Chapter 23 Salem
TWENTY-THREE
SALEM
The highway unspools beneath us in a dull, hypnotic rhythm.
Trees streak past the windows in a smeared gray-green haze, their branches clawing at the edges of my vision before dissolving into nothing.
Above, the sky hangs low and heavy, the color of week-old dishwater left forgotten in the sink.
Inside the car, the heater drones a steady, toneless lullaby.
The tires murmur secrets to the asphalt, soft and constant.
Ozzy’s hands rest on the wheel with practiced calm, knuckles pale but unmoving. Still, I can feel the tension rolling off him in quiet waves. It crackles in the space between our seats like invisible static, prickling the skin on my arms.
My stomach is a cold, hollowed-out place, as though I swallowed dread instead of coffee this morning and it’s been sitting there ever since, heavy and sour. Every breath tastes faintly metallic.
My mind races back to my father.
Arthur Charles.
Three syllables that have suddenly grown weight and shape. A real name attached to a real man who once drove a real car down real roads. A man who might have held me, or at least known my name. A man who shares strands of my DNA and may once have carried pieces of my story in his head.
Or may still.
I curl my fingers into my palm and press until the nails bite crescent moons into the skin. The sharp sting is grounding. Pain has always been a reliable anchor. It yanks me back when my thoughts start to spiral outward into panic.
I turn my face toward the window, letting the cold glass kiss my temple, and try to summon him.
A face.
A voice.
A gesture. Anything.
My mind offers only blankness. Nothing but a gray screen, flickering faintly like a television left on after the broadcast ends. No features rise to fill it. No memory of cologne or cigarette smoke or the low timbre of laughter. Just absence, vast and polite, waiting for me to stop asking.
I have spent my whole life with an empty space labeled FATHER, and now someone has drawn a circle around it and written MISSING in red ink.
I swallow and taste acid.
Ozzy glances at me for half a second. “You okay?”
I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to throw something. Instead I say, “Sure.”
Ozzy doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t push. His jaw tightens, and his eyes flick to the mirrors again. Road. Mirror. Road. Like he is counting threats.
I force a breath in through my nose. Hold it. Let it out slowly. I can do this. I can handle information. I can handle fear. I’ve handled worse.
My mind tries to be practical. If his car was there, he was close to Goldenbell.
If Goldenbell has him, then he is leverage.
If he hired Maddox Security to save me, maybe he tried to do the right thing and got punished for it.
Or maybe he hired them for a selfish reason and now someone wants to shut him up.
I hate that my brain goes to the worst-case scenario first. I hate that it is usually correct.
Ozzy takes a turn, and the gas gauge catches my eye. It’s sitting on empty. “We need to stop.”
I keep my voice calm. “Okay.”
Ozzy pulls into a gas station off the highway, the kind with two faded flags and a convenience store that smells like hot dogs no one should eat. The lot is mostly empty. A pickup truck on the far side. A sedan at the pump. The fluorescent lights make everything look sickly.
Ozzy parks by a pump but does not get out right away. He scans. Left. Right. Mirrors. Then he looks at me. “Stay close.”
I nod, but my skin prickles anyway.
Ozzy steps out and starts pumping gas. He keeps his shoulders angled so he can see both the road and the store. His whole body is alert.
I force myself to move like a normal person.
I open the passenger door and step out, the cold air snapping at my face.
The smell of gasoline hits my nose. It mixes with old asphalt and burnt coffee.
My bladder chooses now to remind me I am human.
I hug my hoodie tighter. “I’m going to use the restroom. ”
Ozzy’s head snaps toward me. “I’ll go with you.”
My cheeks heat. “I can go by myself.”
His eyes narrow like he hates that sentence.
I try to soften it. “You’ll be right there. I’ll be quick.”
Ozzy hesitates, then nods once. “Door stays in sight. If anything feels off, you yell.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
I walk toward the convenience store, sneakers grinding against the loose gravel parking lot. Each step sends up small, dry whispers of sound that seem louder than they should in the flat afternoon quiet. The building itself looks tired.
The glass door is a mess of overlapping fingerprints and smudged handprints, as though dozens of people have pressed against it in a hurry and never quite made it all the way through.
When I push it open, a small brass bell above the frame jangles once, sharp and cheerful, the sound clashing with everything else around me.
A wave of warm, stagnant air rolls out to meet me, carrying the mingled scents of day-old coffee, sugary glaze from yesterday’s donuts, industrial floor cleaner, and something faintly sour underneath it all.
The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting a sickly yellow pallor over the narrow aisles.
Behind the counter, a clerk in a faded polo shirt sits slouched on a tall stool, thumb scrolling endlessly across the screen of his phone.
He doesn’t lift his eyes when I enter. His face stays blank, lit only by the cold blue glow from below.
I keep my head down, hood pulled low, shoulders hunched just enough to make myself smaller, less worth noticing.
My pulse is already climbing, thudding against the base of my throat in a rhythm that feels too loud, too fast.
I tell myself it’s only nerves. Just the ordinary static of being out in the open again.
Everything feels edged with threat after you’ve been taken once. Every shadow holds a shape that might move. Every stranger’s glance feels like reconnaissance.
The hallway is too narrow, the walls too close. My elbows nearly brush both sides as I move. The silence presses in, broken only by the low electrical hum and the distant clink of the clerk setting his phone down.
My heart is hammering now, hard enough that I can feel it in my fingertips, in the roof of my mouth. I force one slow breath through my nose, then another.
It’s just a bathroom. Just a door. Just a minute to splash water on my face and pull myself together.
I reach out, palm flat against the cool metal, and push the door open.
The light flickers. The mirror is spotted. The lock on the stall looks flimsy. I pee as fast as my body will allow, washing my hands like that will wash off the feeling crawling over my skin. I stare at my reflection and my own eyes look too big.
I whisper to myself, “You are fine.” I leave the restroom and step into the hallway.
Something shifts. Not a sound exactly. More like the air changes. I freeze.
A man stands near the end of the hallway. He is not the clerk. He is not in a uniform. He wears a dark hoodie and a baseball cap pulled low.
My stomach drops. I know that shape. My body recognizes him before my brain catches up. The same build. The same stance. The same calm menace. The same kind of nothing in the face when someone has already decided you are an object.
My mouth goes dry. I take a step backward without thinking. The man takes a step forward. My heart slams against my ribs. No. Not again.
I turn to run. A hand clamps over my mouth from behind. My scream turns into a muffled choke. My body goes instantly rigid. Panic explodes in my chest. A second arm locks around my torso, crushing the air out of me. My mind flashes white.
The smell of sweat and cheap detergent fills my nose. My vision blurs. My legs kick. I stomp down hard, heel landing on something solid. A grunt. The grip tightens.
I bite down as hard as I can and my teeth sink into his skin.
The man swears, but he does not let go. Instead, something sharp presses into my side through the hoodie.
I stop fighting for one second because my brain screams at me that fighting will get me stabbed.
A voice hisses in my ear. “Be good. Be quiet.”
I shake my head, tears burning hot. I try to pull air in through my nose. I can. Barely.
Footsteps approach. The man in the hallway appears in front of us now, blocking the path back to the store. He’s smiling. A slow, ugly smile. “You made it real easy,” he says.
My stomach flips. I try to scream again, but the hand over my mouth presses harder. My eyes dart toward the store entrance. If I could get to the main area, if I could knock over a display, if I could make noise…
The man holding me drags me backward. Toward a side door I did not notice.
My heels scrape the floor. My hoodie rides up. Cold air hits my lower back as the door opens. The winter air slams into my face. The parking lot is too bright. Too open.
Ozzy is still at the pump. He’s facing the road. He’s not looking at me.
My entire body surges with desperation. I twist hard, trying to jerk my head enough to make noise. The grip around me tightens like a vice.
I manage a sound anyway. A muffled, ugly “Mmmp!”
Ozzy doesn’t hear it.
I kick again, frantic now.
The man swears and yanks me faster, toward the back of the building. Behind the store, the lights do not reach as far. Shadow swallows us. I try to dig my nails into his arm. He slams me into the side of a van.
My blood turns to ice.
No.
No no no.
The van door slides open. The dark inside looks like a mouth. The man shoves me in. I hit the floor hard, shoulder and hip screaming. The door slams shut with a metallic bang that echoes like a coffin lid. The air inside is stale, smells like rubber and old sweat.
My breath comes in sharp bursts. I scramble upright, hands shaking.
My eyes adjust enough to see shapes. Two men.
I’ve seen them before. I’ve been here before.
They’ve laughed while I cried before. This can’t be happening again.
One of them crouches, grabbing my wrists.
He yanks them behind my back and cinches something tight around them.
Zip ties. The plastic bites into my skin. I jerk, trying to pull away. He backhands me. Stars explode behind my eyes. My cheek burns. My ears ring. I taste blood. I blink fast, trying not to sob.
The van lurches forward. I try once more to fight. To do something. I kick and thrash, but it’s no use because the moment the van makes a hard turn, my head slams into the wall of the van.
My mind screams Ozzy’s name.
Ozzy.
Ozzy will come.
Ozzy will burn down the world.
But the reality hits right after. He didn’t see me. He was facing the road. He thinks I’m inside buying a drink or using the restroom. He thinks I’m safe.
The thought makes my chest crack open. Tears spill before I can stop them. I force my breathing to slow. If I hyperventilate, I will pass out. If I pass out, I lose control. Control is the only thing I have left.
The van bumps over potholes. The smell gets worse. My wrists throb. The men do not talk much. One of them hums like this is just a job. And I hate him for that.
I stare at the seam of the door, at the thin line of light. I try to memorize turns. Left. Right. The length of the stops. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know this area well enough.
Minutes stretch into something cruel. Then the van slows until it stops.
The door slides open. Cold air spills in. A warehouse. The warehouse. The one where Ozzy and I just were only thirty minutes ago.
They yank me out of the van.
My legs are weak, but I force them to work. They drag me through a side entrance. The inside is dim, lit by one row of overhead lights that flicker and buzz. Dust floats in the beams like slow snow. The sound of my shoes scuffing on concrete seems too loud.
My heartbeat is louder. We pass old pallets, abandoned machinery, trash bags stacked like bodies. My stomach twists.
There’s a man in the center of the warehouse. He’s tied to a chair, his head hanging forward. His shirt’s stained dark at the collar. His face is bruised. One eye swollen shut. His mouth split. He’s barely breathing.
My chest seizes. The men shove me down onto my knees beside him. My knees hit concrete hard, pain shooting up my legs. They grab my arms and pull me upright again, tying me to another chair. Rope this time. Rough and scratchy. It bites at my wrists, already irritated from the zip ties.
One of them yanks my chin up. “Sit still.”
I glare at him with every ounce of defiance I can find.
He laughs, then steps back.
The other man looks at the beaten stranger like he is a piece of furniture. “Don’t talk.”
Then they leave, their footsteps echoing away.
Silence floods the warehouse.
My breath is loud in my ears. The overhead light buzzes and flickers, making the shadows jump. I twist my wrists, testing the rope. It’s too tight. Too strong. I swallow back panic, forcing myself to look at the man beside me.
His head lifts slowly. His one good eye finds mine. It is bloodshot. Tired. Sharp anyway. He looks at me like he is seeing something impossible. His voice comes out rough, broken, but clear enough. “Salem,” he whispers.
My blood goes cold. He knows my name. I stare at him, my throat closing.
He swallows hard, wincing. “I’m sorry,” he rasps.
My voice shakes. “Who are you?”
His breath is shallow, and then he says the words that split the world in half. “I’m your father.” And the lights flicker again, like the building itself is holding its breath.