37. Freya
37
FREYA
W e’re standing at the end of a short drive, only a few meters away from where my mother lives. I should be running up the drive, sprinting to see her, to get to her before my father does but all I can think is that I know this house.
It’s not that I’ve been here before. Despite the missing memories I’m 99% sure I’ve never stepped foot beyond the small walled garden to our right.
No, it’s that, for my entire childhood, a framed photograph of this house hung in our kitchen.
I remember the porch with its lattice trellis and white decorative gate pulled shut in front of the door. I remember the cream cladding on the house and the red brick wall around the kept garden. Except the garden looks a little less kept now, with weeds growing through the sun-browned grass.
My feet are still rooted to the gravel, but my hand tremors at my side. I stretch out my fingers then clench them into a fist. It feels like some sort of mindfuck, having a photo of where our mother was hanging on the wall by the kitchen table. Like she was right there, just out of our reach.
I let out a breath and unfurl my fingers.
Jude steps closer. “You doing alright?”
I nod. “Never better.” I spin around and spread my arms out wide, a bitter smile on my face. “This is every motherless kid’s dream, right?”
Jude eyes me like I might be losing it.
Hell, maybe I am.
I turn around and prop my foot on top of the short garden wall to check the knife I slipped into my boot is easily accessible. Technically, knives aren’t FBI regulation but with Farrah AWOL and River unsure who we can trust, we’re bending all sorts of rules at the moment.
“You coming, or what?” I say as I straighten up and head towards the porch.
Jude, Eli, Oz, and River follow a step behind me.
I ring the doorbell and wait. Then the cream door behind the gate opens and I forget how to function.
A thin, drawn face blinks at us, dirty blonde hair braided over one shoulder. Shadows color the skin beneath her eyes and the first hints of wrinkles crease her thin neck. She doesn’t open the door fully, just peers out from the edge through the corrugated iron of the gate. Her eyes linger on me for a moment before she jerks her chin up, looking past me to River. “Can I help you?”
I open my mouth. “I…” I trail off. I don’t realize I’m not breathing until my fingertips tingle.
“Hannah Munroe?” River asks.
She nods.
“I,” I try again. “I’m Freya, I’m your?—”
“I know who you are,” she says softly.
“Oh.”
Her eyes dart to the side and I notice they’re green, the same sort of dusty green as mine. I thought I got my eyes from my dad’s side of the family along with the red hair. But no.
She looks back at me only to dip her gaze. “You should go.”
I step forward when she moves to close the door. “Wait, please.”
She winces but stops.
My words desert me again and River fills the silence. “Miss Munroe, we’re with the FBI. We have reason to believe you’re in danger. May we come in?”
She lets out a shaky breath but reaches to unlatch the gate separating us.
River steps up beside me and pulls open the gate as my mother retreats into the house and lets us pass.
“I’ll make us some tea,” she murmurs, and we follow her into a small kitchen off the side of the narrow hall.
I look around, taking in the yellow kettle sitting on the stove, the wooden table, the magnets and kid’s drawing on the refrigerator. Did I do that? Did our father use me and my sister as a way to keep my mother under control? That might explain why it looks like she lives here, free to come and go as she pleases and not locked up in the basement.
She waves a hand at the table. “Please, sit.”
I take the seat at the end of the table, wanting to be near the exit.
Jude and Oz sit down to my right, but River and Eli stay standing, both of them on high alert. Oz’s phone buzzes against the table but he declines the call and puts it away.
The stove clicks on as Hannah turns the knob, then she busies herself putting tea bags into mugs. Her hands tremble. “What makes you think I’m in danger?” she asks.
“Arthur Maxwell,” I say, just to gauge her reaction.
She stills for a moment, then the kettle whistles and she picks it up.
“How much do you know about him?” I ask.
Hannah finishes pouring the steaming water into the mugs. She hands one to me then sits in the chair to my left. I angle my seat so we’re facing each other on the diagonal.
Her fingers curl around the mug and some of the tension seeps out of her shoulders. “More than most,” she says, “but maybe not more than you.”
She glances over my shoulder before drawing her gaze back to me.
With the way I’ve turned my chair, there’s a door behind me now. I clocked it when I came in and assumed it led to a pantry but if Hannah’s looking for an escape maybe it leads elsewhere.
“Your sister,” Hannah says, drawing my attention back to her. “Is she okay?”
I don’t know how to answer that. How to tell my mom that Angelica is fine and not fine all at the same time. How our father broke her in his efforts to make her just like him.
I wonder if Hannah has scars too and my gaze drops to her chest.
That’s when I notice it. A cut at the collar of her shirt. It’s not deep, more of a nick really, but it’s recent.
The hairs on the back of my neck prick like needles.
“She’s as well as can be expected,” I reply while I reach for my phone and get up the notes app. “This tea is good. Earl Grey?” I turn my phone around so she can read the question I just typed, the one I’m actually asking.
She looks up from the screen, her lips pressed together. She nods. “Yes. Earl grey.” Her eyes dart back to the door behind me.
Oz’s phone buzzing again makes me jump. I take a breath against the steel band around my chest and put my phone on the table. “I’m sorry,” I say to Hannah. “This must be a lot, having all of us here. Why don’t the guys wait out front for a while and you and I can talk in private?”
Hannah’s eyes widen and I place my hand on her wrist before she can object. She bites her lip. “Yes, that would be nice.”
Chairs scrape as Oz and Jude stand up.
River stays standing, arms crossed, even after the others have filed out of the kitchen. He scowls at me.
I stare back, willing him to move his stubborn ass. If he doesn’t leave, my plan isn’t going to work.
He pokes his tongue into his cheek and gives a sharp shake of his head, but he uncrosses his arms and sweeps out of the room.
My breath whispers out of me. I wait for the thunk of the front door closing before I turn back to Hannah.
“They really left?” she asks, the lines around her eyes tightening.
I nod. “We have a little while.” I shift my foot and drop my arm to my side, preparing. I raise my voice. “Why don’t you come join us, Dad?”
The door behind me opens, and the cocking of a gun clicks in my ear. “Clever girl.”
Unlike his face, my father’s voice hasn’t changed. The dark cadence cuts through my defenses, triggering every fucking trauma response I have, but I’m ready this time. My fingers curl around the knife in my boot and I whip my arm behind me, pressing the blade to his thigh.
He has a gun to my head. But I can slice his femoral artery with the single flick of a wrist.
My father chuckles. “Like father, like daughter.”
I tense. My hand is sweating.
The knife slips a little.
He trails the gun down my head. “I taught you so well.” The cold metal of the muzzle digs into my skull and his breath is hot against my ear as he leans down. “But you had to go and fucking ruin it.”
I press the knife a little harder.
“Careful now,” he warns. “I could just as quickly shoot your mother. She’s of no use to me now after all. I was so close with you and your sister, you see. You were supposed to be my masterpiece. Then you fucked up, so I had to try again. But your mother couldn’t even do that right. Could you, dear?”
She flinches, her hands shielding her stomach.
Vomit burns the back of my throat at what my father has done to this woman. What he’s forced upon her. It’s time to end this.
“I must admit, I learned a lot from you,” I confess. “How to survive. How to fight.” I tighten my grip on the knife. “How to set a fucking trap.”
The click of another gun cocking hits my ears.
“Drop the weapon,” River says from behind my father. “Or I promise I will shoot you before your finger so much as twitches on that trigger.”
“Or I will,” Eli adds as he, Jude, and Oz stream into the room and surround my father.
“Take your damn time, why don’t you?” I snark. I knew full well they’d never left the house but I’m starting to get fed up with having a gun to my head.
A breath of air rushes out of me when the cold bite of metal disappears, and I stand up, pushing back against a wave of dizziness.
My father grunts and I turn just as River slaps the cuffs on his wrists. He grabs my father by the upper arm and stares pointedly at me. “We were waiting for you to distract him enough to take his gun off you.”
I twist my lips and shrug. “I didn’t want to risk him pointing it at my mom.” At least if the gun was trained on me, everyone else would be safe.
All four guys scowl at me. Yeah, okay, my self-preservation kind of sucks.
River shakes his head and reads my father his rights.
I stand back as they head to the front door. Jude and Oz follow behind while Hannah sits frozen, her hands still cupping her mug, like she can’t quite believe it’s over.
I’m not sure I can either. It seems so… anticlimactic. The big bad monster who’s haunted my entire life is just being walked away.
I lean back against the table, steadying myself as it sinks in. We caught him.
We finally caught him.
My gaze collides with Eli’s by the door. His gun is still out. He’s holding it so tightly his hand is chalk white and his jaw is granite.
Darkness fights the ocean blue of his eyes.
“Eli,” I start to say, but I’m cut off by my phone ringing.
I slip it from my pocket, catching Luke’s name on the screen. I press to answer and give him the good news. “Luke, we caught him. We’ve got Maxwell.”
There’s no breath of relief on Luke’s end. “Josh is awake,” he says. “He’s talking.”
My chest unlocks. “Oh, thank god. It’s?—”
“Freya,” Josh cuts me off, urgency biting his words. “He keeps saying a name. He keeps saying ‘Layla’.”
The blood in my veins ices over. I freeze for one second before panic fires through me. “Oz,” I shout, running into the hall. “Your phone, check your phone.” It kept buzzing, it kept on buzzing. Fuck.
River, Jude, and Oz stop before they reach the door, and my father turns to face me. Oz takes out his phone. I hear his sharp intake of breath, but I don’t see his reaction because I’m watching my father and the smirk spreading across his sick face.
“Oz, what is it?” River asks.
I do look at him then. At the phone hanging from his fingers. At the horror draining his face. At the panic pooling in his eyes.
He says just two words.
“Layla’s missing.”