Chapter 21 #2
Everest did a good job with it. It looks a lot more like the kind of place people might expect me to want than the cottage I did buy.
Sorely out of place in the quiet countryside, it’s a looming, rectangular thing with large glass walls, and the furniture I get a glimpse of through the windows is very modern.
Exactly like my apartment at Devil Tower, which I was perfectly happy with until Seraphina reawakened my childhood dreams.
As quietly as possible, I enter each room, turning on the lights while pointing my gun, ready to shoot.
Everest did a good job with this too. There are lived-in signs: the bed, partially unmade, the shower curtain damp, some dirty bowls in the kitchen.
Enough to convince Noel that we really do live here, but that we’ve probably gone out.
I have a feeling he’s planning to come back in the middle of the night and gun us down in our sleep. But I’ll be waiting for him.
I return to the car and drive away until I find a little clearing off a small country road. I figure he will hear about my appearance at the diner. Now, it’s time to wait.
But I have the perfect pastime.
I take out my phone and click on the camera feed. It’s after noon by now, but Seraphina doesn’t seem to have any plans of eating. Tsk, tsk. She really doesn’t take care of her when I’m not around.
She spends the day going around the house, sitting on one chair then the other, occasionally flipping through a book or a magazine, staring at the clock, looking bored out of her mind.
It all brings back fond memories of when she was my little captive, so bored by her captivity that it made her look forward to my visits.
I always think back fondly to that time.
For the first time, I wonder whether she does too.
I guess kidnapping victims don’t usually think back happily to their captivity. But this is different. Isn’t it? She fell in love.
She’s told me so.
Worry worms its way into my heart again as I wonder if I have after all conquered her resistance. If I’ll ever own her entirely. If she’ll ever obey me the way I want her to, at the drop of a hat.
I want all of her, and I’ll never be satisfied with less. I own her heart and body now, but I want her will, too. I’ll wait however long it takes. I can be patient… sometimes.
Patience is certainly needed as I stay in my car for hours on end, nearly forgetting about the upcoming danger as my thoughts wrap themselves around her.
I miss her. How fucking sappy is that?
Maybe I could have spent another day with her. My bones literally ache with her absence.
But no. I had to do it this way. I know Angel enough to understand their logic, because it’s like mine. The predator, watching his prey. Waiting him out.
Noel would have waited to see me before making his move. That’s why I went to the diner first thing in the morning. Now, he knows I really am here, and he’s going to strike. But he’ll take his time. He’ll do it when he thinks we’re defenseless. When he believes we’re asleep.
His plan was to kill Seraphina. But he must realize I won’t leave her side, and that if he wants to get her he’ll have to get me too.
Plus, if he killed her and not me, he’d be a dead man.
Only he knows very well that I’m a much stronger predator than he is. The only way he can hope to win is by gunning me down in my sleep.
There’s no doubt about it in my mind: he’ll attack tonight.
Finally, it grows dark, and I slip out of the car and back into the house. Finding my way to the master bedroom, I put some bundled-up blankets under the covers, prodding them into the shape of sleeping bodies, before heading toward the closet. Then I settle in for a long night.
The hours tick by. Ten… eleven… twelve…
I hold perfectly still, convinced he’ll arrive sometime after midnight. If he knows me as well as I think he does, he’s aware I don’t sleep much. I often go to bed after midnight and wake up sometime around five. He’ll probably choose to enter the house at two or three o’clock in the morning.
But the hours pass and no one comes.
My alertness and focus slowly give way to rising panic. Why isn’t he coming? Did something in our plan go wrong?
I hesitate, unwilling to make any noise or to remove my gun from its cocked position. Maybe Noel is already on the premises, and realizes that I’m trying to set him up. Maybe he’ll barge in at some other time.
But deep down, I know that’s not the truth. He’s not that good. There’s no way he’ll attack at some other time. Whatever he’s planning to do, he’s going to do tonight.
So why the fuck isn’t he here? Where the fuck is he?
Anxiety squeezing at my chest, I quickly take my phone from my pocket and type a message to Logan and Everest.
Me: Wtf? He’s not here.
Logan: I know. We’re trying to figure it out. His car never showed up.
Me: You didn’t see him on the cams?!
Logan: Nope. And we set up a bunch of them all around the house. Plus more on the one road leading into the town. We would have caught him if he’d shown up.
Me: But he must have been in town, at least. Spoke to a waitress at the diner who said so.
Everest: Trust me, we would have seen the car.
Me: Couldn’t he have used another car?
Everest: No.
Me: … No?
Everest: Vincent confirmed that he’s in a black Mercedes. He hasn’t changed it.
Me: OK, so… who are the two men the waitress saw?
Logan: Two random men, maybe?
Everest: Noel is by himself, anyway.
Me: But they were Hispanic. What are the chances of that in this cracker-ass town?
Logan: IDK, but the important thing is he isn’t here. Doesn’t look like he’s planning to come. Which means, I guess he saw through our bluff.
Me: Or maybe he chose Lucy after all.
Everest: No. We obviously set up a camera there too. She’s still nicely buried. Dead by now, 100% guaranteed.
Me: Ok, so… what does it mean if he saw through our bluff?
My blood freezes in my veins as I type out the question. Even before Logan sends me back a message, I know the answer. Since Noel didn’t fall for our trick, it means he must have figured out the real location of our house.
He figured it out… or he knew it all along.
My whole body grows cold. I leave the closet door in slow motion, walking back to my car, as if in a dream.
If he knew the real location all along… it means that by the time I return, it will be too late. I’ve been gone more nearly twenty-four hours. Seraphina will be dead. And it will all be because of me.
I choke up at the thought, and as I reach my car, I’m taken by the violent need to throw up. The contents of my sole meal today, that goddamn peach cobbler, splash to the floor. I’m still vomiting a minute later, dry heaving, my stomach empty.
But there’s still a chance. I cling wildly to that slim hope. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he realized we’d set him up, but he didn’t know where our house actually was.
Lucy admitted to everything, and she swore she didn’t have the location of the house. Igor told me he believed her, and he’s always been able to tell when our prisoners are lying.
Noel probably understood enough to realize that if we were setting him up, it was because I was planning to kill him. He knew I would leave Seraphina’s side tonight. He probably figured that tonight was his only chance to get to her without having to fight me.
But if he didn’t know the location of our house, then he had to find out. And that means time wasted searching. There’s a tiny chance he hasn’t gotten to her yet.
I jump into the car, pushing down on the waves of nausea that still threaten to overtake me. I start driving twice over the speed limit, putting my cell phone on speaker.
“Did you figure it out?” I yell. “Where is he?”
“I don’t understand,” stammers Everest, “the home surveillance system isn’t working. It’s like it’s been disabled. Vincent’s trying to hack into the closest camera there.”
“What the fuck? Hurry!” I fume.
“Yeah, trying… trying…”
“It’s going to be fine, man,” tries to soothe Logan. “I’m sure he hasn’t found her yet… I’m sure…”
“Remind me why I haven’t killed you yet?” I growl, and he thankfully shuts up.
“Okay, yes,” says Everest at last. “A camera did film his car. About five minutes ago, heading down the main highway, ten minutes away from the house.”
“That means there’s still hope,” tentatively suggests Logan. “He only just found the right location. He must have spent all night searching for it.”
“It means I’m too late!” I groan. “It means he’ll be there in five minutes. And I’m still thirty minutes away.”
“Call her now,” says Logan urgently.
They hang up, and with trembling fingers, I compose the house number. Why the fuck have I never given her a cell phone? The only thing I can do is call the landline, hoping that Everest was right with his calculations, and that Noel isn’t there yet.
Pick up… pick up… I think in a silent prayer.
The call goes straight to voice mail.
Fuck.
I call the number again. It rings about five times, and I’m already expecting it to go straight to voicemail again when there’s a click, then a sleepy voice.
“Hello?”
Thank fuck.
“Darling,” I murmur urgently. “Hide.”
“What?”
“It was a trap. Noel is about to arrive. Hide!”
__
The trip should take thirty minutes, but in less than fifteen I’ve arrived, my car crunching up the gravelly driveway.
I don’t even take the time to stop when I notice Stefano lying in the grass, his eyes staring upwards, unseeing.
Better dead than a traitor. I guess the others have turned against me, and they’ll die for that.
But right now, my thoughts are fixated on Seraphina.
I jump out, hoping I haven’t made too much noise driving up. The black Mercedes is already there and my heart sinks to my stomach, even though I’m not surprised.
I enter the house quietly, my gun cocked, my ears and eyes straining for any sign of him—any sign of her.
At last I hear something.
“Here I come! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”