Our Scars

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40

Numb (Title by Dotan)

"Have you seen this man?" When they arrived at the club Will had named, Rianne showed the first bouncer they got to a photo of Jay on her phone.

"I don't know, too many faces coming and going at this hour..." The big lump of a man wanted to brush them off, chewing gum and looking bored.

He just continued to wave new customers through to let them inside. It seemed like the night was only just starting to get busy. Rianne felt her aggressive side surfacing at his laxness.

"Try a little harder dude! I'm with the CFD, this is a serious investigation," Kelly threatened with authority in his voice before she could.

The bouncer eyed him suspiciously, but decided to take a closer look at the picture Rianne was still holding out to him, seemingly trying to remember. Not caring to ask himself if the Chicago Fire Department was even authorized to do such 'investigations' as Kelly had called it. Sometimes acting bold just worked.

"I guess someone looking like that, stumbled out of here some time ago. He was pretty out of it. Couldn't tell you when... like I said: Terribly busy here all night long."

Rianne doubted that as this was not the most popular club in this area, but let it slide: "Where did he go?"

"This way," the man pointed to his right and the three of them moved into that direction immediately, hoping it hadn't just been a random answer to get them off his back.

Will was nowhere to be seen, though he'd promised to be here, so they started their search without him to not loose anymore time. If he had found Jay in the meantime he would certainly have called. Rianne wondered how much use the older Halstead would be in his intoxicated state anyway. He had sounded really drunk.

"Have you tried calling Jay again? Maybe by some miracle his phone's switched on now, or he just didn't have reception earlier," Stella said behind her, when they pushed their way through a crowd of people in their evening's best.

High-spirited party-goers with not a care in the world all around, while Rianne felt her own world dangerously spinning on its axis right now.

She didn't know which way to look, which way else to turn her head to hopefully catch a glimpse of hazel colored, well-groomed hair or something else that gave them a clue where Jay was. She wished for nothing more than him surfacing out of the blue, unharmed, unbothered. There were a lot of words she would have for him if that were the case, maybe even some fantasies of inflicting pain on him for making her worry like this. But the longer they searched the less Rianne thought this was actually realistic.

They stopped for a second to try his phone anew. A desperate move as it went straight to voicemail. So finding him by miraculously getting a ringing sign, if they would even be able to hear it above the hubbub of the nightlife, was not an option.

Kelly jogged up and down the streets to look into every club entrance and food stand and ask around.

Stella and Rianne called out for Jay while scouting every alleyway, never getting an answer and never seeing anything. It was like he had dropped off the face of the earth.

Rianne's frustration and fear were growing constantly. She felt like they were running out of time while she equally had no idea how many minutes had passed since they had started looking for Jay.

When there were less people around them because they had been walking away from the bigger hotspots, she grabbed on to her friends arm:

"Stella? If we find him and it's bad, I need you to make sure I don't freeze and fuck this up again!"