Colton White waited outside his manor for Evan King, his best friend, to pick him up for whatever they had decided to do. A movie, maybe, he wasn’t sure, all he knew was that he was glad to see Evan stepping away from the addictions that he had been struggling to break free from for over a year.

They’d known each other their entire lives, starting from their first playdate in infancy. Their families had been close for generations, a tradition that the pair was glad to keep alive through their lifetimes. They had been through everything together, even when it was hard or something Evan didn’t want him near, like his addiction or his taste in partners.

Evan was lucky that he could afford the sheer amount of drugs that he had been taking with the trust fund he had been given at birth, the same one that was nearly empty before he made it out of high school in less than a month.

Colton checked the time; he’d been waiting for too long. Even if Evan was running late, his family driver should have pulled around by now. He’d never been late before, even when he was running behind, and twenty minutes was more than enough to worry. Being late was Colton’s job.

With a sigh, he sat on the front steps and checked Evan’s location, a privilege he’d given himself that Evan didn’t know that he had yet. The small red blip on his screen flashed on the map as close to the pier as one could get without actually being on the water, on the other side of the city from the manors in Warehouse Row.

There were only so many reasons someone would be anywhere near Warehouse Row, work being the most common, but someone like Evan could only be there for two things, and neither one was legal.

Dread filled him, with a dash of disappointment. Evan was either relapsing again or in serious trouble. He hoped it was the former; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to fight Evan out of it this time after how bad the last time was. With a tightening chest, Colton sped his way to the garage, hoping their bike was still there.

He grabbed his fire-red helmet off the shelf he’d claimed as his own for all his motorcycle needs when he and Evan started building the bike a year ago, and dragged off the protective sheet he had covering it until the last couple of panels finally came in. They had the body custom-made as a compromise, even though Evan didn’t know how to ride yet, so it would look as ‘badass’ as it possibly could.

“Guess we’re test riding for daddy,” He mumbled, mounting the bike and sliding his helmet on.

The bike should be better than the car to get to him as quickly as he possibly could, even if there was a small chance that there was not enough gasoline to get them back from the warehouses. He could also use it to make Evan feel worse, making him ride behind Colton as he took them to wherever they were supposed to go. Maybe it was dinner?

Colton raced down his long, winding driveway and through the private road until he hit the main roads, where he weaved his way through the heavy evening traffic, only following the laws he cared to.

It was pitch black by the time he reached the warehouses, the one-way street only lit by the lights on his bike. Even with as bright as its headlight was, he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He checked the location again, zero movement.

Evan stayed at the forefront of his mind, his worries only amplified as he grew closer to the blip that might not be his friend anymore. His mind went to dark places as it tried to explain why he was there. He worried he was there for heavier drugs, that he had gotten mixed in with more stuff he wouldn’t tell anyone about, or that he was being used for ransom by the wrong people who would kill him if he fought back.

Colton felt the shock wave throw him off his bike, and his bike off the fragile balance that kept it upright, before he heard the explosion that shook the ground beneath him.

He pulled his legs out from under his bike, where it fell after the wave hit them, and struggled to his feet, trying to shake off the dizzy spell that it caused, and ignored the searing pain in his shin.

Once stable, he looked for the cause until he spotted the flames and a small crowd forming from all over the yard to see the freshly burning warehouse that echoed the newly missing blip on his phone that used to mark the building they were watching with curious eyes that starved for the information none of them would get.

Without thinking, he made his way over to the crowd, a leg dragging slightly behind the other that he couldn’t feel anymore. None of it felt real: the warehouse, the fire, Evan.

Evan wasn’t in there. He couldn’t be.

He knew there was no way Evan King would be caught dead in a place like this, filled with dirt, sweat, and blood. It was too reminiscent of the real work they had spent their whole lives avoiding with money that wasn’t theirs yet.

Evan King wouldn’t dare spend time where he had no business being.

The flames reflected in his deep blue eyes as smoke barreled into the skies. A small part of him wondered if he was wrong, if he was too late, if the smoke he was watching used to be Evan.

He pushed to the front of the growing crowd of spectators who’d still been in the district when it began.

Nothing made sense, nothing was connecting as it should.

Both their families owned property in the district. It was just as likely to have been him if the intention was to hurt their reputation or be used for ransom money. But that building wasn’t a King facility; it was independently owned by some fishing company that had come up from nowhere.

Nothing made sense.

As he made his way as close as he could to the building before the crowd stopped him, looking for anything that could connect Evan to the rundown place.

It didn’t take him long to spot a shoe lodged in a pothole in the pavement, proving some kind of altercation, one matching Evan’s favorite pair that had been custom-made to his feet.

A foreign shriek tore from his throat, nearly forming Evan’s name in the flames of a fire that should never have started.

The crowd behind him kept their distance from the warehouse, speculating from safety about what could have happened so late at a fishing facility. Something he would have been smart to do himself.

But he couldn’t, he wouldn’t just stand by without knowing there was nothing left to save his friend. Even though it had already been a crucial few minutes, he broke through the crowd’s grasp and ran at full speed the few feet to the doors, knowing very well that they would think he was insane.

The smoke attacked his lungs first as he tried to see through the thick mess that burned his eyes through his helmet while he walked through the oddly empty building.

He searched as thoroughly as he possibly could while being attacked from every side, but the majority of what was still inside looked more like kindling for the fire that would inevitably take the building to the ground.

It almost seemed like the company had just moved recently into a different space, until he spotted the drying pool of blood leaving rings of red on the ground as the fire ate away at what it could.

“EVAN!” He cried as his burning throat swelled from the smoke that circled him.

He rushed over to the shrinking pool, throwing aside the cardboard that had been haplessly thrown onto the pool like it was going to clean up the evidence whoever it was left behind.

He studied the pattern on the ground, vaguely resembling the edges of a metal chair and the stand for what could have been a side table. From the drops of blood and patterns that he could find, it looked like there had been a struggle, and then the victim was clearly made to help clean up whatever was left over from what they had done to them.

He couldn’t be sure that it was Evan who was there. Or what happened to the victim after they left the building, as the drops didn’t lead to any exit that he could find. The only things that he knew for sure were that Evan’s shoe was there, his phone was there, he had never been late before, and there was no evidence that it could have been anyone else.

As firefighters pulled him from the collapsing building, his mind was occupied with connecting anything that could prove that it wasn’t Evan. That Evan was alive.

But Evan’s parents had already gotten there when they pulled Colton out. Probably having followed a tracker they had put on him themselves. Mrs. King was screaming her pain at the building while Mr. King held her, trying to keep it together while he talked with the police to get and give as much information as possible.

And Evan wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

He was treated by paramedics and lectured by the firefighters, but he didn’t care; a part of him died with Evan, and he wished the rest of him had gone with it. He couldn’t live without the partner in crime he’d had his whole life. He couldn’t live knowing that Evan’s end would have been torture.

How was he supposed to go on alone now?

How was he supposed to explain to Evan’s parents that he hadn’t kept their son safe like he’d promised them when he took over as his point of contact for whatever he needed while he was going through rehab and his sobriety?

How was he supposed to explain to his own parents that he had put a tracker on Evan’s phone without his knowledge or permission, and left home with a bike that might not be able to make it back to the manor to go find him, with no knowledge of why he was there?

How was he supposed to explain to the cops that this wasn’t a tragic accident caused by a bad drug deal?

How was he supposed to explain to the press that his best friend was, in fact, a victim of whatever happened inside that building and should be treated like it?

How was he supposed to explain to himself that Evan was made to help cover up his murder, and that he had been too late to save him, again?

Too many questions. Not nearly enough answers.