31. Chloe
Chloe
Ibacked down my driveway so fast I’m surprised I didn’t veer off the lawn and take the wrought iron fence down with my Bug. And then I squealed away so quickly I’m sure there are marks in the asphalt, perhaps even chunks of rubber missing from my tires.
I didn’t miss Barry flipping around in the cul-de-sac, catching up to me just as I turned onto the highway that leads in the direction of the area Grayson died just a few weeks ago.
But as I pull into the dirt parking lot of the warehouse, I find myself flooded with relief that Barry followed me.
I slow to a stop in front of the large metal building, and Barry hesitates from the highway before he pulls just inside the gate and stops, thinking I haven’t seen him even though it’s broad daylight.
I want to kick myself for throwing that tracker out.
I’d done it out of spite, but now, walking into what is clearly some sort of setup—completely without a plan or a weapon—I’m not convinced it’s going to end well, and I wish Colin knew where I was.
So, I’m thankful Barry tailed me, because I’m sure he will either relay my location to the proper authorities, or at least write a glowing article in The Peak that clears my name entirely once I become nothing more than a grey face in the obituary column.
I’d called Stella on my drive over, and her and Stone are too far away to be helpful. Stone answered the call to her phone and put it on speaker while the wails of someone being actively tortured resounded in the background.
“We’ll head back as soon as we can,” she promised, her voice laced with worry.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Chlo,” Stone demanded.
“I don’t have a plan,” I whined. Thoughts of Maeve being hurt wound through my mind, making me frantic, my mind foggy.
“Hey.” Stone’s voice penetrated my spiral, and his words grounded me, like Stella has mentioned they do for her. “You know exactly what to do,” he said, and he sounded so fucking confident in me that I had no choice but to believe him. “Save her.”
It’s the middle of the day, but it’s overcast, the sea of dark clouds above blanketing everything in a dimmer shade.
The forest of trees that surround the building only adds to the eerie, grey tint of everything.
There are no other cars that I can see besides mine and Barry’s.
The grind of metal on metal coming from inside the building and a slow, blinking red light off to the side lead me to believe this is an active mill of some sort, but in all the times I’ve stopped in here to drop my car off, it’s been a complete ghost town.
With Stone’s words echoing in my brain, I tell Rue to stay put and stay quiet. I climb out of my car, walking toward the massive building illuminated only by the glow of lights from inside the windows.
The metal door handle is freezing cold under my fingertips, and I take one last glance back across the parking lot, back at Barry, wanting confirmation of some sort that I haven’t walked into an alternate reality.
It doesn’t come.
Perhaps I should have taken a stroll around the perimeter, scoped the place out, but my plans have always been a bit chaotic, and Maeve’s life is in danger, so I don’t really have the patience or the time right now to develop a proper strategy.
When I pull the door open, the scent of sawdust overwhelms me. It’s so strong that I stretch my arm across my face, burying my nose in the bend of my elbow and squinting my eyes as I continue into the open space. The place is empty, save for Maeve curled up in a corner on her side.
I break into a run, collapsing to my knees at her side and clasping her warm face between my hands.
Her cheeks are red, and the sight knocks me into the present, the thick air suddenly making the vast room seem ten times smaller.
There are beads of sweat trailing down her forehead, strands of wet, black hair stuck to the edges of her face.
“Oh my God, Maeve,” I whisper-cry. “Babe, wake up.” I shake her head in my hands, but she’s completely limp. The green of her irises barely peeks through the semi-conscious crack of her eyelids. I press my fingertips to the faint pulse in her neck as I glance around the warehouse.
There’s a conveyor belt running across the room, chugging along but not getting anything done because it’s empty.
Old chains hang from the ceiling, swinging only about as hard as a slight breeze could push them.
There are stacks of plywood off to the left, and on the right a giant stack of logs piles toward the ceiling on a trailer, appearing ten years past its due for collapse and held in place only by the aged, rusted metal of a lift gate.
Two voices in the midst of what sounds like an argument chatter from a dark hallway across the room, and I stand abruptly, jumping around the corner and pressing my back to the cool stone.
I pinch my eyes closed, trying to come up with a plan, and my eyes pop open when a warm, firm hand presses over my mouth.
“Shhh.” The man in front of me presses a finger to his lips. His face is shaded in almost complete darkness, but his bright blue eyes shine. “Do you know who I am?”
I swallow, nodding slowly.
“I am not going to hurt you,” he whispers, and I believe him. My tense muscles slowly relax under his grip. He keeps his hand pressed to my face, shifting his body to peek around the corner before meeting my eyes again and releasing me.
“Micah Winters,” I breathe, studying his features, comparing them to the single employment photo Maeve and I saw of him on the Devil’s Peak police department website.
He’s in his department issued blue polo, the collar hugging the colorful ink around his neck.
“I don’t understand,” I continue. “Why are you here?”
He lifts his hands into the air to shush me, and I’d be offended if it weren’t for the situation we were in. The sound of distant arguing dies off and leaves behind a single voice mumbling lowly on the other side of the wall.
“If you distract them, I can get her out of here.” He nods toward the wall behind me where Maeve lies helpless and unconscious on the other side.
His statement surprises me, but there’s something happening where our eyes are clashing.
He seems just as worried about Maeve as I am.
I can see it in his swirling, icy eyes that he knows how badly I want to protect her, and the way his eyes flash with a frightening combination of rage and fear, I realize that for some reason, he wants the same thing. “I’ll come back and help you.”
The memory of what I’d seen in his eyes in his employment photo springs to life in my mind. He’s not an angel. He’s not offering to come back and protect me. He’s offering to come back and help me finish these people off. He’s like me.
“No,” I find myself saying. “Just get her out. Get her away from here.”
“Chloe,” he argues, pressing his hand to the wall behind me. The gesture seems so oddly intimate that I find my spine straightening under his stare. It’s like he’s known us for years, like he’s just part of the gang showing up to help get shit done. “Colin will kill me if—”
I press my hands to his chest, silencing him and gently pushing him away. “Don’t worry about Colin, and don’t worry about me. Worry about Maeve.”
He looks conflicted, and after a moment of hesitation, he reaches into his back pocket and produces a switchblade, extending it in the space between us.
I nod, taking the knife from his hand and he nods in return.
Slipping around the corner, I sprint in the direction of the man pacing across the room.
I surprised him. I can tell by the way he freezes his movement and turns in my direction slowly, caught off guard for a moment that I’m the enemy.
It’s too late by the time I make it across the room, have the switchblade flipped open, and collide with his body, slamming my hand into his shoulder and plunging the knife in my other hand into his stomach.
“Fuck!” The gun he’d been holding—which I did not notice until right now—drops from his hand and he presses his fingertips to where I’ve extracted the sharp metal from his gut.
“Bitch!” he cries. He lifts his bloody hand off his stomach and whirls it into my face.
I jolt backward, my back slamming into the metal lift gate holding the pile of teetering logs in place.
I’m dazed, but as the black recedes from the edges of my vision, I glance toward the spot Maeve was curled up in, and she’s gone. And honestly, I don’t care what happens next.
I’m tired of this. Of hoping someone sees me. Hoping someone recognizes the dark inside me as just shaded light.
Maeve is safe, and with the knowledge that someone else is as protective of her as I am, I let my body sag against the cold metal behind my back until I’m sliding toward the floor.
“You’re something else, you know that?” the man grunts, drawing my focus back to him. He’s bending slowly toward his gun on the ground, his other hand pressed to the dark red circle forming on his t-shirt.
“So I’ve been told,” I mumble.
I couldn’t place his voice before, but seeing his face, I realize he’s the third guy from Max’s group.
The one who’s been on the run the last couple of weeks.
He was there at the bowling alley the night they challenged us to a game.
I remember his voice from the alley when Max knocked me out, he was the one urging Max to pick me up.
I’m assuming he was also at that party, but I still can’t remember anything from that night.
Raising the gun in my direction, he takes a weak step toward me, the blood in his face draining toward the wound in his stomach. “You’ve been taking out our best guys. You’re ruining—”
“Freeze!”