Chapter Thirty-Two
Thirty-Two
Sean.
Sean. What happened? Where are you?
I’m standing in our white room again. My head throbs something fierce.
I’ve been hit, I remember. By what, I’m not sure, except that it was heavy and metal and left my ears ringing like a struck bell.
An aluminum baseball bat? A shovel? The butt of a gun?
I can hear Julian, but when I look out into the distance all I see is endless nothing.
She hurt you, his voice echoes.
“Julian?” I call out. My teeth chatter; I’m so scared. “Jules, I’m sorry. You have to go back. Ritika’s hurt. And I left her. I had no choice; I had to go with them. She has Winona and Sophie, and I couldn’t…she’s going to kill me, but it’s the only way—”
Listen to me, Julian interrupts. Even in my head, he sounds fierce. I will not let that happen. Okay? You will die someday, Sean Sullivan, but it will not be today, tomorrow, or the day after that. I will find you. So keep fighting.
Tears streak my face. It feels so bleak, but I nod anyway, and when I open my eyes again it is to an incomplete darkness.
I know I’m awake by the way the distant pain in my temple becomes panging and acute, by the iron taste of my breath.
My arms are tied tightly behind my back; when I try to spread my legs, I realize those are bound too.
I’m in motion; wheels are bumping underneath me, but the vehicle is otherwise quiet. My kidnappers are not chatty.
I don’t know how much longer we drive, just that the sky is dark when we finally stop. I need to pee something terrible, but I’m too scared to speak.
Leila does it for me.
“We’re here,” she says. “Will you promise to behave?”
I swallow against a gravel throat. Wherever we are, Sophie and Winona are too, and they’ve been fed a story that I have come willingly. Any sign that I’ve been coerced might put them in danger.
“Yes,” I say hoarsely.
I hear the hum of a powered car seat being pushed backward, the metallic twang of a knife slicing through air.
There is a tug, then a release. My arms are free.
The relief is instant; I have been so distracted by my fear that I barely noticed that my shoulders have locked.
I roll them as my captors loosen my blindfold, and then my passenger door is being opened, and I am being escorted out.
I blink, scrunch my face to bring back its feeling, and examine my surroundings.
We’re nestled in the forest in front of a charming log cabin.
A large pile of chopped logs leans against the side of the home, and there’s a wood picnic bench out front, but it is otherwise nondescript, the kind of place that may or may not have running water.
There are no street signs, precious few lights, and no evidence of civilization beyond the clearing in which we stand.
It hasn’t snowed here, and the weather is even warmer than at Alphonse and Mary’s cottage; we must be farther south.
I glance up at the night sky and suck in a breath: it’s alight with an explosion of stars, clusters of galaxies that the light pollution of the city would snuff out.
“Isn’t it adorable?” Leila says, beaming. “Brandon bought it for me.”
She’s goading me, and if there wasn’t a hulking armed man standing next to her, I might have fallen for it.
And then I freeze, because I hear something in the distance: a series of rhythmic thumps, growing faster and closer, a heavy, inhuman pant.
Then, a sound so familiar that my body recognizes it before my mind does: a clatter of claws skittering against wood.
“Onix?” I say, disbelieving, just as a hefty gray body lunges for mine. Onix is one wiggling, whining muscle, leaping for my face to lick, bringing me down to my knees with his enthusiasm. I’m still overwhelmed with conflicting feelings of joy and despair when another body slams into mine.
“Auntie Sean!”
Sophie’s eyes are red rimmed from crying and her nose is crusted with dried snot, and she’s still the most beautiful child I’ve ever seen. I heft both my babies into my arms, crushing them to me as if to prove what I see with touch. They’re alive, warm, whole.
Then I hear another voice call out to me, and the crunch of her feet against the mulch as Winona turns the corner and races toward us, feel the impact as she collides into us.
Sobs wrack my body, ripping out of me with such violence that they ache on the way out.
In truth, I have been so stupid. Winona and Sophie, who have nothing to do with this, are in danger right now due to my own selfish desire for answers.
By going to Rose’s show to seek Julian out, I’d bartered their safety for my own chance at a happily ever after.
And worse, they don’t know. They didn’t consent to the peril I’ve placed them in. They’re happy to see me, when they should be the ones to put the gun to my head and pull the trigger.
“You scared us, Sean,” Winona says. Her hug is the tightest, a brief breath-stealing squeeze. “You really, really scared us.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, gathering my wits about me. You don’t know how much.
Winona pulls back to search my face, and I search hers too. She looks exhausted, but intact.
“I’m glad to see you safe, but we need to talk,” she says stonily. “Did Leila already tell you about Brandon?”
I look over my shoulder at Leila. She’s watching us with an appropriately sorrowful expression, and loathing rises like acid in my throat.
“Yes,” I manage through gritted teeth. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for it.”
Winona doesn’t respond, just fixes me with a gaze that is one part worried and another wry. Then she straightens, puffs out her chest. “You’ve had a long journey. Let’s get you inside. Robbie said he’s cooking something good for us tonight.”
“I’ve got braised short ribs and cornbread going,” Robbie says. It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak, and I’m surprised to hear a thick Southern drawl. He lowers his mask to reveal a thick brown beard and gives me a toothy grin. “I hear it’s your favorite.”
I have to fight to hold back a sardonic laugh, because I’m not quite sure how Leila knew that it’s precisely what I’d choose for a last meal.
Sophie grabs my hand and leads me inside the cabin.
It’s quaint and larger than it looks from the outside, with a cowhide rug draped across the floor, an old wooden console piano that probably needs tuning, and rustic but chic decorations—paintings that I now recognize as Margaret West’s but not Rose Callahan’s style, cute knickknacks in the shapes of small animals.
As I get my tour, I learn several things: that Sophie and Winona believe they are on a grief retreat, that Robbie, the Navy SEAL who pointed an assault weapon at my head earlier today, is posing as Leila’s hired cook and housekeeper, and that “Rosie,” the thirteen-year-old girl who looks balefully up at me from the living room recliner, is Leila’s young adopted cousin.
“Nice to meet you,” Rose says. In this form, her foxlike features are more pronounced; it feels strange to know for a fact that she will someday grow into her too-big ears and pointed chin.
She struggles to hold my gaze when I take her hand.
I recognize her expression for what it is: guilt. “Sophie was really worried about you.”
I squeeze her hand hard, and to her credit, she doesn’t flinch away from my hold.
“She’s a good kid,” I tell her.
Rose bites her bottom lip, swinging her gaze to look out through the window into an endless night. Then she propels herself out of the chair.
“I’ll show you your room,” she says. “Me and Soph got it ready for you when we heard you were coming.”
“We just made the bed, nothing special,” Sophie insists, falling into step with Rose. I watch them, tense, but Rose is gentle with Sophie, accepting her hand when she reaches for it as they take me down the hall, Onix padding behind us.
My room is small, but well furnished, with a large vanity, a queen-sized bed—“I switched the comforter with mine, because I know you like green,” Sophie declares proudly—and a trunk at its foot that I open to find dog food and toys.
Sophie sticks to me like a burr, and I observe how she’s changed in the short time that I’ve been away, regressing back to the days when she would cling to her trusted adults so closely that we’d trip over her.
Even though she’s yapping away, telling me all about her talented new friend, the cabin’s extensive collection of art supplies, and the mirrored closet doors that make it easier for her to practice her dance moves, there is a desperation in her cadence that confirms to me that her world has been upended.
There was a time when Sophie was a daddy’s girl.
When her favorite time of day was when her dad, who worked longer, less flexible hours than her mom, came home and launched her into the air.
Now she has to live in a world in which he is only a memory, the once unquestionable certainty of his existence now broken.
“Let her rest, Sophie,” Winona says. When I turn, she’s leaning against the doorframe, watching us with her arms crossed. “She’s probably had a hard time the last few days, and it was a long drive. She’ll come back out for dinner.”
Her gaze flickers reflexively to my hands.
I look at them, then hurriedly tug down my sleeves: dark bruises have blossomed around my wrists.
Our eyes meet, and her brow raises in a subtle but grave question, and I recognize, with horror, that what I’ve been seeing in my best friend’s face isn’t just grief, but unease.
Shit. Those sharp instincts that can pick up on her clients’ subtle emotional shifts are going to get us in trouble.
Luckily, Sophie doesn’t seem to notice.
“Oh,” she says, walking to the door. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, nugget,” I say. “I’ll be out soon.”