CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Raina
My heart raced so wildly it felt like I was having a coronary as fear invaded my insides like a paralyzing poison. I did my best to relay the situation to Myla on the phone, but my hyperventilating wasn’t helping. She said she was on it, then disconnected the call.
Then I called Gabrielle while Jagger reiterated things to his brothers.
Lastly, he called the school, but the bus had already left with all the students to take them home. According to the secretary, Sierra, Marco was on that bus.
“What do we do now?” I screamed at Jagger, my hands shaking. “There’s no other way to the school.”
He stood there in silence, unmoving, unblinking for an agonizing moment.
I punched him in the shoulder. “Jagger! What do we do now?”
“They’re not going to the school,” he said, almost under his breath.
“What do you mean?”
“They’re not going to the school. They’re going to stop the bus and take him by force.”
“How do you know?” How the hell did he know all this? Was he in on it?
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Of course he’s not in on it.
Just like he didn’t snoop on your computer.
Pickford’s words of bringing more danger to the McEvoy family doorstep and endangering an entire other family, and six other children, sent you into a vortex of shame and doubt and you did what you always do—run.
You picked a fight with Jagger and ended it in order to keep his family safe.
In order to keep your heart safe. Trust him. For fuck’s sake, trust him.
“Get in the truck,” he ordered me, running back around to the driver’s side.
“What? Why? We’re blocked.”
“No, we’re not. Just … let me try something.”
I climbed into the passenger seat, my fingers trembling and barely able to function as I tried to buckle my belt.
“Fasten your seat belt,” he said, cradling my headrest and glancing behind him as he backed up, but into the other lane.
“I’m trying,” I hollered, the male portion of the belt going every which way but into the female part of the belt.
He slammed on the brakes again, causing me to lurch forward in my seat and have to brace myself on the dash. Barely waiting for me to sit back again, he reached over and buckled the belt for me, then proceeded to back up more.
“You’re not actually thinking about jumping that log, are you?” I asked. “It’s like two feet in diameter.”
“Hold on,” he said, having backed up a significant distance.
“Jagger, I am not doing this. You are not doing this. We are not doing this!”
But he didn’t gun it like I thought he would.
Instead, he turned to the left and went in through the bushes and shrubbery.
Branches knocked and gouged the side of his vehicle, and smacked the windows as he skirted around the thickest part of the evergreen tree, to where it naturally tapered toward the top and he was able to successfully rev the engine and gather enough momentum that the tires went up and over the narrow trunk like it was a speed bump.
He slowed down and scarcely missed driving head-on into a thin alder trunk by taking a sharp turn to the right, just in the nick of time. We were back on the road and racing toward the ferry as fast as we could.
Jagger took a left at the next fork and nearly rear-ended the bus, which was stopped in the middle of the road, red lights flashing.
I bailed out of the truck, Jagger too, just as Myla pulled up in her cruiser behind us, lights and sirens going wild.
I banged my fists on the closed door, then peered inside through the long, narrow windows. Palmer Figgs, the bus driver, was not in his seat.
Was he in on this too?
Stop thinking everyone is out to get you. Is out to get your kid.
“Uncle Jagger!” cried a little girl’s voice.
We glanced up to find Emme, having opened one of the bus windows. “Two men, they stopped the bus, came on with knives, and took Mr. Figgs and Marco.”
It was like someone dumped a bucket of ice water on me. Spreading down my spine like a venomous spider with icicles for legs. My shoulders were the first to lock, then my legs, as that spider’s toxin slowly paralyzed me.
“Emme, sweetheart, is everyone else okay?” Jagger asked.
“Yeah, just scared. Are Mr. Figgs and Marco going to be okay?”
“You need to open the door, Emme,” Myla said. “There’s a button there. You’ve seen Mr. Figgs push it before, right?”
Emme nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Just a sec.”
A second later, the hydraulic hiss of the door opening broke through the damp air. Myla jumped onto the bus, but I was already racing back to Jagger’s truck.
He caught up to me just as I climbed behind the steering wheel.
“They’re heading to the ferry,” I said. “We can catch them.”
“Move over,” he said, climbing in and shoving me over to the passenger seat.
I didn’t argue with him, since I really wasn’t in any state to drive anyway. We peeled out of there, burning rubber on the wet road.
The truck bumped and bounced along the pothole riddled old island road toward the ferry, and Jagger called one of his brothers.
“What’s going on now?” Wyatt’s voice filled the cab of the truck.
Jagger gave him the cliff notes version of what happened. Wyatt said two of them were on their way to retrieve the kids, while the other two would meet him at the ferry terminal.
I barely noticed the arms waving on the side of the road, or that it was Palmer Figgs, with a cut through his lip and a black eye. But Jagger noticed him and skidded to a stop.
Palmer climbed into the back. “I’m so sorry, Raina. I tried to stop them.”
“Wh-why’d you go with them?” I asked, just as Jagger hit the gas again.
“They made me come with them. Didn’t want me chasing them down in the bus. So they took me far enough away, then dumped me here.”
“It’s okay, Palmer,” Jagger said, gripping the wheel tight enough to make his knuckles turn white. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“What did they look like?” I asked, already knowing the answer. This had Ozais written all over it. Ozais, and probably Soloman.
“Uh … one guy was really tall. Older. Scraggly brown and gray beard. Pale-blue eyes.”
“Soloman,” I breathed.
“The other … red hair like you. Big guy. Tall too.” He made a shivering noise. “Scary … that’s the only way I can describe him. Like … he’d have no problem gutting me like a fish and leaving me for dead on the road.”
“Ozais,” I whispered, earning a glance from Jagger. “That’s definitely Ozais.”
We reached the big hill that led down to the terminal.
The typical line of cars extending up the road, waiting for the next sailing, was back—and oddly comforting.
But my stomach bottomed out and fresh horror took hold of my throat when the image of the ferry just pulling away from the terminal came into view.
“No!” I screamed, as Jagger went racing down the hill. “No!”
“He might not be on it,” Palmer said with little hope in his voice. “Maybe … maybe they’re in the line?”
“We don’t even know what they’re driving,” I cried, just as Jagger came to a stop at the bottom of the hill. He leaped out of the truck, barely managing to put it in park, before racing up to the attendant’s counter.
“They’re in a bakery van. White, with a basket of breadsticks on either side,” Palmer said. “I didn’t see it in the line.”
“Go double-check,” I said, before chasing after Jagger.
“They were in a bakery van. Bread—breadstick basket on the side,” I repeated when I reached him.
“Yes, they were one of the last vehicles on,” Brenda, the attendant, said.
“Call the Coast Guard,” Jagger demanded. “And the cops. Tell them a little boy—Marco Aaronson—has been abducted and the kidnappers are on the ferry.” Then he was gone, sprinting down to the dock in the marina.
Gus and Caleb, who we met on Wayman Island and ran their water taxi service, along with Gerry—who had the kidney stones—were just helping a few passengers off the ramp when they saw us run up.
“We need … we need to get to the ferry,” Jagger said. “Now. Raina’s kid is on that. His uncles kidnapped him.”
“Get on,” Gus said, going to help Caleb untie the ropes.
“Hang on, hang on,” came a deep, rumbly voice from down the dock. “Take my Zodiac. It’s faster.”
“He’s right,” Gus said. “I’ll get you to the ferry, but Dutton will get you there faster.”
Jagger and I climbed back out of Gus’s boat and chased after Dutton, who had already jumped into his boat—which looked more like a kid’s large inflatable toy, than a boat—and started the engine.
“Put this on,” Jagger said, handing me a bright-orange life vest that matched the color of the Zodiac. Dutton Styles was one of the local whale watching guides. But during the winter months, he didn’t do too much tourism. It was a blessing he was even down on the docks today.
Normally, we should have almost crawled out of the marina, to not rattle the other boats, or shake the dock with our wake, but this was an emergency, and Dutton knew it. He peeled away from the dock with the right kind of speed, and navigated around the breakwater with finesse.
My gut was in my throat as the water and frigid wind smacked me in the face, but I didn’t care. I could catch hypothermia right now and not give a shit. I didn’t matter. What mattered was my son. What mattered was getting my little boy back and away from his uncles.
Even though it was just past three o’clock, the thick, low-hanging charcoal clouds and dreariness of winter made it seem like we were just minutes away from nighttime. It felt like twilight, when the shift between day and night made it more challenging to see as your eyes struggled to adjust.
The ferry was a decent distance from us now, but Dutton changed course slightly, so we weren’t going directly into the wind and on-coming swells. I probably would have been nauseous with seasickness if I wasn’t so full of fear. My body didn’t have time to be sick.
“What are you going to do when we reach the ferry?” Dutton hollered at Jagger.
“You’re going to get me as close to the ladder as you can,” Jagger yelled back.
“Are you crazy? That’s suicide!”