Chapter 19 Megan #2
I whirl around and face her, the woman I’ve known most of my life.
I realize now that I hardly know her at all.
“What did you think was going to happen when you took him to my motel room? Did you think he would sniff my panties like some kind of fucking pervert and be on his way? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She remains seated. She looks scared, and I’m glad.
“I didn’t want this, Meg. You have to believe me.”
“Believe you? I can’t believe a fucking word you say!” This is killing me inside, but I can’t stop myself now. “Amber’s father has followed us here because of you!”
“I don’t think—”
“No, Nikki! That’s the fucking truth. You don’t think about anyone but yourself. Because of you, he’ll take Amber away from me.”
Amber stirs inside the den, and I realize I’ve been practically shrieking at Nikki. I need to dial it down for my sister’s sake.
“They won’t let him take Amber away from you.” Her eyes are pleading with me, but I can’t even bear to look at her. “There are bodyguards everywhere. He won’t get anywhere near you.”
“He already has.”
I realize that she doesn’t know what happened in New York, but it makes no difference. She was my best friend, and she betrayed me for a guy who threatened to destroy her career if she didn’t.
“I’ve got a fucking panic button.” I raise my hand to show her the strap fastened around my wrist. “There’s a bunker underneath the cabin that we’re to hide in if he finds us. A bunker, Nikki. That’s what our life has become thanks to you.”
“A bunker.” She stands up, peering around the room as if she might already be under the ground. “Why would they tell you to go hide in a bunker? You’ll be trapped.”
“Because he won’t be able to get in.” When Ric first mentioned it, I dismissed it as a last resort, but now…
“We won’t be able to get out.” Her use of the word ‘we’ isn’t lost on me. “I can’t go underground, Meg. I’ll freak out. You know I have a phobia of enclosed spaces.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to remind her that this isn’t about her, but her breathing is growing shallow, the dip between her collarbones caving as she tries to fill her lungs.
She’s having a panic attack. She went through a phase of having them frequently when we were at college, but she got them under control, and I’ve not seen her have one since.
I open and close the kitchen drawers, searching for a brown paper bag for her to breathe into. In the end, I settle for a piping bag.
Nikki is sitting on the floor with her knees spread wide, and her head between her knees to stop her from passing out. I cover her mouth with the piping bag and hold it tightly around her lips while she breathes into it, the bag expanding and constricting with each breath.
She’s crying when her breathing regulates itself, and I sit beside her, lean back against the cabinets, and pull her head against my chest.
I can’t stay angry with her. We should stick together for Amber’s sake.
This might not be about Nikki, but if Amber’s father finds us here, he isn’t going to spare my best friend simply because she helped one of his stooges break into my room. He wouldn’t have found anything anyway. I haven’t been back to the motel since I met Gio.
“It’s okay, Nik,” I murmur, smoothing her hair away from her face. “We’ll figure it out.”
“They will stop him, won’t they?”
She sounds so young, so vulnerable that I’m transported back to when we were in high school, and her first boyfriend dumped her for a popular girl called Alice Beedon. She’d cried on my shoulder then too.
“Of course, they will. That’s why Ric told us to stay inside. It’ll all be over soon. Maybe we can ride an inner tube around the Winooski River tomorrow. I picked up a leaflet about it in town.”
She relaxes against me a little. “Meg, can you ever forgive me?”
No regrets. That’s what my mom used to say. Regrets are for people who didn’t live their lives the way they ought to.
“On one condition. You dump that fucking asshole and then make sure that everyone in Hollywood knows what he really is.”
“You’re a good person, Megan Walsh,” she murmurs against my chest. “No wonder Gio fell in love with you.”
“He’s a good person too. One of the best.”
I glance up at the camera. I hope he’s watching us right now, and if he is, I hope that his lip reading skills are up to scratch.
“I think I loved him from the first moment I set eyes on him.”
“You seemed pretty irate to me at the time.”
I smile. “I was in full-on panic mode, but being with Gio… I think it’s the only time in the last five years that I’ve been able to let go.
I trusted him to take care of us. I still trust him.
” I stare straight at the camera. “He’s the only person who makes me feel safe, Nik.
He said that he would protect us with his life, and I believe him. ”
“You really love him, don’t you?” she whispers.
“I’m head-over-heels in love with him.”
I only hope that, when this is all over, I get to tell him this to his face again. I don’t care about Lucia. Arrangements can be broken, but love can’t. I just don’t want our story to end like this, at the hands of a sociopathic murderer who thinks he can play God with our lives.
“This is real love, Nik. How does the song go? Seems like all I really was doing was waiting for love. I get it now. Everything that has ever happened to me, good and bad, was leading me to Gio.”
Good and bad.
Gio and I were always meant to meet this way. The realization gives me a wave of renewed energy. Amber’s father isn’t going to win. His lack of any kind of human emotion or empathy will not triumph over love. It won’t.
I check out the clock on the kitchen wall. It’s later than I realized, and there has been no communication from Ric or anyone else since he took Nikki’s phone.
The silence makes me shiver.
Should we move down to the bunker now before it’s too late? Or is the silence a good sign? I mean, we haven’t heard any gunshots or raised voices. We literally haven’t heard anything.
“I should wake Amber up.”
Aside from the fact that it will be cumbersome trying to move a sleeping five-year-old’s dead weight through a hatch in the floor and underground to a secret bunker, it wouldn’t be fair to wake her up in an unknown place.
Nikki stands first and offers me her hand.
We’re friends again.
Nikki goes to the window. I go to the den and drop onto my hands and knees, my heart melting when I see that Amber is sucking her thumb the way she did when she was a baby.
“Amber,” I whisper, stroking her hand gently.
It’s so cozy inside the blanket den, I can understand why she’s still asleep; she has probably hunkered down for the night after the day we’ve had.
“Amber, sweetie, it’s time to wake up.”
Time to wake up, what a ridiculous saying. If she wants to sleep, she should be allowed to sleep, but I can’t leave her here.
“Okay, Amber, do you want pizza?” Nothing. “How about ice cream?”
Her eyelids flicker. “What flavor ice cream?” she murmurs without fully opening her eyes.
“What flavor do you want?”
She curls her legs up to her knees in the fetal position, getting comfortable again.
“Amber? Do you want vanilla? Raspberry ripple? Cookie dough?”
Somewhere in my consciousness, I register the cabin door being opened. There’s a rush of cool night air on the back of my neck, and I turn around just in time to watch Nikki stepping outside.
“Nik? Where are you going?” I keep my voice low. Too low.
She doesn’t acknowledge me before she gets swallowed up by the shadowy twilight of the world outside.
“Amber, stay there,” I say firmly. “Don’t move until I get back, okay?”
The door is still open. Alarm bells are ringing inside my head, but I have to find Nikki and get her back inside.
I stand on the threshold and peer around the darkness. It isn’t like nighttime in the city. Here the dark is denser, like a blanket dotted with stars, because there are no lights in the mountains to guide the way.
I can’t see Nikki.
“Nik?” I whisper. “Nikki?”
There’s no sign of Ric or anyone else. The other cabins are all in darkness, and I get a horrible sinking feeling that they’ve all gone and abandoned us here. We should be in the bunker. We’ll be safe down there.
No one can reach us.
No one will be able to take Amber away from me.
I just need to find Nikki first.
I step outside. Hesitant. Hardly daring to breathe.
Then I spot her. She’s standing between the cabin and the path that snakes its way up the mountain, hands on hips, as if resuming her earlier conversation with Ric.
“Nikki?” I start walking towards her as a gunshot splits the night in two.
She sprawls backwards like this is one of those team-bonding exercises where you trust your colleagues to break your fall. But no one catches her. She hits the ground with a thud, her face bone-pale in the moonlight.
I freeze.
A dark patch is spreading across her chest.
Nikki has been shot. It makes no sense, but I know Nikki has been shot, and Ric is nowhere to be seen.
Then I hear a scream, and Amber darts past me yelling, “Auntie Nikki!”