Chapter 2
(Kidnapping)
Grace
Chase Baker.
The local dealer who was always selling weed from his run-down van in the park near our high school.
And who never got caught—miraculously. No matter how many times his van was searched, he came away clean as a whistle.
He had no criminal record whatsoever. I never understood how he managed to avoid trouble, but I didn’t really care.
I was only worried about Nikky, since she and her friends often bought weed from him.
Once, she even dragged me along with her saying Chase Baker was a weird combination of disturbed and disturbing.
A beautiful psychopath. The Devil without horns.
Satan himself who could bring Hell to Earth.
I could only roll my eyes at my sister’s tirade.
It was even more boring than Mrs. McLaren’s physics class—Nikky’s outburst made absolutely no sense.
What’s the big deal? He’s a twenty-year-old guy selling drugs with no goals in life except drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.
He seemed… more a good-for-nothing than dangerous.
That is, until I met him.
I instantly understood why Nikky and her friends were scared of him.
Chase Baker was silent. He barely spoke, yet his silence—and the way he looked at you with that heartbreakingly beautiful yet somehow appallingly ugly gaze of his—could scare people to death.
You felt as if he could see into your soul.
As if he knew what your fears and desires were—and how to turn them against you in an instant, twisting your dreams into nightmares.
I won’t lie—he also put me under his spell for a short while. His dark, bad-boy vibe, his chiseled, rigid features, his long black eyelashes, his hair falling into his deep brown eyes that somehow had a steel edge to them... all of it swept me off my feet.
However, no matter how gorgeous he was, I wasn’t na?ve. Mom kept lecturing us about the dangers and tricks lurking behind beautiful faces, about the arrogance that often hides behind bright smiles.
I snuck a glance at Nikky and had the feeling that she hadn’t been paying attention to Mom’s warnings at all.
We had nothing in common besides our parents’ DNA.
While I was a slowly winding river, she was a wild ocean.
Our relationship was limited to having to bear each other’s presence while we were living under the same roof.
She never did anything a normal sister would: never did my makeup, never painted my nails, or shared anything with me about her private life.
No hanging out together, no gazing at the starry sky in our backyard gossiping about guys or girls…
She only acknowledged my presence when she needed something—when she needed me to cover for her or get her ass out of trouble.
This was one of the times when she needed me so she deigned to consider me her sister—for a while.
Nikky is three years older than me. At the time, she was close to eighteen while I was nearing my fifteenth birthday.
The difference was visible, even from a distance.
She loved to flaunt her blossoming body while I wore oversized T-shirts and denim overalls.
I didn’t wear makeup or paint my nails, and at home, she called me “Samaritan” to mock my selflessness.
“And who is she?” Chase asked, pointing at me. His voice pulled me out of my sister’s shadow.
“My cute little sister, Grace,” Nikky replied, stepping closer to me and putting her arm around my shoulder. She tried to play the cool girl but her visible shaking betrayed the lie behind her confident voice. The funny thing was, I wasn’t shaking at all.
“Grace.” Chase repeated. His voice made my stomach shrink to the size of a walnut.
Chase Baker was only twenty years old but had a voice of a powerful Greek god: it was commanding, authoritative, with a dark resonance.
There was no compliment in it, yet I felt as if the word was floating above us, like in an invisible speech bubble.
My heart jumped, goosebumps rose on my skin, and a tingling ran down my spine when he noiselessly jumped up from his seat and offered me a pack of Marlboro Reds.
For a few seconds, I did nothing but take in his masculine hand and long, tanned fingers before I fell into his empty eyes, which were devoid of any emotion.
His gaze was a dark, dangerous, swirling whirlpool that sucked me down mercilessly, without asking questions.
Nikky elbowed me in the side to get a reaction, but her bony elbow felt like nothing more than a mosquito bite. I looked at her, and her eyes were a warning: don’t screw this up for me.
I turned back to Chase and slightly shook my head, while my eyes still kept naively caressing his face. The windows of the van were rolled down, and a mild draft caught my long, light brown hair and hid my face. I was grateful for it, because my face must have been a tapestry of dancing emotions.
Although he didn’t offer a cigarette to Nikky, she arrogantly took one anyway, and kept fluttering her eyelashes at him like a slut.
Still, Chase was unfazed. Other boys would have played her game and taken her up on her implied offer to fuck her or have their dick sucked.
However, Chase’s expression shifted subtly between pity and revulsion.
His thin lips curled slightly, hinting at a mocking smile edged with disgust. As the silent minutes passed, the unwanted dark shadow of my sister pressed on me. I hated when she did this.
I shook off her arm and turned my back on them.
“I’ll wait for you over there,” I said as I stepped out of the car and sat down on the old bench, partially worn away by the passing of time.
I smiled as I scanned the hearts carved into the wood, including the one with my parents’ initials.
I parted my hair and braided it in two plaits while I was looking at the carvings.
According to Nikky, I was so lame that I shouldn’t have ever gone near her like that—I’d embarrass her.
“You are almost fifteen, but you look like a ten-year-old,” she told me once.
I took out my compass and reinforced my parents’ artwork.
A tingling crept up on the back of my head and I felt as if someone was watching me—but when I looked up and around, I only saw a few kids on the running track, and Mr. Miller, who was looking for kids who should have been inside the school.
Suddenly, a dry twig cracked behind me, and I was startled.
“It was right about time,” I snorted angrily. I put my compass in my backpack, then slung my backpack over my back and easily swung my legs around. However, the red mist of my anger dissipated in an instant when I realized it wasn’t Nikky standing behind me—but Chase.
I blinked in surprise, and kept looking around for my sister.
“She’s gone,” he rumbled in his dark voice, making my insides shake and my lips twitch. Seriously, Nikky? How could you leave me here with him?
“So typical,” I mumbled—or, more precisely, growled under my nose. She’s gonna get it back. The scaredy-cat.
Chase was leaning back against a tree, lit a cigarette, and exhaled the smoke towards me, which almost sent me into a coughing fit.
I was trying to wave the poisonous cloud away with my hand.
As he kept weighing me with his eyes, I thought about my ridiculous plaits hanging below my tits.
I did look like a ten-year-old, but I didn’t care—I did not want Chase Baker to like me.
Quite the opposite: I wanted to avoid him like the plague.
Still, we spent several silent minutes gazing into each other’s eyes.
In my imagination, I was already far away, but my legs felt frozen.
“Grace!”
The sound of my name burst the bubble enveloping us. I turned toward the school and saw Daisy, my friend, waving at me. He couldn’t see Chase because the thick trunk of the tree hid him.
I smiled and waved back, thinking it would be rude to not say goodbye.
I didn’t want to be nice—but still, it was us who approached him.
Although I had no idea how I should say goodbye.
Bye? See ya? See you never, alligator? However, when I turned back toward the tree, Chase wasn’t there.
He could be silent as a ghost when he wanted to be.
Or like an apex predator. The thought made me shiver.
I let out a relieved sigh. My tense muscles relaxed, my shoulders slumped, and my legs finally did my bidding. I walked over to Daisy. Halfway there, I turned back and cast a quick glance behind me, but he wasn’t there.
However… Later, he did return—and he didn’t take his eyes off me. He burned into my memory, into my body. His dark, mysterious eyes followed me, haunted me, and nearly drove me mad.
The last few weeks of school were difficult: both students and teachers were exhausted.
And we students were already going crazy over the upcoming summer vacation and all the possibilities it held.
During breaks between classes, the school’s oval-shaped courtyard was filled with loud conversations.
During lessons, there was a constant buzz of whispers, and we barely paid any attention.
There was some nonsensical gossip about the principal and Milly Stepsford’s mom.
And I was constantly haunted by the reputation of my “slut of a sister”.
According to everyone, I was “little Grace”, living under the dark shadow of my sister—however, I mostly just felt ashamed whenever my classmates informed me about what she had done under the stands next to the football field.
Recently, Mr. Miller had been spending a lot of time with us in the courtyard, striking up conversations with students who wanted nothing to do with him or his advice.
And of course, Daisy fell ill with a GI infection in the last weeks of school, which made it impossible for her to leave home—or, in her words, the bathroom.