Chapter 38 – Lauren
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
LAUREN
F ive hours have passed since the showdown in the woods, and after accompanying Taylor to the hospital and making sure he was stable, I am yet again trudging through a forest. It’s full night now, the place illuminated by moonlight, the branches painting eerie shadows against the dark backdrop of a star-studded sky.
We are making our way around land that Ivan Volkov owned through a shell corporation near Dover. In the end, torturing the last man standing back at the cabin wasn’t much help because he was hired muscle who knew very little. A mess of blood, broken bones, shattered teeth, and missing fingernails, he was willing to betray his own mother by the time Seb and Sasha finished with him. From what I’ve heard, torture is one of Sasha’s very favorite things, and he’s quite good at it.
Still, all the guy knew was that Volkov kept a place in Kent, near the ferry port. It was a waypoint for his illicit cargo before leaving the country or upon entering it. The guy did solve at least one mystery by telling us about the tracking device that was placed on Seb’s SUV the day before.
The new nugget of information about Dover was enough for Sasha to mine his contacts in the criminal underworld, and now here we are—desperately searching for a little boy that we all know is probably dead. Or worse, I remind myself. He could be in the hands of predators who will turn his young life into a hellscape of abuse.
Unable to put one foot in front of the other if I allow myself to think like that, I shut the thought down. It won’t help Nicky, and it certainly didn’t help Caroline. We already found her body, and it was a sight I will never forget in a million years. She was dumped naked on a dirty mattress, like a ragdoll with her limbs splayed and twisted at unnatural angles. Every inch of her body was striped with whip marks, and blood was crusted between her legs. Her once-pretty face was caved in, almost unrecognizable, beaten to the point where her facial bones had collapsed in on themselves.
I was almost sick right then, and it was only Seb’s steadying hand on my back that stopped me. He hadn’t wanted me to come with them, obviously, and now I understood why. He’d wanted to protect me from this.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, turning me around to face him as his men covered her with a discarded blanket. A small show of respect for a woman who had clearly fought to the last.
“Me too,” I replied, my breath shuddering against his chest. “We let her down. I’m going to feel awful about that later, but now isn’t the time. Now, we need to find Nicky.”
After turning the ramshackle house at the center of the compound upside down, we found nothing—no trace of him at all.
“He isn’t here,” Sasha announced sadly. “I fear he has been taken.He could be anywhere, with anyone…”
I know from Seb that Sasha’s own childhood was one of pain and torment, and he was visibly distressed.
“No.” I shook my head firmly. “We don’t know that. There are more buildings here. Shipping containers. A lot of land. We don’t give up until we have nowhere left to look. Until we’ve searched every inch of it, all right? We owe him that much. We owe Caroline that much. And if he’s not here, we keep on looking. I don’t care how long it takes or where that search takes us—we find him. We find the sick bastards who have that child, and we end them. We do not give up.”
I only realized at the end of my speech that I was yelling. Gabriel, Alex, Jacob, and a few others whose names I don’t know were all staring at me. Tough men, all of them, and I was screaming at them like they were children.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Seb said, looking back at them and daring them to disagree. “We will tear this world apart to find him.”
Sasha laid one hand on my shoulder and smiled. “So fierce. And also so correct. We do not give up.”
That was a couple hours ago, and since then, we have torn through every part of this evil place. We found the remains of other women, some recent and some skeletal, rotting in one of the shipping containers. The sight and smell were enough to make these men gag, and we stood at the door, shouting Nicky’s name. When no answer came, Sasha walked inside the pit of death and checked for signs of a much smaller body. When he emerged again, he was whiter than a sheet, but he shook his head and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
A basement that had obviously been used for rape and torture was found next, chains hanging from the bare brick walls and blood-stained blankets scattered on the filthy floor amid used syringes. “This is where they would have been broken,” Sasha announced, his face calm but his eyes furious. “Beaten. Abused. Addicted. Treated as garbage. All in the name of profit.”
“No more, mate,” Seb said, guiding him out. “Volkov’s gone, and we’ll make sure all the women we found here get a proper burial.”
“Volkov might be gone, but there will be more to take his place. There always are, like mushrooms springing up in shit. But thank you—for the time being, his death will have to be enough. As for Nicky, I think we only have the woods left to search.”
Now, we’re here, walking a grid across the darkened land, all of us exploring our own patch in an attempt to cover a lot of ground quickly and thoroughly. Every once in a while, I catch a glimpse of a flashlight in the distance and hear the voice of one of the others as they call Nicky’s name.
“Nicky!” Seb yells, kicking aside a dense patch of bramble and checking behind it. “Nicky, buddy, it’s Seb—if you’re here, give us a shout.”
I echo his cries, carefully clambering over the obstacles that mother nature has put in our way, desperate to hear a reply. We’ve been out here for a while, and it’s getting harder to cling to hope.
“I don’t think he’s here,” Seb says, trailing behind me. “And if he is…”
“No. We don’t give up. Ever. Promise me.”
He pulls me to a stop and wipes away tears I didn’t know I was shedding. “I promise you, Lauren. I promise you.”
I lean into his big, solid body, allowing myself a moment of respite. I’m running on pure adrenaline after a day that emptied me out of all strength. It’s only the thought of that little boy out here alone, scared and suffering, that’s keeping me going.
I drop my forehead to his chest, feel the steady beat of his heart. Seb is here. Seb is real. Together, we’ll find him.
He strokes my hair with one hand and pulls me tight against him with the other. It gives me the courage and the energy I need to go on.
His body goes tense. “Did you hear that?”
I pull away, not daring to breathe.
“Nicky,” he shouts again. “It’s Seb and Lauren—you’re safe now.”
I listen intently, and I finally hear what Seb picked up on—a rustling and scraping sound a few yards away, deep inside an especially thick patch of oaks. We both react at once, scrambling over collapsed branches and tangled vegetation to follow the sound, but he gets there before me.
I catch up and find him on his knees next to a massive fallen tree trunk. He’s scooping dead leaves and twisted stems away with his bare hands. I shine my flashlight along the space he’s cleared and gasp. Small fingers have emerged from the end of the trunk, and an even smaller voice says, “Seb?”
“Yeah, it’s me, buddy.” His voice cracks with emotion. “You’re okay now.”
He scooches down and pulls Nicky from the hollowed-out trunk he was hiding in. The poor kid looks dreadful, pale skin marred by scratches, his injured arm dangling lifelessly at his side, eyes wide and drained.
I rub the traces of the forest from his face, grimacing at how cold his skin is to the touch. Seb encloses him in his arms for warmth, and I tuck my jacket around his skinny shoulders, alarmed at how quiet he is.
“How long have you been there, Nicky?” I hand him my water bottle and stop him when he glugs too greedily.
“Um… I think maybe three nights?” His voice is croaky, likely from a combination of dehydration and being silent for too long. “It was all my fault. Everything was my fault.”
Seb passes him to me and goes off to use his phone, and I cuddle him close. His clothes are soaked through, and he’s shivering.
“No, it wasn’t, sweetie. Whatever happened wasn’t your fault, okay?”
He clings to me, his body racked with silent sobs, and my heart breaks for him. “He came home early. My dad. I was making noise. I was just playing soldiers. But he was so mad. He put us in the car and brought us here. He locked us up in that horrible room. My mum made me promise to run. So I did.”
His face crumples at the memory.
“Then he came back. He was angry. He called her horrible names. He hit her. And then he punched me in the tummy and made me be sick. He said if she didn’t tell him everything, he’d carry on hurting me. I should have protected her instead of running away.”
My heart breaks wide open. “Darling, no. She wouldn’t have wanted that. Your mom loved you more than anything in the whole world.”
He gazes up at me with hollow eyes. “She’s dead, isn’t she? He killed her while I ran away like a baby. She told me to, she screamed it at me, but I shouldn’t have listened. I should have stayed with her.”
Seb has finished his phone call and clearly overheard the last sentence, and a twitch of his jaw betrays the effort it takes him to stay calm. “You did the right thing, Nicky, and I want you to always know that. You did exactly what you should have done—you found a safe space, and you hid. That is all your mum wanted you to do. You did her proud. Now, do you remember what else I told you?”
Nicky frowns. “You told me I needed to survive and get stronger, and then I could get my revenge.”
“That’s right, son. And you did survive, because you did what you needed to do. What your mum wanted you to do. Look, we can talk about it all more soon, but for now we need to get you warm, get you fed. Get you somewhere safe. How does that sound?”
Nicky’s lip trembles. “Will you stay with me?”
“We’ll never leave your side, mate. Never.” Seb carries the boy out of the clearing, and it is no wonder at all that my heart follows.