them. He sits down on an ottoman and braces his hands on his knees. "This is extremely serious."
Vince throws his hands up. "Will somebody tell me what the hell is goin' on?"
"Albert is one of Lamar's 'people'," Deacon explains. "He does his accounts or somethin', somethin' to do with money. He's basically his right-hand man."
Watty nods. "He takes care of all Lamar's dirty laundry."
"So Rayna's his dirty laundry? What would this Albert guy want with her?"
"Nothin'," Deacon says, "he just does what Lamar tells him to. When we saw him in Franklin it gave me the same feelin' I'd been gettin' seein' the guy with the trenchcoat. It felt off, big time. Rayna sensed it too. And Lacey's description of him - Lurch, that's exactly what I said to Rayna later that day." Deacon recalls the glint in her eyes as she'd stifled a laugh. Lurch is cuter, she'd said. "I knew him bein' there was no coincidence."
"And where Albert is, Lamar is," Watty says.
"From what Lacey said, Albert didn't get out of the car when the other guy… grabbed Rayna. Almost like he didn't want her to see him - she would've recognised him. Lamar's coverin' his tracks."
Watty taps his chin. "But it wouldn't have mattered Lacey seeing his face earlier in the night, because she didn't know who he was."
Vince nods slowly, taking it all in. "So trenchcoat asshole follows you to gigs and places you hang out, and this Albert guy follows you on a day off, gatherin' information and gettin' familiar with your routines." Deacon rolls his shoulders forward, a chill running through him. "But what does her father have to do with it? What does all of this mean?"
Watty's face is grave. "It means that there's a real possibility here that Lamar arranged for Rayna to be taken. And if that's true… she could be anywhere. He will have made sure she's not easy to find."
Deacon takes in a deep breath and lets it back out slowly, digesting the new reality they're facing. Unknown men taking Rayna is one thing, Lamar Wyatt is another.
Vince stands up and whirls around, like a dog trying to find its tail. It's his way of processing. "What do we do? We have to go to the police with this, right?"
"We can't go to the police," Watty answers. "Lamar owns half this town - that includes the police. I would wager the people you spoke to last night and this morning didn't know a thing and were just putting this down as a runaway situation, but if we were to go to them again and implicate Lamar..." He trails off, tapping the toe of one of his boots on the floor. "At best they'd tell us to take a hike, and be no help finding Rayna. At worst… it would piss him off so badly that we were onto him that he'd make life very difficult indeed, and none of us would see her again."
Vince's eyebrows are sky-high. "You think he'll have paid the police off so they'll just let him do whatever he wants?"
"There are no limits to the things that man will do to get his way. Believe me. Paying people off is the least of his crimes."
"Why would he want his own daughter to disappear in the first place?"
Deacon, who's been quiet for a while, stands up. He walks over to the window and looks out at the vast expanse of green that is Watty's yard; the rain is just starting up. "To keep her away from music. And from me." He turns around. "We're gonna have to find her ourselves. I think I know where to start."
/
Tandy is not Vince's biggest fan. She never has been, and she doesn't sugarcoat it; Rayna's always said she has a secret soft spot for him deep down, but it's so secret it comes out as contempt, and that's in her nicest moments.
Thankfully Tandy had picked up when Deacon had called, and she'd been puzzled but agreed, with a mild irritation she didn't quite hide, to meet him at the day spa in the Gaylord Opryland resort. He isn't going to the day spa though - Vince is.
Showing up at Lamar's house to talk to her isn't an option, even if he is out of town - the probability that they'd be seen there is too high, and they can't make any moves that might hint that they've made the connection to Lamar. They need Tandy - she has direct access to him, and she could be the insider to help lead them to Rayna, but they have to play it carefully.
"We can't have her seen with Deacon anywhere in public," Watty had said. "That could get back to Lamar, and he'd know we're onto him. And if they're watching Tandy too, which they probably are, we can't get her to go anywhere that would seem out of the ordinary for her."
That's how Vince ends up sitting beside a hot tub in Speedos.
"What the hell are you doin' here?" Tandy says in greeting. "Did Deacon bring you?"
"Deacon's not here," he replies, standing up and holding his hands out like she's a suspicious deer that might bolt any second. "I need to talk to you. It's important."
She looks around, livid. "And where is Deacon, exactly?"
"I'll explain. Just sit down."
"I did wonder why in the world my sister's boyfriend wanted to meet me in a spa, of all places. I thought he must be bringing Rayna as a surprise or something, but this - is this a trick to get me on a date, Vincent?"
"It's not a trick. It's nothin' like that, I swear. Just give me five minutes of your time, please."
She folds her arms over her chest and bores holes into Vince, but sits, begrudgingly, on the very edge of the tub.
Vince scans the room; they're alone. "I need you to promise me two things," he says, and Tandy laughs.
"And why would I do that?"
"Because we have a problem, a big one, and you're gonna want to fix it just as much as I do." She clamps her mouth shut and waits for him to go on. "I need you to promise me that you'll stay here and listen to what I have to say, and that you'll react as quietly as you can. It's important, Tandy."
"You said that already," she replies, but his demeanour isn't anything she's seen from him before and it must have something of an impact, because she stays where she is and a little of the annoyance on her face slips away. "What is it, Vince?" He hesitates and she shakes her head, impatient. "What's the matter? Is this about Rayna?"
"Yeah," he whispers. "It's about Rayna."
"Is she okay?" Her momentary alarm turns instantly to ire. "Oh my God, has that fuckin' friend of yours knocked her up? She's pregnant isn't she?"
Vince shakes his head but she's on her feet, hands on hips, furious. "No, no that's not it."
"I swear to you, I will strangle him with my bare hands. She's eighteen, for God's sakes - is that why he didn't dare come down here and tell me himself? Is that why she didn't come down here?"
"Tandy! Sit down. It isn't that." She sits, but she's still pissed. Royally. "Rayna isn't pregnant. She's missing."
Tandy doesn't react. She stays completely still, her face frozen. Vince tries hard to calm his nerves. "What did you say?"
"She's missing," he repeats. "Since last night." She starts to get to her feet again and Vince grabs her arm. "Please, I need you to hear me."
"What the fuck do you mean she's missing, Vince?"
"Some people took her, last night, after the gig she played with Deacon." He watches it hit her face and can almost feel the shock ripple through her. Her mouth falls open and she covers it with her hand. It's shaking. "They put her in a car, and they drove away with her. Two men. We think we know who one of them is."
Tears fill Tandy's eyes and Vince hurts for her; she doesn't even flinch when he rubs her shoulder lightly, trying to give her some small semblance of comfort. "Who?"
He takes a deep breath, bracing himself. "We think it was your father's guy, Albert."
She can't help it, she shoots to her feet. "There is no way - what? What are you even talking about?" She takes a couple of uneven steps away from him, and back again, shaking her head so hard she surely makes herself dizzy. He waits patiently for her to absorb what he's said. "This is crazy, this is all crazy. No. You're crazy."
She stalks towards the door, and he gets up and runs after her. "Tandy, please."
She almost knocks him over when she whirls around to face him. "This is some bullshit," she hisses dangerously. "This is some bullshit, Vince. Why would Albert - why would he-" She laughs, a shrill, startling sound, and it bounces off the walls of the room. Water sloshes behind them. "How do I even know any of this is true? Why the hell should I believe anyone's taken my sister?"
"I have no reason to lie to you. We need your help." He holds out his hands. "Rayna needs your help. Every minute we spend not lookin' for her is a minute somethin' bad could be happenin' to her."
Tandy gasps, and her hands fly to her chest. She walks past him, back to the hot tub, and sinks onto the edge. "How do you know it was Albert?" she asks, defeated.
"We've seen him on CCTV. He paid a girl to lure your sister to a place he and his accomplice could easily snatch her. We found her purse on the ground afterwards, right where the girl told us it happened."
She closes her eyes momentarily, and says in a voice that's too soft for the Tandy that Vince knows, "Why would he do that?"
When she looks at him again, her eyes are bloodshot, and tears spill from them.
"We think…" he starts, and he has to square himself up to say what's coming next, "we think your father arranged it. To have taken Rayna away."
Tandy looks crestfallen. "Away from Deacon."
Relief floods Vince. She gets it. It's also worrying that her mind goes there so easily - Lamar's hatred of Deacon runs deep. "Yeah."
"This is one hell of an accusation, you know that, right? You're saying my father-" she looks around, seeming to realise she's talking too loudly, "you're saying my father had my sister kidnapped. You better be damn sure of the facts here."
"That's why we need your help. We're pretty sure, but we need to be really sure. And we need to find out where they might have taken her so we can find her, as soon as possible."
Tandy, someone with intimidatingly perfect posture, slumps forward. She looks hopeless. "My father is insane. I wish I could say there's no way he could have done this, but…" Something in her expression shifts then, and she sits up. "Wait a minute - Albert was with me last night. I had a meeting, he was there through the whole thing."
"What time did he leave?"
"I don't know, it was late though - he stayed behind with me to do a debrief afterwards. It had to have been at least 10pm."
"Where was the meeting?"
"Downtown - City Hall."
Vince thinks back to the night before. That would make sense - if he'd gone straight to The Underdog afterwards he would have been there around the time he and Deacon had seen the car.
"Your father gave him an alibi," he says, almost to himself. "If anyone was to query where he'd been, he'd have a clear answer. All those people at that meeting would be able to vouch for him."
Tandy grimaces. "Lamar Wyatt leaves no stone unturned. Have you gone to the police?"
"We tried. They weren't interested. They told us to call back tomorrow."
"Don't. We're gonna need to deal with this ourselves." She stands up. "He won't have had her hurt. He's a controlling psychopath but he isn't that evil." With a swift, decisive nod of her head, she grabs a towel and wraps it around herself. "Come on. Let's go figure out where the hell my sister is."
/
The pillow under her head is too hard. It's making her neck ache, and she tries to roll over but she feels too heavy and nothing happens. She must be really tired - it has been a long few weeks, she supposes.
Her pillow isn't usually this hard. She sleeps on Deacon's chest most of the time though, so maybe she's just forgotten; she wishes she could muster the energy to manoeuvre herself across the bed towards him, but she's just so tired.
There's an odd clicking noise somewhere nearby. She doesn't recognise it - maybe Vince is doing some weird shit out in the hallway. It doesn't sound like a Vince kind of noise though. She focuses on it as hard as she can: it sounds like a clock. Do they even have a clock in the hallway?
"Mmph," she groans, and prises her eyes open.
The bedroom that swims into view is not hers.
The ceiling is dark wood. The walls too, she notes as they come gradually into view. She can't see properly, and she blinks, trying to steady her vision. Emerald green curtains, heavy at the windows, open. Panelled mahogany walls and a mirrored armoire.
This definitely isn't her bedroom.
"Deacon?" she mumbles, her heart starting to race. She's confused. "Deacon?"
He doesn't answer. Nobody does.
She closes her eyes again for a second, hoping she's still asleep and having an odd dream, but when she opens them again she's still there, in an unfamiliar bedroom that smells like talcum powder and moss.
She tries to sit up but she can't, and panic sets in - why can't she move? She manages to twist onto her side and everything lurches, a blistering pain in her skull stealing the breath from her for a few seconds. She drags her arm up and presses her hand against the side of her head; her skin is clammy.
"Deacon?" she tries again, close to tears now. Silence.
It takes an almighty amount of effort to push herself upright, but she tries until she manages it. She's on a bed, the sheets the same shade of green as the curtains, no pattern or detail on them, just plain, dark green sheets with two pillows. Why is she on a bed? And whose bed is it? She has no idea where she is, or how the hell she got here.
She searches her mind frantically for the last thing she remembers, tears stinging her throat. She badly wants Deacon to appear and tell her everything's okay.
A bar, she remembers a bar. He was there, and Vince, and there was a booth and people smiling. She hears a flash of music, a snippet, just for a second - they played a gig. They played a gig at a bar she's been to before, and their friends were there, having drinks with them.
Did somebody spike her drink? But then where is Deacon? And where is she?
She looks up at the windows; all she can see are trees. They're blowing restlessly outside, thick trees, and it's daylight. She doesn't know how it can be daylight - the gig was at night, it was dark, and raining. How the hell did she get from the bar to this place? Why doesn't she remember?
Breathing rapidly, she pulls her legs to the side of the bed, and her feet hit cold floorboards. That's when she realises she isn't wearing her own clothes.
"What…" she gasps, looking down at herself.
She's dressed in a nightgown, a white, cotton nightgown that reaches past her knees. It's like something out of a Victorian painting, mother-of-pearl buttons all the way to the neck, long sleeves with lace cuffs. She has nothing on underneath and her feet are bare, and tears roll down her face.
Sheer blinding fear hits her; wherever she is, she needs to get the fuck out. She grabs hold of a wooden bedpost and with the force of her determination, manages to stand up. Her head feels like it's about to split in two, and the whole room spins, but she closes her eyes and breathes through it, and shuffles a couple of steps forward. Her body is jelly though, and the second she lets go of the bedpost she tumbles to the floor.
It hurts, but she doesn't dwell on it. She gets onto all fours and pulls herself towards the window, ripping the skin on her knees. Using the ledge for support she gets back onto her feet, unsteadily, and presses her face against the glass. Trees. It's just a sea of trees.
She can't see past them or through them, and above them is only a strip of sky. It isn't raining anymore. She wonders if it's raining where Deacon is.
Deacon. Heat slams her in the chest and almost knocks her over again, and she closes her eyes. She wishes for him so hard it feels like her bones might shatter.
A girl in a band t-shirt. There was a girl - Mötley Crüe, that was it. She asked Rayna for something, they went to a bathroom that smelled really bad.
She tries to stay with it, to coax whatever had come next, but it evades her, just out of her grasp.
"Shit," she spits in frustration.
There's a door at the other side of the room. She gathers all of her strength and focuses on it, and takes one shaky step forward, and then another, and another. Feeling like a toddler learning to walk, she makes it, and it exhausts her but she stays on her feet. The door has an old fashioned gold knob and she twists it.
It's locked. The fucking door is locked, and Rayna loses it.
"Hey!" she yells, too desperate and too angry and too Goddamn scared to think better of it. "Let me out of here! Hey!"
She bangs on the door with her fists, but no one comes. The pain in her head intensifies until she thinks she might black out, and she sinks to the floor and sobs.
How did she get from a bar with Deacon and her friends to a locked room in a creepy nightgown?
When she catches her breath she scans the room, not sure what she's looking for - anything that might help her get out of there, tell her where she is. Her fucking clothes, maybe.
She sees a small en suite bathroom and manages to drag herself towards it, but she can't stand up to turn the tap on. She's thirsty, insanely thirsty.
The gravity of her situation starts to really sink in: someone is keeping her locked in this room, someone brought her here, and she has no idea why or what they're going to do with her.
She drops to her raw knees, pain ripping through her, and crawls back to the bed, but there isn't a shred of energy left in her and she collapses in a heap at the foot of it.
That's when a lock clicks open and a woman appears in the doorway.
