Chapter 26 #2
“Escape?” Bella snorted, but there was a look of quiet anger in her eyes.
“Well, it took me two thousand years, and even then all I’ve gotten is the equivalent of a smoke break.
Even though I married and drained enough rich men to pay for two billion Balenciaga bags, all my mother decided I was entitled to was a roundtrip cruise ticket from Romania to Boston and some pocket change.
And even that came with a time limit. I knew they’d come fetch me eventually, just thought I had more time. ”
Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Yasmine’s question seemed to open the flood gates. Bella shook her head, as if she was in disbelief at her own memories.
“Once I got to Boston, I did as much as I could to completely extricate myself from their life. I didn't use any social media. I didn’t let other people take pictures of me.”
Yasmine remembered how she’d teased Bella about refusing to let her lectures be filmed; she felt a dark pit in her stomach thinking about it now.
“After I finished at Princeton, I didn't originally plan to move to New York City,” she breathed. “I wanted to go way farther than that. Somewhere they would have much less access to. The plan was Japan. You should see my Duolingo level in Japanese.”
When Yasmine laughed, Bella’s eyes flitted over to her briefly.
“But then I found out about you, and I don't know,” she paused. “Everything after that just felt inevitable.”
Yasmine’s heart clenched.
You feel inevitable to me, too.
The thought burned, but Yasmine didn’t try and wipe it from her mind this time.
“Anyway,” Bella said, clearing her throat. “They can’t even be mad at me, because technically my scouting mission went really well. I mean, look at you. I could have been richer than the devil if I had sucked you dry. You should really be thanking me.”
Yasmine rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t stop the smile forming on her face. But even though it was clearly a joke—it did make her pause.
Don’t ask her. Seriously, don’t ask—
“Why didn’t you?” she mumbled quietly, so the back row couldn’t hear.
“You’re smart. You could have engineered a tranquilizer to knock me out.
You could have been the richest vampire on planet Earth.
Then you’d have plenty of options for escaping your family, plus more than enough funding for your own research. ”
Bella’s smile faltered. She shifted the gear, and the car rocketed up another ten miles an hour. Trees and wide fields of cattle sped by, blurry as oil paintings.
“To be honest, I thought about it,” Bella admitted, then took a breath in. “But every time I pictured going through with it, I…”
She met Yasmine’s gaze in the rearview mirror again. Her fingertips trembled on the steering wheel.
“I imagined putting you to sleep, taking all of your money, jetsetting to Paris… to somewhere romantic, and rich, staying at some fancy hotel… eating lobsters, crabs, I don’t know—whatever rich people eat—and then coming back to the hotel room…
and finding you sitting there, angrily flipping through channels on the television. ”
A fierce blush spread over Bella’s nose. She ducked her head down.
“Turns out, you were the one person I wanted to celebrate my freedom with,” she mumbled. “Which made killing you a bit impractical.”
Yasmine’s voice went hoarse.
“Bella…”
A siren wailed just as they were about to curve onto the highway. White lights flashed forward from the exit ramp. Two fire trucks curved around them, headed south.
A fire?
“Those assholes,” Bella cursed.
She jerked the stick, reversing the car into the metal railing separating the road from a steep dropoff. Sylvia yelped as the back of the car dented inward.
“Are you trying to skewer us?” she shouted. “I’m a mother. Think of my child.”
Yasmine rolled her eyes. “Oh, be quiet—”
The rest of her sentence was locked in her throat as the car lurched forward, turned, then rocketed down the road. Bella looked furious.
Looking through the windshield, Yasmine quickly found out why.
A dark plume of smoke crested over the horizon.
A few yards out from the main road was a field that was scattered with blackened debris.
The lights of what had formerly been the limousine were dangling from a telephone post. Flames were licking across the grass, towards the trees. This would be a full blown forest fire.
Yasmine’s stomach was in her throat. No. No. No.
Rebecca had three kids. She knew that much about her.
God, why was that all she knew? Why hadn't she paid more attention?
What was she going to tell her children?
As soon as Bella hit the brakes, Yasmine tore out of the car, sprinting towards the vehicle. The driver’s seat was sitting in the middle of the field, completely separated from the rest of the car. Sitting inside, one hand still on the steering wheel, was a charred body.
Its eyes were still open.
God, no.
No, no.
She felt the Nightmare seeping out again.
“Yasmine.” Bella’s arms wrapped around from behind, squeezing her tightly. “Yasmine, breathe. It's not Rebecca. Look. Look.”
Bella guided her eyes toward the corpse's face again. The eyes—they were bright blue. Rebecca’s were a dark brown.
And this face had facial hair, a mustache now burnt at the edges.
The memory came back to her suddenly; she realized she'd seen his face out the window back at the mansion, waiting by the car. He had been their driver.
Her shoulders sagged in relief, but only for a moment.
He still didn't deserve this.
Humans were all worth something, every single one of them. Dignity did not belong to those she deemed important.
She knew what Rebecca would do in this situation. Summoning her strength, she reached out her trembling fingers, and closed his eyelids.
After a moment, she regained her composure, turning away from the body, and toward Bella, who was still holding her in her arms. It took all the strength in her to pry herself out of the embrace, taking a step back. She looked off into the woods.
“Do you think they ran from here?” she asked shakily.
Bella looked at her with concern, but she knew how much Yasmine hated being pitied, so she didn’t push the issue.
“Definitely not. My mother probably chartered a helicopter in preparation.” When Yasmine looked at her incredulously, she said. “You aren’t the only one with money.”
“I… see.”
“But thankfully, we still have the advantage,” Bella said, taking a deep breath in. “We know what they want, and you know where it is. So all we have to do is get there first.”
Yasmine blinked. “Right. Yes… Where it’s… stored.”
“Oh my god.” Bella gave her the most withering look in existence. “You don’t know.”
“I don’t not know.” Yasmine paused. “No, I don’t.”
“Have you ever heard of a single point of failure system?”
Yasmine grabbed Bella’s hand, and yanked her driver towards the car. “It’s not a single point of failure. I have one other point.”
***
A powerful, persistent knock thudded on Wallace’s door.
He shot into a sitting position, nearly giving himself a heart attack. “What was that?” He yanked the cord on his bedside lamp, and his boyfriend groaned.
“Babe,” Jason said, shielding himself from the light. “It’s like 2 AM.”
“Yes, precisely,” Wallace hissed. “Which is why I need you to grab the baseball bat.”
“Baseball bat? Wally, you are so paranoid.”
“I said grab it.”