Chapter Nineteen Audrey
Chapter Nineteen
Audrey
The little blinking dots moved farther and farther apart, and it took all my restraint not to cry. The goodbye with my son remained on repeat like I kept hitting the same note on the piano over and over again.
“They’re on the move,” Seraphina told me, sitting in the front seat next to Ryder as the three of us drove down the icy, snowy roads in Ryder’s rental truck.
Chase’s little blinking light was no longer stationary. That meant he was now on the snowmobile with Trevor, making his escape.
There went my already-in-overdrive heartbeat, soaring at an even more dangerous speed. “I see,” I whispered, finally ripping my gaze from the disposable phone.
“Don’t leave me, Mommy!” Chase’s cries before Trevor had to pull him off me so I could get into the truck haunted me all over again, and I shut my eyes and rested my head against the side window.
“We’re coming up on that turn now,” Ryder said a few minutes later, ushering in a new wave of panic.
“What’d Alex nickname this turn?” Seraphina’s soft, easy voice was comforting. If she didn’t seem terrified, maybe I didn’t need to be?
Eyes open again, I focused on Chase’s dot like it was a heart rate monitor. Every blink was a beat of my own, remaining alive as long as he was safe.
“Something like ‘Where Old Souls Go to Die,’” Ryder said as he slowed down, and I twisted back to see Reed, driving my SUV behind us, do the same.
“So, he’s going to send his rental off the cliff, and with it, the burner phone that text came from.” I repeated what they’d told me earlier, needing to digest that idea all over again. “And you said you, um, mirrored that phone so if contact is made again, we’ll still get the message?”
“Exactly. We’re just trying to burn our trail and send whoever’s keeping tabs on us in the wrong direction for now.” Ryder briefly caught my eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Because they’re not literally driving behind us, but they did tag that phone and . . .” I let my words drift just as the truck did a little side slide, too, sending my stomach along with the movement.
Ryder easily corrected the steering. “Presumably, yeah. They’ll expect we’ll try and ditch them, and that we might be successful, which is why you received that text as well. Scare you into thinking that, to protect Chase, you have to help whether you want to or not.”
“Alex is done rigging everything now; then he’ll set the car to coast over the cliff to buy us a little time to get to the airport,” Seraphina said, still studying an iPad. “The snow helps, but this is just an extra decoy.”
Alex had left ahead of us, bravely leading the way to create a diversion.
“And Beau’s sending deputies for those bodies and the one you kept alive to keep questioning him, yes?” I asked despite knowing the answer. I had to stop doing that, but it made me feel better to hear their confirmations.
“Yeah, and hopefully we’ll get a hit on their identities by the time you all make it to Wyatt Pierson’s cabin in Boulder,” Seraphina replied as the road narrowed into a winding bend flanked by snowbanks. I could see the drop-off looming ahead since the snow had stopped falling a few minutes ago.
Ryder slowed the rental truck to a crawl, then pulled off to the side and cut the engine.
I turned around to see Reed parking behind us.
“It’s time?” I asked Ryder, and at his nod, I followed up with, “What if someone goes off that cliff because we took out the guardrail?”
“Natasha made a call to have two snowplows come block off access to this road from both sides to prevent civilians from getting into an accident.” He twisted in his seat to study me, his 9mm resting on his lap as if it were an extended limb.
“The plow drivers will clear out, so if the assholes show up to follow the trail, no one’s here to get hurt. ”
Good. I couldn’t live with anything happening to an innocent person because of me. “Will the bad guys really bite and believe we went over that cliff?”
“Probably not. But we’ll have the only way on and off this mountain blocked, and it’ll be obvious a car did go off the cliff, right along with their tracker,” he replied. “All of this is to buy us time to get to the airport to switch vehicles.”
Misdirection. An illusion. A decoy to get my son and us to safety. I needed to have faith, but gosh, I was still lacking in that department right now, and I hated myself for that.
Ryder faced forward as a call came over the dash. He placed it on speakerphone.
“Hey, Natasha here, patching in from CIA aerial. No thermal pings from your route yet. You’re clear. All of you.”
I let the comfort of those last three words sink in, and checked Chase’s blinking dot again—still on the move, which was a good sign.
“We watched the vehicle go over the ridge. We’re going to jam all external frequencies in a ten-mile radius after this call and induce a short power outage on the grid. We’ll blame the snowstorm that rolled through your area. But that means you’ll temporarily lose all signals as well,” she went on.
I vaguely remembered meeting Gray’s sister at some point in the past after he had married Trevor’s cousin, but we hadn’t had a chance to really speak too much. Thank God she worked for the CIA and her father was who he was, though.
Here I am, constantly thanking God, and yet I’m still lacking faith that all will be fine. What is wrong with me?
“Roger that,” Ryder confirmed. “If they do have airborne support, they’ll be blind, unlike you.” He peeked at me in the mirror, adding, “And don’t worry, our drone won’t be impacted.”
“The snowplows are almost to your location. Your ten-minute window starts in thirty seconds. Visibility is going to drop again for you in about two miles, where the storm is hitting now. Be safe.”
“Thanks, Natasha.” Ryder ended the call as someone was walking our way outside.
My heart squeezed at the realization that it was Alex. He waved at Ryder, then kept on walking.
The second he was in the passenger seat of the SUV with Reed, Ryder pulled back onto the road and the little blinking light on my phone went offline. My stomach muscles banded tight at the loss of the visual.
“We’re ghosts now,” Ryder said, and a few seconds later we passed the area where Alex had sent the rental car over the cliff.
“No one I’d rather be dead with than you,” Seraphina said in a teasing tone, reaching for his hand on the steering wheel.
“Real funny.” He shook his head. “She loves to give me an ulcer.”
“We’re going to be fine. I can make jokes because I trust you.” She twisted around to look at me. “You’re in good hands, and when they get you to Boulder, they’ll figure this all out.”
I nodded my thanks to her and closed my eyes.
The next ten minutes were going to be the longest of my life as I waited for that little blinking light to return.
The second it did, a breath of air whooshed free from my lungs, and a text quickly followed from Trevor’s burner, which I’d preprogrammed into my phone.
Trevor: In the Jeep. All clear. Our son is safe. I have every intention of keeping him that way.
I texted back without hesitation, relief bubbling up inside as a shocking smile hit my lips.
Me: You shouldn’t be texting while driving.
Trevor: Voice texting, relax.
Me: Talk about deja vu.
Trevor: No repeats of Friday night, please.
Trevor: And the fact you’re responding means you’re safe too. Good. Stay that way.
I let go of another deep breath and shifted around to ensure the only tail we had was the one we wanted. At the sight of Alex and Reed right behind us, I faced forward and texted Trevor back.
Me: I plan on it.
Me: Tell Chase I love him infinity times infinity.
Trevor: He says he loves you infinity cubed.
I clutched the phone to my chest while letting them know: “They’re okay and now in the Jeep.”
“I can see them on my screen,” Seraphina confirmed. “Natasha patched us in so we can share the view.”
Technology could be both a blessing and a curse, and right now I was grateful for it. “And Eden? She good?”
“She’s at the sheriff’s department with Beau. All good,” Seraphina answered. “He has our hostage in a cell.”
“Y’all really did Houdini us to safety. Thank you.
I don’t know what I’d have done without you.
If my mom didn’t tell me about you at Thanksgiving, then .
. .” Tears gathered in my eyes as the memory grabbed hold of me, right along with the fact I’d barely spoken to my mother since that night, still so hurt that she’d kept a brother from me all my life.
“Speaking of your mom . . . who have you told about what’s going on?” Ryder asked.
“Just my best friend.” And, oh shit. “Is she in danger now? We need to give her a heads-up. And before you ask, yes, I trust her. We’ve been friends for almost nine years.”
Ryder nodded, then requested I give Seraphina Hollis’s phone number. “I’ll handle it. No contact with anyone from here on outside of Trevor, though, got it?” he asked once I’d rattled off her number—one of the few I had memorized.
“Yeah, okay.” I nodded.
“But you really didn’t tell your mom about this?” He peeked at me in the rearview mirror, clearly surprised by that news.
“No. I’m still trying to forgive her for everything.”
My mom knew our father had been married when they’d had an affair. Four months into her pregnancy, she met my dad, who raised me as his own.
“You know I don’t hate her, right? I haven’t met her, but I, uh, don’t blame her for our dad walking out on my mom. He left them both,” Ryder said. Seraphina reached over and rested her hand on his leg in quiet support. “He’d have left us no matter what.”
I had no idea what to say to that. I hadn’t even known I’d been abandoned until this Thanksgiving, but Ryder had spent thirty-plus years living with it.
“I’m still sorry,” was all I could manage, my gaze falling to Chase’s little blinking dot as we kept moving farther and farther apart.
“You owe me no apologies. And, Audrey?” He stopped at a red light and looked back at me. “Does it make me fucked up that I’m glad Dad cheated? You wouldn’t exist otherwise, and I wish I’d known you sooner—but at least I know you now.”
And that.
Right there.
Sent me into the deep.
Into the thick of it.
Into an avalanche of hope, believing everything truly happened as it was meant to, which meant everything would work out now. It had to.