Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NICK
When the rental car’s trunk slammed shut, I blinked into the darkness and strained to hear the muffled conversation happening outside the car.
It moved away before I could catch anything.
I’d played possum for around fifteen minutes, feigning unconsciousness and hoping they’d let something slip that I could use.
Chloe’s padded handcuffs still circled my wrists, my ankles were tightly bound with something wrapped over my jeans, likely tape, and a material gag was tied around my mouth.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wriggle my cuffs down my back enough to step through and bring them to the front.
I wasn’t flexible enough and the space was way too small.
I wasn’t going anywhere. The gag was my only option.
It took a bit of time, but after working it against the tarp lining the trunk, I finally managed to slip it down.
Not that it did me any good. With the car still parked in the clearing, there was nobody around to hear my shouts.
I’d have to wait until we left and slowed at an intersection, at the very least.
I was still trying to find a position that didn’t make my injured shoulder scream when the car door slammed, the engine turned over, and someone started playing with the radio until an old rock station blared.
I assumed it was Austin since Belinda would be staying as far away from any incriminating action as she could.
Regardless of what she felt, if anything, for Austin, I figured Belinda was in it for the money and she’d want Austin to take the heat if things fell apart.
Squeezed like sardines into the tiny space and with a tarp top and bottom, there was barely enough room to breathe let alone move as the car bounced and jolted over the rough terrain. We were heading, I assumed, to the quarry lake mentioned earlier, wherever the hell that was.
Chloe was supposed to drown and I— An image of Mads appeared in my brain and I couldn’t finish the thought. The idea of not seeing him again, of not having that life we’d planned together, the one I’d almost fucked up before finally getting my head out of my arse, just didn’t seem possible.
Not now.
Not when everything was going our way.
Come on, Davis, I sent a silent prayer out into the universe. A little other-worldly help wouldn’t go amiss right about now.
The switch from track to tarmac came as a welcome relief and I spooned my larger frame around Chloe’s back, offering what little warmth and cushioning I could against her tiny frozen body.
Her breaths came in short, shallow bursts, but at least they still came.
It was the increasingly longer breaks of silence between them which had me crawling out of my skin.
As hard as I tried to wriggle closer, the persistent rocking of the car kept rolling me away.
In the end, I settled for hooking my chin over Chloe’s shoulder and bracing my feet against the back panel of the trunk.
In response, Chloe grew heavy against my chest, like she was letting me take her weight.
And whether it was my imagination or not, I thought her breathing eased.
She smelled of the derelict hut, rotting wood, damp, and the stale scent of urine.
But underneath it all ran a winsome thread of something familiar, a memory from a long time ago.
The scent of rosewater and oranges—a perfume she favoured when I was a child.
The name escaped me, but her best friend always bought a bottle for her at Christmas.
I drank it in, my mind wandering back to those times, no longer stuck in the pain and anger and desolation of when she’d left.
Instead, the memories ran to watching her cook and listening to her read me books.
Walks in the park and laughter under the trees.
Times of hope and possibility and a belief that the bad stuff would someday end.
It did, of course, although not in the way I’d dreamed.
But that was life, wasn’t it? You came up with a plan only to have the universe shit all over it.
I’d always thought that the trick to survival was not succumbing to the anarchy.
To let the old plans go and keep coming up with new ones.
Thinking back, I wasn’t sure how well I’d done at that, all things considered.
It felt like a lot of the bad stuff had stuck with me.
I kissed my mother’s shoulder and whispered, “I’m sorry this happened to us, Mum.
Dad. You and I apart for so long. Austin.
All of it. I don’t know what I would’ve done in your place.
But you were right about one thing: Dad would’ve killed you if you’d stayed.
That night. That week. That year. Or the next. ”
I closed my eyes and rocked against her with the movement of the car.
“Did I hate you for leaving me? Yes, I did. Maybe in some ways I still do. I miss the life we could’ve had together without him.
But I still loved you, then and now. I don’t think there were any good choices to make when he found us that night.
You made the one you thought was right at the time, and you continued to make them, all the way through to the one that brought your letter to me.
Would I change anything? Hell yes, I would.
But I know you would too and that means a lot.
In the end, it is what it is, and we survived.
The only question left is what we do now. ”
Chloe never moved. A thin, silent block of ice against my body. I sighed against the back of her dress and buried my face in her shoulder, wondering if this was the last time we’d ever be together.
“I love you, Mum.” Tears flooded my cheeks to soak the thin material beneath.
“We’re strong, you and I. We’ve survived a lot, and we’ll survive this too.
Mads is looking for us and he won’t give up.
I hope you get the chance to know him better.
He’s . . . he’s everything to me. My whole world.
And I’m not letting him go without a fight. ”
I put my lips close to her ear and whispered, “If you can hear me, be ready. I don’t know what’s going to happen, or how this will go down, but if I see the slightest chance to turn this around, I’m taking it.
If you start to wake up, don’t let them know.
Keep your eyes closed and your ears open.
Our story isn’t done yet. Not if I have anything to say about it. ”
I waited for a grunt, a twitch, any sign that she’d heard me, but all she did was breathe. In and out. In and out.
Things could’ve been worse, I supposed. At least she was still alive.
I curled my body back around hers and prayed for all I was worth. “Come on, Mads. Use that big beautiful, nerdy brain of yours to come find us.”