Chapter 15 Megan #2
“Last Friday. This is our last night.”
“Have any of you seen anything that seemed a little off to you? Like a man with a kid who was crying, or a man carrying a kid in his arms.”
The guy wrinkles his nose and glances behind him at the bar they’ve just left. “You don’t get many kids in the bars. But … there was something.”
My heart rate speeds up. Did he see Amber with her father?
I can’t hear what Demi says next, and when I try to lipread her, I realize that she has moved just out of view. The group, which is made up entirely of lads, seems to have divided in two, one half surrounding Demi while the others have been herding me away from her without me even noticing.
“What are you doing?” I try to push between a thickset guy with a buzzcut and tattoos covering his lower arms, and a mixed-race man with jet-black hair and silver crosses in his ears, but they budge together, blocking my path. “Let me through.”
My voice shakes, and I wish it hadn’t because their top lips curve upwards.
“What’s the rush?” Buzzcut says this like he’s being friendly. A little too friendly. Like I just announced that I wasn’t staying for the final round of drinks.
My heart doesn’t want that level of friendly either.
I jut my chin and narrow my eyes when I look at him. “My friend is a cop, so unless you want to spend the night behind bars, I suggest you let me go.”
“Your friend is a cop?” He widens his eyes dramatically and covers his mouth with one hand while his friend snickers. When he drops his hand, the friendly grin has been replaced by something reptilian that makes my skin prickle. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
My gaze flits between them, my breath hitching. Have I misread the situation? Am I over-analyzing every person I meet because I’m worried the Fish is pulling their strings?
“Okay.” I nod. “We’re done here then.”
I try to skirt around him, but this time, his arm blocks my path, nudging me back in front of him and his friend.
Somehow, we’ve meandered away from the bar and, I realize now, we’re only a few steps away from the path that will lead around the back of the premises. They might not have touched me, but they are being intimidating, and that can only lead to one thing.
“Demi!” I yell.
Buzzcut clamps a thick meaty hand over my mouth and drags me along the side of the building, twisting me around, his other arm wrapped around my chest. My fingers scratch at his arms, but he’s strong. All I can smell is the liquor on his hands and his breath, and I know I’m going to puke.
“Hey, man,” his friend says, his eyes dark. “Drop it. Let her go.”
At the same time, I open my mouth and bite into Buzzcut’s fleshy palm.
He yelps and lowers his hand, but his other arm is still wrapped around my chest. So, I do the only other thing I can remember that you’re supposed to do in situations like this, I raise my feet off the ground and lean forward.
I catch him off-guard. He leans with me, and we both hit the ground, but I curl myself into a ball so that he goes flying over the top of me.
I’m still staring at his friend’s box-white sneakers when he collapses sideways onto the ground, and Demi appears in front of me.
“Fuck! Meggie, are you alright?” She grips my hand tightly and hoists me onto my feet, scanning my face for bruises. “Did they hurt you?”
I shake my head “I’m fine. I just want to get out of here.”
“Don’t move.”
She drops to her knees between the two guys, and I see a glint of metal as she slides a set of handcuffs from her pocket. She clamps one around Buzzcut’s wrist and the other around his friend before either of them can stop her.
Straightening, she says, “Come and find me when you’re ready to apologize and I’ll think about setting you free. If I find the apology worthy.”
Buzzcut shakes his fist, dragging his friend’s arm with him. “You can’t do this without arresting us, and we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find that I can.” Demi meets his gaze coolly, hands on hips. “And I’d call assaulting my friend a crime. Wouldn’t you, Meggie?”
I want to get as far away from them as possible, but she’s right: men like Buzzcut shouldn’t be allowed to get away with assaulting women and claiming that it was just banter.
“Yes.” I back away, and Demi follows me, watching them to make sure they don’t follow.
When we’re back outside the bar, the busy town within walking distance, the adrenaline crash hits. I lean sideways and retch onto the grass, tears streaking my cheeks. For one fleeting moment, I’d thought that we’d found our first clue, and the realization that it wasn’t real, hurts.
“It’s alright, Meggie.” Demi rubs my back. “I’ve got your back. Not that you needed my help; you should’ve seen that guy’s face when he went flying over the top of you.”
I wipe my chin with the back of my hand, and giggle.
Nothing about the situation is comical, but my emotions are all over the place, and it’s impossible to think that I was afraid of a man like that after all that’s happened.
I almost got blown up for fuck’s sake! I got a bullet in my foot for trying to save my sister.
If only my regular customers at the bakery could see me now.
An image pops into my head: the customer with lilac hair and a chihuahua called Fifi that sits inside her shiny white handbag when she pops into the bakery to collect her chocolate Guinness cake. It tips me over the edge, and I’m on my knees and still giggling when two pairs of feet approach us.
“Excuse me.” A woman’s voice. The other feet are wearing sparkly pink high-tops with frilly white socks. Amber would love those shoes, I think, and the thought sobers me immediately. “Are you the two women who are asking about the missing girl?”
Fuck! I drag myself upright, praying that I don’t look as raggedy as I feel.
“Yes.” Demi’s voice is steady tinged with a splash of hope. She shows the woman Amber’s photograph on her phone. “Do you know something?”
“I’m not sure.”
The woman rests her hands on her daughter’s shoulders and moves the child around to stand in front of her.
It’s a natural reaction; she does it without thinking, and I wonder if that’s what I would do if the roles were reversed.
The child is blond like Amber, her hair naturally straight though, her ponytails reaching almost down to her waist. Her eyes meet mine, and I stop myself from throwing my arms around her and squeezing her tightly.
“If you can tell us anything at all, we’ll be grateful,” Demi says.
The woman releases a shaky breath. “It might be nothing, but one night about a week ago, I couldn’t sleep.
I was trying to read when I heard a scream.
I live that way—” she hooks a thumb in the direction of somewhere behind Main Street.
“You know what it’s like, every sound in the middle of the night is magnified.
So, anyway, I got up to see what was going on. ”
I hardly dare breathe.
“It sounded like a child, but I couldn’t see anything. Until I heard squealing tires. There was a dark car, black maybe, heading out of town towards the mountain.”
It must have been when Amber’s father took us from the thrift store. She must’ve seen him driving up towards the mountain hut with us.
“Did you see where the car went?” Demi asks.
“I ran to get my husband’s binoculars. I lost the car on the mountain, but I was too shaky to try going back to sleep so I waited by the window in case it came back again.
I think I found it about halfway back down the hill.
It was a clear night, so it was easy to track it between the vacation cabins on the slopes.
It stopped for a while.” She pauses. “It didn’t come back into town, just headed north. ”
“How far did you track it out of town?” The hope in Demi’s voice is morphing into desperation.
“Not far.” She shakes her head. “It merged in with the regular traffic, and by then my eyes were stinging. I didn’t even have a license plate I could write down. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Demi is thinking. “You said the car stopped on the slope. Can you remember how long it was there for?”
“Twenty minutes maybe? Half an hour.”
“Did you see anyone get out of the car?”
“No, it was parked behind a cabin, so I could only see the hood.”
Demi glances at me before asking, “Do you think you could point out to us roughly where you think it stopped?”
The woman smiles. “I could try.”