Chapter 2
MEGAN
The relief when Gio walks through the door of the hut is short lived.
He shouldn’t be here.
He should be out there looking for Amber.
I don’t want him to save me if it means that Amber is going to die. Or worse. Have to spend the rest of her life with her sociopathic father.
I can’t move. I’m not afraid for myself. After everything that has happened in the past twenty-four hours, I could slay an ogre with a golf club and not think twice. But I am afraid for Gio.
He’s Amber’s only hope. Besides, I won’t be responsible for his death too. Not after what happened to Nikki. And Ric…
My chest feels hollow with all the death and loss and fear that has followed us across America. But he won’t go. I know I’m wasting my breath, but I have to try. For his sake. For Amber’s…
“We can go to Sicily and grow olives and lemons and tomatoes sweeter than any you have ever tasted before…”
I know what he’s doing. He’s talking so that I don’t have to think about how it will feel when this bomb goes off.
He’s filling my head with beautiful thoughts, so that my final moments are not spent with Amber’s father in my mind.
I wish that I could kiss Gio’s beautiful lips and tell him how much I love him, and how happy he made me during our oh-so-short time together.
Where is God when he’s needed, eh?
Where is justice and superheroes and Batman?
Yes! Where is fucking Batman when the baddies are roaming around Gotham City and killing all the good guys?
Where is the bitch goddess karma right now?
Gio doesn’t deserve this. Amber doesn’t deserve any of the shit that the world has dumped on her plump five-year-old shoulders.
But still, karma keeps turning her back on the sociopaths and the serial killers and the slimy fucking perverts and shoveling the shit our way.
I’m not bitter.
I’m raging.
But it seems my anger isn’t enough to quell the fear when the guy with the makeshift hose comes over and tells us we’re going to get wet.
My body shakes. I thought I knew fear when we were hiding in the basement of the thrift store, but it’s nothing compared to what I feel now. I lean on Gio, and I know I couldn’t do this without him.
I should think about Amber. But my brain has smothered itself with bubble wrap, and all I can do is focus on Gio’s solid chest, his strong arms, his soft murmurs as he squeezes me tightly.
Will it hurt? Will we know how it feels to have our body ripped apart before we die? Or will it be instantaneous, our brains shutting down before we can register the pain? This is the thought that lingers, squashed between our bodies until Gio finally releases me and says, “We did it, fiore.”
Then I slide down and down into darkness.
I’m disoriented when I open my eyes.
I’m in a room that I don’t recognize. Vertical blinds are pulled shut across the windows leaving the room in an eerie kind of twilight.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The rhythmic sound is so gentle, it barely penetrates my consciousness. I roll my head across the pillow, realizing that I’m in a strange bed as I stare at the monitor standing tall beside the nightstand.
Beep.
A green line blips across the screen.
I raise my left arm slowly, like I’m trying to lift a bucket of sand, and peer at the cannula inserted into the back of my hand, and the tube leading to the drip stand next to the monitor.
I’m in hospital.
I’m safe.
But it doesn’t feel right. Like an insect that burrows under your skin and lays its eggs, the realization that I’ve lost Amber comes crawling back, leaving me breathless.
I can’t stay here. Not while she’s out there somewhere in the clutches of that fucking maniac.
I try to sit up, and the room slides out from under me. I lay back against the pillows, panting, eyes squeezed tightly shut while I wait for the world to stop spinning.
“Breathe, Meg,” I mutter to myself. “Breathe.”
I inhale deeply through my nose, hold the sterile air in my lungs, fighting the urge to cough, and exhale through my mouth. My heart is still thudding. But when I open my eyes again, the world manages to stand still.
I peer around the room to get my bearings. There’s a visitor chair, empty. A rolling bedside table pushed up against the far wall filled with medical equipment. A door that must lead to the ensuite bathroom. A sink with a bottle of antibacterial handwash attached to the wall.
Where are my clothes?
Where is Gio?
I take it slowly, pushing myself into a sitting position, and that’s when I notice the cast shoe protecting my foot.
Almost instantly, the pain comes flooding back, bowling me over with its intensity. It’s white hot, blinding, like a branding iron slicing through my foot.
I try to breathe through the pain, the way I remember my mom breathing when she was in labor with Amber. She said it helped. It doesn’t. But I can’t stay here, not while my little sister is with that monster.
The weakness is even more terrifying than the pain.
The bullet in my foot, and the explosives strapped to my chest have sapped the energy from me and left me feeling like an empty husk of the person who hid Amber inside a cardboard carton and told her not to make a sound.
I try to reach the cup of water on the nightstand, and tears well in my eyes when my hand shakes so violently that water spills onto the floor.
I have to get up. Gio should’ve known that I can’t stay here and wait for him to find my sister.
Clenching my jaw, my fists, and every muscle in my body, I ease my legs over the side of the bed, gravity dragging the pain down to my patched-up foot.
I’m wearing a white hospital gown that reaches my knees.
The skin on the back of my head feels taut as if the doctors have stitched it back together again while I was unconscious.
But nausea keeps crashing through me like a tidal wave on a loop while the world threatens to tip me onto the floor the instant I try to move.
Deep breath.
I make it onto my feet, barely, before my legs give way and the floor is hurtling towards my face. Then the blackness is back.
Voices.
Gio?
They’re so low that I can’t decipher what they’re saying, but I sense the urgency all the same. Another voice that is familiar, the owner just out of reach. I try to open my eyes, to let them know that I’m awake, but my eyelids are heavy. Too heavy.
I can’t move my arms…
I’ve never suffered from night terrors before, but the panic is real. Shadows closing in on me, and they all look like Amber’s father, hands reaching for my neck, threatening to squeeze the life out of me. I try to scream, but no sound comes out.
Where am I?
Amber? Gio?
The blinds are still closed, but the room is a lighter shade of twilight than it was before.
“No. No. No.”
My mouth is so dry that the words are little more than a few random gasps.
I’ve no idea how long I’ve been here, but the longer I stay, the harder it will be to track down Amber’s father.
That’s what they say in detective movies—the first twenty-four hours in an abduction case are crucial.
The more time that passes, the lower the chance of finding the victim.
I can’t remember what her father said to me when he took Amber.
The panic floods my chest the way it did when I tried to get her away from him, but everything else is hazy.
He was taunting me, proving how easy it was for him to take what he wanted, how inconsequential I am in the grand scheme of things.
What did he say?
There’s a dull throb in my head and my foot, no doubt tempered by whatever drugs the medical staff have given me. But I know what I need to do.
Slowly, slowly, I ease my legs off the bed, one at a time, testing my strength when I’m finally ready to stand up.
Shadows pass behind the interior window separating me from the rest of the hospital, and I freeze, waiting for the door to open. It remains shut, but whoever it was is still there. I can hear them talking.
Using the bed to support myself, I shuffle closer, dragging the drip stand along with me. I cling to the frame at the foot of the bed and listen to the muffled conversation taking place outside my room.
I recognize Gio’s voice, and my heart starts racing. He’s here. He didn’t leave me. But this is quickly followed by the icy realization that even he can’t be in two places at one time, and if he’s here, he isn’t looking for Amber.
I let go of the bed frame ready to cross the room, when I hear the name Ric.
Ric!
Is Ric here too? Is he still alive? I pray that he is. Without his help, I can’t even think about what might’ve happened on the mountain slope.
I take a tentative step without anything to hold on to.
A woman’s voice reaches me, but all I can make out are random words. “…fish … revenge … go back…”
My breathing grows shallow. Are they going back? Going back where—to the mountain hut? What about Amber?
I limp the rest of the way to the door—it’s no more than a few steps but feels like crossing a ravine on a rickety bridge. I’m almost there, lunging forward to grab the handle when the door opens, and Gio is standing there, his brown eyes filled with concern when he realizes that I’m out of bed.
“Meggie? What are you doing?”
He blocks the doorway with his wide shoulders, takes my hand and slides his free arm around my shoulders, guiding me back to the bed that it took me so long to haul myself out of.
“No, Gio.”
I must be even weaker than I thought I was because my feeble attempts to wriggle away from him achieve nothing.
Before I can form a coherent reason for me to be on my feet, he’s pulling back the covers and sitting me down, fussing over me like the kindly gray-haired grandmother from the fairy tales my mom read to me when I was a little girl.
“You should’ve pressed the button if you needed help, Meggie.” He points out a shiny red button behind my head that I never noticed before. “I’ve been outside the whole time. All you had to do was call.”