Chapter 18 #2
He nods, his eyes still on Charlie, who's showing Carter how her new bear's vest matches his. I slip away from the table, weaving between Sydney and Kane, past my father who's deep in conversation with Greyson about something that's making them both laugh.
The hallway is quieter, the restaurant's soft music fading behind me as I push through the door to the ladies' room. I'm halfway through washing my hands when my phone buzzes in my back pocket.
I pull it out, expecting a text from Matthew asking where I've gone, but the name on the screen makes me pause.
Trixie.
Matthew's younger sister. The ER nurse who couldn't get her shift covered. She texted us this morning with a string of sad emojis and a promise to make it up to Charlie this weekend.
I open the message.
Back entrance. Let me in? Surprise! Couldn't miss this after all.
I frown at the screen. The back entrance? That doesn't make sense. She'd come through the front, the way everyone else did. And the tone feels off. Trixie texts in all caps and exclamation points, not these clipped, punctuation-perfect sentences.
But maybe she's parked in the back lot. Maybe she's got a gift that's too big to carry through the restaurant. Maybe I'm reading into things because the last month has trained me to see threats in every shadow.
I dry my hands and slip out of the bathroom, glancing toward our private room. Through the doorway, I can see the back of Trenton's head, then Matthew's profile as he leans down to hear what Charlie is saying. They're fine. They're safe. I'll just pop out and let Trixie in.
The back hallway is narrow and dimly lit, leading past the kitchen where the clatter of pans and the hiss of a grill fill the air. The exit door is at the end, marked with a glowing red sign. I push through it into the small concrete loading area behind the restaurant.
The air is cold and smells like fryer grease and wet asphalt. Two dumpsters sit against the brick wall, and beyond them, the parking lot where deliveries are made. A dark sedan is idling at the edge of the lot, its headlights off.
No Trixie.
I take a step forward, my hand going to my phone to text her back.
Where are you? I'm at the back door.
The sedan's trunk pops open.
Not a trunk. A hatchback. The back lifts smoothly, revealing the cargo area.
Trixie is lying inside.
She's on her side, her dark hair fanned across a blanket, one arm dangling over the edge. Her scrubs are rumpled, and there's a dark smudge on her cheek that might be mascara. She isn't moving.
"Trixie?" My voice comes out thin, barely audible over the idling engine. I take another step. "Trixie, are you…"
"Don't."
The voice comes from behind the open hatchback door. Low. Familiar. It sends a cold spike through my chest that has nothing to do with the November air.
Evan steps into view.
He's thinner than I remember from the photos. The beard is gone. His face is pale, almost gray, and there's a wildness in his eyes that the mug shot didn't capture. In his right hand, angled down but not holstered, is a gun. It's pointed at Trixie's still form in the back of the car.
My body goes rigid. Every nerve ending fires at once, and the world narrows to the small circle of concrete between the dumpsters and the car, to the distance between the back door of the restaurant and where I'm standing, to the fact that my phone is still in my hand and Evan's eyes have already found it.
"Drop it," he says.
The gun doesn't move. It stays trained on Trixie's unconscious body.
My fingers loosen. The phone hits the concrete with a crack that sounds obscenely loud in the quiet loading area.
"Inside the car," Evan says. His voice is steady. Controlled. The voice of a man who has rehearsed this. "Passenger seat. Now."
"I can't—" My voice breaks. I swallow. "She needs medical attention. Let me call someone for her. Please."
The gun shifts. Not toward me but toward Trixie. The barrel presses against her temple, and something in my chest fractures.
"Now," he repeats.
I move. My legs carry me forward on autopilot, each step feeling like it belongs to someone else's body. The passenger door is open. I can see inside as the interior light is on, illuminating the empty seats, the gearshift, a car that doesn't belong to anyone I know.
Trixie doesn't stir. Her chest rises and falls in a slow, shallow rhythm. Drugged. He drugged her. An ER nurse, taken from her shift, from the hospital where she should have been safe.
"Get in," Evan says. "Close the door. Don't look back."
I get in. The seat is cold through my dress. The door closes with a solid thunk, and the interior light goes out.
Through the windshield, I watch Evan lower the hatchback. He does it carefully, like he's closing a coffin. Then he's at the driver's side door, and the car dips as he gets in.
The engine revs. We pull out of the loading area and onto the side street. Evan turns right, away from the restaurant, away from the private room where my family is celebrating.
My phone is on the concrete behind the dumpsters. Trenton will text. Matthew will call. Someone will come looking for me in the bathroom, then the hallway, then the back door. They'll find the phone. They'll see the text from Trixie's number.
But Trixie is in the back of this car, unconscious, and Evan has a gun, and we're already three blocks away and accelerating.
Evan drives with both hands on the wheel. The gun is in his lap now, barrel pointed toward the passenger door. Toward me.
"You should have stayed away from my daughter," he says.
I don't answer. My mind is racing, calculating, the way it did in the safe room and in the cabin. Distance from the restaurant. Direction of travel. The gun. Trixie's breaths shallow but steady. My phone left behind. The text on my screen.
Trixie's phone. He has Trixie's phone. He used it to text me.
"You took her phone," I say. My voice sounds strange to my own ears. Flat. Empty.
"Smart." He glances at me, then back at the road. We're on a residential street now, moving at exactly the speed limit. "You figured that out fast."
"Where are we going?"
He smiles. It's a terrible smile, thin and stretched and completely without warmth. "Somewhere quiet. Somewhere we can talk without interruption."
I look in the side mirror. The restaurant is already gone, swallowed by distance and the curve of the road. Behind us, the street is empty. No headlights. No pursuit.
Not yet.
Trixie makes a small sound in the back. A moan that is barely audible over the engine. Evan's eyes flick to the rearview mirror, then back to the road.
"She'll wake up soon," he says. "The dose was light. I didn't want to hurt her."
The casualness of the words—the dose was light—sends a wave of nausea through me. He planned this. He planned the dose. And he planned the car, the phone, the text, the loading area behind the restaurant where no one would see.
He planned me.
"Evan." I keep my voice even. "You don't want to do this. The police—"
"The police have me for murder already," he says. "What's kidnapping on top of that?"
The words land like stones. He's right. He has nothing left to lose.
I look out the window. We're heading northeast, toward the old highway that leads out of town. The houses are thinning. The streetlights are spaced farther apart. In another five minutes, we'll be beyond the city limits.
Trixie moans again, louder this time. Her arm shifts in the back. I can hear fabric rustling, the sound of someone trying to move limbs that won't cooperate.
"Morgan?" Her voice is slurred, thick with whatever he gave her. "Morgan, where—"
"Stay down," Evan says, without looking back. "Don't move. Don't talk."
The gun is still in his lap. Still pointed at me.
Trixie goes quiet. But I can hear her breathing change, faster now, sharper. She's awake. She's processing. She's an ER nurse. She knows what's happening even through the fog of whatever drug is in her system.
I meet her eyes in the rearview mirror. They're wide, terrified, but clear enough to understand. I give her the smallest shake of my head. Don't. Don't move. Don't speak. Don't give him a reason.
She understands. I see it in the way her jaw clenches, the way her hand curls into a fist against the blanket. She stays still.
The highway opens up ahead of us, the streetlights giving way to the long, dark stretch of road that cuts through farmland and forest. Harris accelerates smoothly, the car eating up the road with a hum that seems too quiet for what's happening inside it.
I think about the restaurant. About Trenton checking his watch and Matthew stepping into the hallway to look for me. About Charlie, who just became officially ours, sitting at a table surrounded by people who love her.
They'll find my phone. They'll see the text. And they'll know.
But knowing and finding are different things, and we're already getting farther away with every second.
Trixie's eyes find mine in the mirror again. She mouths something I can't read in the dark. Then her hand moves slowly, carefully, beneath the blanket.
Evan doesn't notice. His attention is fixed on the road ahead, on the empty highway stretching into the night.
I keep my eyes on him. On the gun. On the road.
And I wait.
Matthew
The TV volume goes up mid-laugh.
I'm not even looking at the screen when the anchor's voice cuts through the room. His tone is clipped and urgent, making the back of my neck prickle before my brain has processed a single word.
"Breaking news. We're receiving reports of a prison break at Cedar Creek Correctional Facility."
My glass stops halfway to my mouth.
"…at least three inmates have escaped, including Evan Harris, who was awaiting trial for multiple homicides."
The word Harris lands in my chest like a round hitting a plate carrier. Not through. Stopped. But felt.
I set the glass down. I don't remember deciding to do that.