Chapter 21 Megan #2
He doesn’t speak. Something inside me twists when I realize that he isn’t moving at all. Didn’t he hear me?
“Ric! We need to get away from here!”
As if he doesn’t already know this.
My legs slow down of their own accord. I don’t understand what’s going on. I didn’t expect a warm welcome followed by a hug and a cup of freshly brewed coffee, but neither did I expect him to look at me as if I’m the enemy.
The thought is like a sucker punch.
He thinks I’m the enemy. If all his men have been killed… Is he blaming me?
I freeze, instinctively dragging Amber to stand behind me.
Ric faces me squarely forming a blockade between me, Amber, and the safety of the cabin behind him. “You’re not in the bunker.” He shakes his head. “You were supposed to be in the bunker.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” My voice barely reaches my own ears. “Ric, please. I don’t know what’s going on, but you have to help me save Amber. Please. Please don’t let him get her.”
“I sent them away.” His cracked voice is terrifying. He doesn’t even look like the same guy who took Amber on the ferry across the Hudson and pointed out famous landmarks.
“Sent who away?”
Was it him all along? Has he been leading Amber’s father directly to us?
I shake my head to clear the terrifying thoughts. I’ll beg if I have to; I’ll give it my best shot.
“I wanted him all to myself. He was mine. It was always going to end this way.”
“Please, Ric.” I’m sobbing now because I have no idea what he’s talking about, and we’re running out of time.
“Amber doesn’t deserve this. She’s just a child.
You have no idea what he’s like, what he’ll do to her.
He doesn’t care about her. He doesn’t care about anyone.
I can’t lose her like this, Ric, I can’t. Please help me.”
My tears are flowing freely, and I don’t wipe them away.
I swear my heart stops while I wait for him to speak.
Then, as if waking from a dream, his eyes come back into focus, and he guides us toward the foliage shielding the back of the cabin from prying eyes. When we’re surrounded by thorny branches, he leans closer. His face is gray, as if he has aged ten years since I last saw him a few hours ago.
“Keep heading straight left and stick to the shadows. There’s a car near the road. The keys are in the ignition.” He hesitates.“You can drive, can’t you?”
He waits for me to nod before he continues. I don’t tell him that my dad paid for me to have driving lessons when I was seventeen, but I’ve never owned my own car. Or driven since.
“Drive into town. Don’t stop for anything, Meg. Or anyone. Do you understand?”
I nod again. I have no words left, and the tremor in his voice is scaring me.
“When you hit Mountain Road, you’ll see some lodges on the right-hand side. The second lodge is a thrift store. Park around the back. Someone will be waiting for you.”
It’s hard to keep up, but I run through a mental checklist in my head before the information slips into the night and vanishes in a puff of smoke: Mountain Road, second lodge, thrift store.
“What about you?”
His eyes meet mine briefly. “Don’t worry about me. Now go.”
I don’t waste a beat.
I don’t thank him or say goodbye; there isn’t sufficient room in my brain for manners and survival. I’ll save that for later.
I follow Ric’s instructions, dragging Amber along behind me and sticking to the shadows, which isn’t difficult as there isn’t a single light between us and the town below.
The car is there, just like he said. It’s a big car with huge wheels and a high roof. Part of me is already panicking that I won’t remember how to get it into gear, but this fear is quickly beaten to a pulp by the sound of gunfire.
It’s like an electric shock to my system.
Somehow, we muster the energy to run even faster, and then we’re by the car, and it feels as though the night is filled with bullets instead of stars.
I yank open the door and shove Amber inside, realizing too late, that the driver’s seat is on the opposite side in the States.
“Climb over!” I snap.
Amber doesn’t complain. She shuffles across the center console, and I climb in beside her, closing the door with a click that doesn’t quite connect.
I don’t shut it properly. I’m feeling for the key where the ignition should be, only it isn’t there, and I can’t switch the light on, and Amber is watching me with her ghastly pale face.
“Where are the fucking keys?”
It registers vaguely in my mind that I swore in front of her, but this isn’t real life, and swearing is allowed when a bullet might smash through the windshield at any moment and kill you stone dead.
“Get on the floor, Amber.”
She climbs down into the footwell without a word, and as I glance at her, I spot the key swinging from the ignition on the wrong side of the steering wheel.
“Thank fuck,” I mumble.
I turn it, and the car rumbles to life.
“Gearstick, gearstick…” I find it set high in the center console and squint at the markings. “What the fuck does R mean? Where’s first gear?”
“Meggie, why aren’t we moving?” Amber’s soft voice reaches me from the footwell and jolts me back to life.
While I’m messing around with gears, Ric is risking his life to buy us some time.
I find the letter D—I’m guessing that it stands for Drive—move the gearstick, release the handbrake, and hit the gas pedal.
The car jolts forward, slamming my chest against the steering wheel and winding me momentarily.
I look up just in time to swerve around a tree.
The car skids across the road, and I feel like I’m on the bumper cars at Adventure Island in Southend until I finally get it under control.
My heart is literally trying to leap out of my chest as we hit what feels like a boulder, the vehicle rocking precariously from side to side. I lean over the steering wheel and closer to the windshield. “Why can’t I see the road?”
The car veers up onto the grassy mountain slope and a low wall comes into view before I realize that I haven’t switched on the headlamps. I can’t find the control. The dashboard is like a fucking aircraft control panel. And besides, the headlights will only alert him to our getaway.
“I’m taking my chances on near-zero visibility thank you very much,” I mutter to the universe.
I have to perch on the edge of the seat to reach the pedals. I’m gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles are white. And my head is already pounding from squinting at the darkness.
Then someone appears in front of us, and I scream as I spin the wheel, waiting for the sickening thud as I hit their body, and praying that they don’t land on the windshield like they always do in the movies.
When nothing happens, I open my eyes again and murmur a silent prayer to a God I don’t believe in for saving us from certain death by tree trunk collision.
Miraculously, we pass no other cars on the way into town, which gives me permission to drive in the middle of the road all the way.
“Mountain Road, second lodge, thrift store.” I repeat the mantra in my head, although they’re only words until I spot the road sign I’m looking for, lit up by a streetlamp.
Second lodge on the left.
Amato Thrift Store.
I swing the vehicle left, narrowly missing the white sign announcing that everyone is welcome, and screech to a halt around the back of the whitewashed lodge.
I hug the steering wheel, my heart trying to batter it through my ribcage.
We made it.
I don’t know how, but we made it, and we’re safe now.
Nikki is dead. The thought flashes into my head. What about Ric?
I try to swallow, but my throat isn’t cooperating, and my brain is throwing all this bad stuff at me like it’s accusing me of abandoning them.
I peer down.
“Amber?” She is curled up into a ball with her arms around her bloody knees. “Are you hurt?”
“N-no.”
“We’re getting out now. Stay there until I come round and open the door.”
My legs give way when I climb out, and I cling to the door to keep myself upright. I stagger around to the passenger side and help Amber, who wraps her arms around my neck and refuses to let go.
Hoisting her into my arms, I turn around to face the back of the thrift store, my hopes plummeting through the ground when I realize that it’s in total darkness.
Before I can consider our options, a door opens, and someone hisses urgently, “Over here.”
I try to follow the sound, but I’m disoriented after recent events.
“This way!” An old man appears out of the shadows.
I don’t get a chance to look at him before he turns around and heads back inside. I follow him, still carrying Amber, who is clinging to me so tightly, it’s hard to breathe.
The old man closes the door behind us using deadbolts top and bottom and a chain to reinforce the regular lock.
He switches on a flashlight and uses it to gesture to another doorway on the opposite side of what appears to be a utility room.
Cabinets line the walls, sacks of clothing piled up high on every counter.
“We’re going down to the basement.”
He has an accent that reminds me of Gio although this man’s voice is coarser around the edges like it has been scraped with sandpaper.
He is barely a couple of inches taller than I am, with bowed shoulders and a bald patch on the top of his skull, but from the muscles bulging out from beneath his sweater, I’d guess that he still regularly hits the gym.
No introductions. He doesn’t ask if we’re hurt. Whatever arrangement he has with Ric, it only extends as far as hiding us, and that suits me just fine. Too many people have been dragged into this situation without me having another victim on my conscience.
On the other side of the interior door is a narrow hallway. Unlit, I can’t see where it leads to, and I don’t ask. The guy walks a few steps and stops, sliding a hand down the wall on his left. A crack appears. A secret doorway, and he gestures for me and Amber to go inside.
“You can use the flashlight to get you down the stairs. Find somewhere to hide, kill the light, and stay there until I give you the all-clear.”
I nod.
He hands over the flashlight and closes the door behind us.
I don’t move. Casting an arc of light around us, I discover that we’re standing at the top of a steep stone staircase, slick with damp. Down below, all I can see is blackness.