Chapter 2
H ours passed during which, despite my tension, I kept dozing off while sitting.
The situation was anything but relaxed. Icarus kept glancing in the rearview mirror to see if a police car was following us.
Pan played with the gun he had brought with him, and then Nathan, Pan, and Troy discussed the stolen car that they would soon have to leave behind, and Nathan’s cell phone rang incessantly until he eventually turned it off.
Isaac definitely wanted to know where we were.
Reality was increasingly sinking in. We had escaped Isaac and his men but I was still a hostage. Status: complicated—I could tell by the way they treated me.
When we changed cars, no one forcibly steered me by the arm from one car to the other, but Nathan, Pan, and Troy stayed close by.
I couldn’t have run away. Since I was not allowed to use the public restroom, I had to hide in the bushes every now and then—with Nathan standing guard just close enough to be acceptable.
Later, when they could only find a car without tinted windows to hotwire, I had to climb into the trunk for part of the journey.
It stank of dog hair and excrement, and it was cramped and stuffy.
I was afraid in the absolute dark but I didn’t say a word.
When Nathan let me out later, I didn’t eat anything even though he had bought me fries and a cheeseburger with the money that had been in the car.
The greasy stuff that I was never allowed to eat at Dad’s smelled incredibly tempting, but I just gave him a reproachful look.
He didn’t seem particularly guilty about the trunk.
He had made it clear to me that there was no alternative and they didn’t have time for arguments.
I was torn between gratitude and hurt pride.
And that was true for all of them except Sparta.
He was quiet the entire time, so I didn’t know what to make of it.
He had sounded honest when he had declared his innocence.
The question was: if it wasn’t him, then who?
Apollo perhaps? Or Taurus? Or, although I didn’t want to think it, maybe Ilias?
I didn’t know the answer, but I would have to talk to Nathan about it soon.
Right now, I was too angry with him and my mind was spinning.
Everything had changed in a matter of hours.
Icarus, Pan, Troy, and Sparta had become Ian, Kjertan, Noah, and Stanton.
Sometimes they used their last names as boys sometimes did, but I couldn’t remember them all, only McCormack and Van Veenstra.
Van Veenstra because it sounded so unusual.
When I asked where they were taking me at a rest stop in a remote parking lot, Nathan smiled for the first time again.
“You’ll like it,” he stated easily, touching the swelling on my face gently.
He seemed loving at that moment, but I turned away even though my heart was pounding with excitement and a million butterflies were fluttering in my stomach.
He had said he wanted to be closer to me than was good for him, closer than was good for the plan.
However, if he actually had to choose, he would still choose the people and the Coldville dead.
His whole life connected them to him. Still, it hurt in a place that was foreign to me.
When Nathan released me from the trunk of car number four, it was pitch black.
I could barely see anything, but it smelled of ponds, moors, and wet wood, but the smell from our clothes was no better.
Disgusted, I sniffed the sleeve of my dried hoodie and wrinkled my nose.
I stank of dog. Of a very old, soaked dog, and I was still miserably cold even though the air was warm.
Shifting from one foot to the other, I looked around and listened.
An army of cicadas chirped against the dark croaking chorus of frogs.
An owl hooted somewhere and there was a rustling sound—like the wind in the lush treetops of Rosewood Manor, but there was almost no wind.
“Where are we?” We had been on the road for over twenty-four hours.
Nathan glanced around. “Louisiana.”
“Louisiana?” My heart leaped in surprise. “Where exactly? In the bayous?”
“We’re getting you to safety.”
“Me? More like you guys!”
Nathan ignored the comment and glanced at Pan. “We shouldn’t leave the car where it can be seen so easily. It’s best if we push the Nissan a little way into the undergrowth. Noah, Stan, move her a bit off to the side.”
Troy grabbed my arm and pulled me back a few steps. “Just step away from the Nissan.” I didn’t reply as I stiffened.
Restrained by him, I watched as Nathan released the handbrake, turned the steering wheel, and pushed the car along with Icarus and Pan.
There were in fact, dark trees towering next to us reaching up into a pitch-black sky.
Now that my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the vague outlines of my surroundings began to take shape.
We were off a gravel road in an overgrown meadow where the weeds were choking each other.
There were forests to the right and left with a thick layer of moisture hanging over everything.
The air was so saturated that I wondered why I had only just noticed it.
It was as if I was drinking while breathing. I listened, and again, I heard rushing.
I awkwardly wriggled out of Troy’s grip. “Is there a river nearby?”
Nathan glanced over his shoulder at me. “Up ahead, just a hundred yards away. The Atchafalaya.” Branches cracked as they pushed the cart into the undergrowth. “In its native language it means long river.”
I had heard of the Atchafalaya River when I was a child.
It was said that the entire river delta with all its green tributaries and lakes covered over a hundred miles from north to west and over twenty from south to east. It was swampy land, a labyrinth, home to every kind of hermit, leper, or displaced person, and it flowed into the Gulf of Mexico in a basin where it merged with the bayous of the Mississippi.
“So I’m supposed to stay near the Atchafalaya for a year?
” I asked challengingly, wrapping my trembling arms around my torso.
“Exactly!” With a strange feeling in my stomach, I watched Nathan slam the door of the car. “That’s far enough, I think,” he then said.
“Should we cover it with branches?” Icarus looked around, but Nathan waved him off.
“No need. We’ll be far away before it gets light.”
“Don’t stare at her like that!” I suddenly heard Troy hiss and turned to see him shove Sparta in the chest, causing him to lose his balance and fall backward onto the grass.
“I simply didn’t let you drown because I wouldn’t have been able to reconcile it with my conscience!
But that doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re a miserable little shit. Just watch it!”
Shocked, I looked from Troy to Sparta. “He’s sick,” I said, irritated by Troy’s outburst, and spontaneously held out my hand to Sparta.
He took it gratefully and I pulled him to his feet.
He was much lighter than expected and probably exhausted since he didn’t fight back against Troy in any way.
“And it probably wasn’t even him,” I added now.
I hadn’t known at the time of my accusation how bad off he truly was.
Troy sized me up, his chocolate-brown eyes narrowed. “You were so certain. Besides, who else could it have been? Ian or me?”
I shook my head. “He was strong.”
“Thank you,” Troy replied dryly. “Then it was Kjertan.”
“Stop it!” Nathan approached us with long strides through the darkness. “Save your strength, we still have a long way to go.”
“Stanton looked at her as if he wanted to skin her alive and then put her in a saltbox.” Troy spat on the ground. “I say we leave him here.”
“And I say we take him with us.” Nathan’s calm voice indicated there would be no argument.
For a moment, they stared at each other, still overstimulated by the escape, irritated and tired from lack of sleep.
Troy was the first to look away. “Don’t say that I didn’t warn you!
” He marched forward as naturally as if he knew the way, Nathan, however, whistled him back.
“This way.” He pointed to a path in the opposite direction that led into the forest on the other side.
Visibly embarrassed, Troy trotted back, which made Icarus grin.
“Ass!” Troy punched him in the shoulder and Icarus punched back, then they laughed like two schoolboys having a fun fight at recess.
“I hope you all have your boots on.” Nathan, who was a few steps ahead, stopped abruptly.
I glanced at my feet, which were only in socks, but I didn’t really realize it until Nathan’s inquiry. “Um…no.”
“No?” Nathan liked to do that. Repeating words or questions. He came over and stared at my feet in disbelief. “Damnit! Please tell me this is a joke and your shoes are in the Nissan.”
“They’re on the Agamemnon in your cabin,” I replied sheepishly even though it wasn’t my fault they were there.
“The Atchafalaya,” Nathan said, making a vague gesture with his arms outstretched, “is teeming with swamp rattlesnakes, diamondbacks, and coral snakes. A coral snake bite can kill several adults, but go ahead, princess, if you think you can go barefoot…”