38. Freya
FREYA
T he whole living room looks like a child’s birthday party, and I adore it. My palm flutters to my heart and I spin in Jude’s arms, looping my hands around his neck. “This is for me?”
“Happy birthday, babygirl,” Jude whispers against my lips.
I kiss him then duck out of his arms to explore the room. A happy birthday banner hangs above the backdoors and multi-colored balloons float in every corner. The coffee table is piled high with wrapped presents and my mouth rounds as I look over to the island.
“Is that a pinata?”
Eli picks up a rainbow baton from behind the couch and walks over to the papier maché donkey hanging from the ceiling.
He holds the baton out to me. “Care to do the honors?”
I laugh. “This is ridiculous.”
“Do you like it?” Jude asks, coming up behind me.
“I love it.”
Oz hooks his phone up to the sound system and music fills the room as River blindfolds me. I take the baton from Eli and the guys spin me around before letting me loose and I decide pinatas should be an official form of stress relief.
I forget all about my brother and the case as I swing the bat like a madwoman, squealing when the donkey cracks and candy rains down on me.
I pull the blindfold off and feel very much like a kid in a candy shop as I stand among hundreds of sweets.
We spend the next hour playing stupid party games and I’ve never had so much fun in my life. When the lights dim and Oz appears carrying a home baked chocolate cake, tears push at my eyes. They sing ‘Happy Birthday’ for me and I squeeze Jude’s hand tight as I blow out the candles.
“Hey, are you alright?” he asks, wiping a stray tear from my cheek.
I don’t want anything to ruin this moment, so I just kiss him and say, “I’m perfect.”
Oz goes to the fridge and comes back again with a jug of white chocolate caramel frappes that I just know he’s made from scratch. I even manage to convince River to try one.
He keeps his face perfectly straight as he takes a sip and places the glass back down on the coffee table.
“And?” I ask.
“And it is as disgusting as I predicted. Possibly even worse. Your tastebuds are broken.”
I cackle and sit back on the couch, resting my legs across Jude’s lap.
We open presents next and each new gift swells inside my heart.
They bought me a new leather jacket, a keyring tag with the name Joey engraved on it, and a sheath for the new knife River got me, the tough material covered in black ink.
I run my fingers over the angel wing illustrations and look up at Jude. “Did you do this?”
He nods and I straddle his lap so I can kiss him again.
It’s not until later, when we’re lounging on the couches watching a movie, that I find the right words to tell them what almost had me in tears earlier.
“I’ve never had a birthday party before.”
Jude’s hand stills where he’s been stroking my hair as I rest my head on his lap.
Eli looks up at me from the floor. “Never?”
I shake my head. “Never even had presents or a cake. Well, Carmen tried the year I was with her but her attempt at baking was more of a health hazard as opposed to an edible cake.”
Jude strokes my hair off my face. “Not even when you were a kid?”
I shrug. The only way my dad marked our birthday was by adding an extra cross to the ones he made us carve into his victims. I don’t want to think about that too hard right now though.
“My birthday always fell in the school vacation,” I say instead. “The only reason I knew it was an important day was because of the kids at school. They’d talk about their parties for weeks and I always wondered what it would be like…” I sniff, my throat thickening. “Thank you for this. Really.”
I look at each of them in turn, making sure they understand how much this means to me. I never really felt my life was something worth celebrating until I met them. No one ever cared for me this much. No one ever did anything purely to make me happy. No one loved me like they do.
Oz gets up and comes over to kiss me. “From now on, you always get a birthday. Maybe even a half one too, like the King of England.”
I laugh. “Do I get a crown?”
Oz captures my chin in his hand. “Anything you want. Everything.”
Eli flips his cowboy hat and grins up at me. “You know what else you get on your birthday? Orgasms. Lots of them.”
I squeal again as Oz picks me up off Jude’s lap and carries me over to the stairs. The others follow but I distract him at the bottom of the stairs by kissing him stupid. He tastes like coffee and cake and joy bubbles inside of me like soda.
A hand twists around my hair and tugs my lips away from Oz. River’s demanding gaze looks down on me. “Enough of that now, we have plans for you.”
I squeeze my legs together and bite my lip.
Oz takes the stairs two at a time. He lies me on the bed in River’s room and Jude’s just reaching to take off his hoodie when Oz swears.
All eyes land on him as he stares at his phone. “Zach just used his debit card.”
Shit. This is it.
Cold water douses the pure delight from this evening.
There’s no time for thought or discussion, the five of us launch into action.
Oz notes the exact location the card was used, and River contacts my old precinct.
He gets them to put a call out for any officers nearby with orders to hold Zach at the scene until we arrive.
We’re halfway to the twenty-four seven gas station when we get word that they’ve got him. My heart sits at the base of my throat, each beat sending my pulse racing.
Eli breaks about a hundred traffic laws as we race to get there, and I grip Oz’s hand in the back of the car.
My mind cascades through a million different scenarios. Zach won’t just tell us where Harley is. He won’t make it that easy on us. He could use her as bargaining chip or he could just refuse to tell us out of spite. If we don’t find wherever he’s holding her, she’ll die.
We’re quiet inside the car as Eli pulls into the gas station and stops next to the police car. The blue and red lights flash against the parking lot and gas pumps and I can just make out the outline of a figure hunched over in the back of the car.
A uniformed officer steps forward as we arrive. “We’ve got him secured,” she says. “He wasn’t armed.”
An itch pricks at the back of my neck. That’s not right.
“All he had on him was this.” She waves a brown envelope in the air before opening the back door to the squad car.
My shoulders drop and I curse.
A young man, who is most definitely not Zach, stares up at us from the back seat, his eyes wide with fear. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I swear.”
River nods at the officer. “Get him out of the car.”
She helps the kid stand up and he backs himself up against the side of the trunk, his cuffed hands hitting the metal.
“Do you have the card he used?” I ask the woman.
She hands it to me as her partner rounds the vehicle, scratching his head.
I hold the plastic between two fingers. “Where’d you get the card from?
” I ask the boy, because now he’s out of the car I can see that he’s still a teenager.
Brown shaggy hair straggles around his acne pitted face as he shakes his head.
“Some guy gave it to me. He paid me fifty bucks to go and use it to buy a card.”
“When?”
The guy swallows, his gaze darting between us. “This afternoon. At the skatepark. He told me to wait till this evening.”
“Did he have a vehicle?” Oz asks.
“Uh, I dunno man.”
I stare up at the night sky, the light pollution too thick to see the stars. “You didn’t think it was kind of dodgy?”
The kid shifts in his trainers and shrugs. “Fifty buck’s a lot of money. It’s not like I did anything illegal. Right?” He looks between us and the police officer.
None of us answer him even though we probably should. He’s just a stupid kid.
“Can I see that?” River asks the officer, holding out his hand for the envelope.
She passes it over and fingertips creep down my spine as River opens it up.
He goes rigid, his body a frozen silhouette in the night.
“River?”
He looks up at me and I can see the thought behind his eyes. He doesn’t want to show me.
“We have a rule River, you can’t keep parts of the case from me,” I remind him.
He grinds his teeth and avoids my gaze, but then he passes it over.
Bright, silver cartoon stars blink up at me. I swallow the grit in my throat and open it.
To my Little Star,
Happy birthday!
Love,
Your big brother x
P.S. I guess now you’ve broken our deal, I can break it too.
I lower the card, crumpling the envelope in my other hand. Monsters crawl at the edges of my brain but I push them back and turn to face the kid.
“Did you write this?” I ask, holding up the birthday card.
He nods. “The guy told me what to put, made me write it down on my phone so I wouldn’t forget. Said it was some inside joke.”
Jude taps his fingers against his thigh. “You didn’t think it was strange he didn’t want to get the card back off you? Didn’t want you to mail it anywhere?”
The kid shrugs again. “Money’s money, man.”
Jude grunts. “Yeah. Sure.”
River turns to the officers. “Take him down to the station. We need to get a full interview done on every interaction he had with the man who gave him the card. We’ll follow you there.”
“Yes, sir.”
The woman guides the boy back into the car and they drive off, leaving us in the florescent lights of the gas station.
River eases the birthday card and the crumpled envelope out of my hands.
“He knows,” I whisper.
“We’ll get him, Freya.”
“I don’t understand. How did he know we were tracking his bank card?”
River runs a hand through his dark hair, the strands shining in the light. “Maybe Jeremiah’s more protective of him than we thought.”
My body is numb. I wet my lips, the cold night air against them the only feeling I can sense. “He’s going to come for you.”
River’s hand tangles in mine. “Let him.”
“We’ll be ready,” Eli says.
My eyes flick over to him and I jerk my head in a nod, but it feels like a lie.
Zach’s been one step ahead of us this whole time. Fear for the guys trembles through me. I won’t run again, whatever is coming we’ll face it together, but we’ve underestimated Zach, and I really don’t know what happens next.