Chapter 25 Damian
DAMIAN
Come on.
Come on, come on, come on!
“Can’t you drive any faster?” I growl at my best friend, my knee bouncing impatiently in the back seat of my own car. I knew I shouldn’t have given Jasper the keys. You’re not in the right frame of mind, he’d whinged. You’ll get us all killed.
Insufferable prick.
“We need to take a left down this lane,” Jack directs from the passenger seat, his eyes glued to Leah’s phone as he waves frantically out of the right window.
Fuuuuuck.
And that’s another thing. I haven’t even been trusted with the map that’ll lead us to the man I love.
With every minute that passes without Kit in my sight, I grow ever twitchier and evermore certain that I should have left these idiots at home.
“No, wait, sorry. Not this left, the next one.”
“For fuck’s sake, Jack,” Jasper groans, putting the car into reverse.
I close my eyes and count to ten.
“I said I’m sorry, alright. It’s not my fault that these country lanes all look the same. But the good news is it looks like Lucien’s car has finally stopped moving.”
We’ve been driving for almost an hour, half of that in the wrong direction after Lucien led us on a wild goose chase towards a petrol station on the outskirts of a rural village.
He only stopped for a few minutes before turning around again, and Jasper cursed as he completed a twenty-point turn in the narrowest lane in the world so that he could follow.
Jasper makes the second left, and the narrow tarmac dissolves into packed dirt and embedded stones. Thank god it hasn’t rained recently, or we’d be stuck in seconds.
“Are you sure this is right?” Jasper asks, squinting through the windscreen. “This doesn’t even look like a proper road?”
“Yeah, this is definitely it,” Jack says, shoving the phone unhelpfully in Jasper’s face. He’s right, though. Lucien’s blinking dot lies at the end of this dirt track.
Why would he be here, in a place so isolated that no one’s even bothered to build a road?
My heart stops. Oh shit, what if there’s nothing here? There’s only one reason to drive to a place like this in the dead of night that I can think of, and it’s not to take in the scenery. It’s for privacy.
“What if we’re too late?” My voice shakes over my worst fear.
“Don’t think like that,” Jane says beside me. “We’re going to rescue your dad from Kit and be home in time for breakfast. The fry-ups are on you, by the way.”
Jasper looks back at her like she’s lost a screw. “Don’t you mean rescue Kit from his dad?”
“Nah, she had it right the first time.” Jack agrees, pinching his fingers to zoom in on Lucien’s tracker pin. “Keep your eyes peeled. We should be coming up to his car any minute.”
We drive in silence, branches clawing at my car as we inch our way closer to Lucien.
My eyes can barely make out the shape of the trees, let alone hunt for any sign of Kit.
The night is merciless, blanketing everything but the path before us in pervasive darkness.
This is night like you don’t experience in the city.
Then, against all odds, we find our way, lured by the forest to our journey’s end. It starts as pinpricks of light through the trees, the dancing dots merging like a plume of fireflies that grow stronger and brighter as the trees thin and we get closer to our destination.
It takes shape, a cottage standing sentry deep in the skeletal forest. Its four wooden walls are damp and cracked with age, and its waved roof is soft with moss, almost hidden amidst the surrounding overgrowth.
I can feel the history of the place hanging in the air, the past curling like smoke from the crooked chimney.
Yet the front door stands strong, the thick wood defying the elements to keep its secrets safe. The warped windows hold the only sign of life, their haunting, orange glow casting shadows over my dad’s new four-by-four.
We made it. We fucking made it.
This is where he’s keeping Kit.
I unbuckle my seat, the hollow click snapping the others out of their stunned silence, and we fly from the car and run for the crumbling cottage.
Jasper gets there first. He tries the handle and throws his shoulder against the unrelenting wood once, twice, three times, but to no avail. “Nope. Locked tight.”
“Move,” Jack says. He pushes past us, switching on the torch on his phone and crouching down in front of the thick, brass lock.
“You don’t see many of these in London,” he tuts, passing the torch to Jane and rising slightly off his heels so he can pull his lockpicking kit from his jogging bottoms. The case holds an array of small, silver hooks, some unnervingly well-worn.
Jack reverently runs his pale fingers along the instruments, selecting the largest of them along with a smaller counterpart, and gets to work.
Now, there’s a reason I invited Jack on this rescue mission, and it isn’t for the headache his bickering has caused.
No, it’s for the soft click that yells through the night barely twenty seconds later.
He quickly twists the handle and throws open the door, the reluctant groan of forgotten hinges sending a flock of birds screaming from the trees.
“After you.”
We spill into a moth-eaten reception room, disturbing motes of dust that hang restlessly in the musty space.
“Kit? Kit, can you hear me?” I call into the dead air, racing across the protesting floorboards.
In my gut, I know it’s hopeless.
In my heart, I know we’re too late.
The place is too still, too quiet.
I fall to my knees and yell out my fury.
Because he’s not here. Despite everything, we’ve failed.
I bury my head in my hands.
Kit’s already gone.