9. Caroline
CAROLINE
Every bump in the road hurts.
That's because my face is pressed against the floor of the van, which is corrugated metal, freezing cold, and coated in a film of something sticky and nasty-smelling.
My wrists are zip-tied behind my back. The tie is cinched too tight—I can already feel my fingers going numb, that awful pins-and-needles tingle that means the blood supply is being slowly choked off.
My ankle, the same one I've been babying for two days, is screaming from how Buzzcut wrenched it when he grabbed my legs.
The van takes a sharp right turn and I slide across the floor, slamming my shoulder into what feels like a metal toolbox. Pain erupts white-hot down my arm.
I don't scream. Dr. Levinson would be very proud of me, though she'd probably point out that the reason I'm not screaming has less to do with bravery and more to do with the strip of duct tape they slapped over my mouth after the doors closed.
Buzzcut did it while the van was still accelerating.
His buddy was driving. The whole operation took maybe ninety seconds from the moment they grabbed me to the moment we were moving, which suggests a level of choreography that does not bode well for the hope that this was spontaneous.
These men were waiting for me.
The bumps are getting worse. We can't possibly be on a paved road anymore.
It feels like ruts in mud every ten yards.
Every pothole sends me airborne for a sickening half second before gravity slams me back down and worsens my bruises.
I try to brace with my knees, but the angle is wrong and I keep sliding around, abusing my cheekbones, aching and doing my best to stay conscious and level-headed.
Breathe, Caroline.
Think.
That's what my dad would tell me. God put that big ol' melon on your neck for a reason, Caro. Use it.
From an early age, he taught me how to move in the city. I always figured that's just what dads raising their kids in Manhattan did.
What do you do if someone follows you on the street? You cross to the other side.
What do you do if someone grabs you? You fight, you scream, you make yourself as difficult a target as possible.
What do you do if you're taken?
You survive. You observe. You wait.
Okay, Dad. I'm observing.
Observation one: we've been driving for maybe thirty or forty minutes now.
We turned right out of Pike Hollow, which means we're heading north or northwest, deeper into the mountains.
At least, I hope that's what it means, and that my sense of direction is correct.
I flunked that badge several times when I was a Girl Scout.
Observation two: Buzzcut and Beanie don't seem to be chatty. They haven't spoken to each other since we started moving, which either means they have nothing to say or they've done this enough times that the silence is just protocol. Another day in the life, I guess.
Observation three: They mentioned a group. We've been looking for him for a while now. Key word there is we. So there are more.
Observation four: I'm terrified.
That last one isn't especially useful from a strategic standpoint, but it does feel important to acknowledge.
Dr. Levinson is a big proponent of naming your emotions so they don't control you.
So, there it is: I am terrified. My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my zip-tied wrists.
There's a tremor running through my whole body that has nothing to do with the cold, though the cold isn't helping.
And my brain keeps trying to short-circuit into full-blown panic, which I am holding off through sheer force of will and the knowledge that if I hyperventilate with duct tape over my mouth, I will literally suffocate.
So. That's motivating.
Without warning, the van slows, turns again, and grinds to a halt. The engine cuts. Doors open and slam. Footsteps crunch on gravel—two sets, one heavy, one lighter. Then the rear doors swing open and gray daylight floods in, making me squint.
"Out," Buzzcut barks. Not much of a talker, this guy.
When I don't move fast enough for his liking, he grabs my arm and hauls me upright, then drags me to the edge of the van bed.
My legs are floppy noodles from being cramped on the floor, so when he shoves me out, I stumble and go down on one knee in the mud.
The impact shoots up through my already-ruined ankle and I scream behind my tape.
Rolling his eyes in disgust, Buzzcut yanks me to my feet.
I look around.
We're in a clearing—though clearing makes it sound pastoral and lovely, and this is neither.
It's a logging camp, or it was once. There's a long, low-slung bunkhouse built from unpainted cinder block with a corrugated metal roof.
A second structure looks like it might've been an equipment shed, its bay door hanging crooked on one hinge.
A stack of cut timber, weathered to silver-gray, sits beside a rusting yarder that hasn't moved in years.
The trees surrounding the camp are dense, dark, and dripping with snowmelt.
But there are signs of new life among the dilapidation.
There's a generator humming behind the bunkhouse.
Two trucks—a black F-150 and a mud-caked Tacoma—are parked beside the van.
Extension cords snake across the mud like orange veins.
Someone has rigged a tarp between two pines to create a kind of carport, under which sits a snowmobile.
Three more men are standing outside the bunkhouse. They were smoking, but they've stopped to watch.
Buzzcut steers me toward the bunkhouse door. Beanie follows.
Inside, the bunkhouse is exactly as charming as the exterior suggests.
A single open room, maybe forty feet long, with metal-framed cots lining both walls.
A woodstove at one end, glowing dull orange.
A folding table in the center covered in fast-food wrappers, beer cans, a deck of playing cards, and an ashtray overflowing with butts.
The floor is plywood. It reeks of propane, stale cigarettes, and unwashed men—a cologne I'm calling Eau de Incarceration.
Buzzcut shoves me into a metal folding chair beside the table. The zip tie bites deeper as my weight shifts. Beanie leans against the doorframe with his arms crossed, watching me with those dark, beady eyes.
One of the men from outside wanders in. He's younger than the others—mid-twenties, with acne scars on his cheeks and a gold chain that looks wildly out of place in a logging camp. He takes one look at me and grins.
"Fresh meat?" he asks.
"Bait in the making," Buzzcut confirms. "Got a nasty set of chompers on her, though."
Buzzcut holds up his palm. Even from where I'm sitting, I can see the crescent of tooth marks. I'd feel a surge of satisfaction about that if I weren't, you know, zip-tied to a chair in a cinder-block hellhole with no way out.
"Boss know?" Gold Chain asks.
Buzzcut nods. "Radioed him on the way in. He's still out on the run with Dmitri and the others. Won't be back 'til tonight, maybe morning."
Gold Chain pulls up a cot and sits on it, still leering at me. "So what do we do with her 'til then?"
"We wait," Buzzcut declares. He's at the folding table now, pouring himself coffee from a dented thermos. "Boss wants to talk to her himself. Wants to know what the Russian told her."
"She don't look like she knows much."
"She was with him a couple days. Gotta know something."
Gold Chain whistles. "Couple days with that psycho? And she's still breathing?"
"Sure seems like it."
They have no issue talking about me like I'm not here. I take it I'm not the first involuntary guest to make their acquaintance here. As I said, another day in the life.
I stare at the coffee stain on the plywood between my boots and think about Afon.
Not in a what would Afon do kind of way, but just, like, Afon, the man himself.
I'm getting a little kooky here, and maybe it's the repeated head trauma or the lack of blood flow, but I can't stop thinking of him as noble.
He has ethics, principles, boundaries that he placed on himself.
This radiating aura of being a man capable of anything who nonetheless restricted himself to doing only the right things.
I wish there was a word for it because I don't feel like I'm making any sense.
But whatever. I'm a lawyer, not a poet.
These men, whoever they are and whatever they want, don't have that. Not by a long shot. God gave their share to Afon when he was doling out the regal genes. One look at them is all it takes to know that they're cut from a different—and lesser—cloth.
Buzzcut barks orders to feel big. Gold Chain leers because he thinks it makes him dangerous. Beanie just stands there, a human coat rack with a pulse.
Afon never had to do that shit. Which isn't to say he was perfect, but he was certain.
Whether he ended up being right or wrong in the end, he chose what he chose and had his reasons for doing it.
As mad as I am at him for everything that has and hasn't happened since I finally found him, there's a kind of frustration that comes with knowing that he did it all for some grand, selfless purpose.
And, fine, yes, he's handsome. That doesn't hurt his cause. Unfairly, inconveniently, distractingly handsome for a forty-year-old hermit with a sour attitude and a persecution complex.
Buzzcut rips the duct tape off my mouth. It takes skin with it. I hiss through my teeth but I don't cry, because I refuse to give him that, even though my eyes are watering so badly that the room goes blurry.
"Time to chat," he says, pulling up a chair across from me and straddling it backward. "Let's start simple. What's your name?"
I scowl at him and say nothing.
"Come on, sweetheart. We're gonna be here a while. Might as well be friendly."
"Caroline," I say, because there's no point in lying about something they could easily verify with one search of my wallet. "Caroline Oglethorpe."