29. Twenty-nine Freya
Twenty-nine: Freya
I ’d been paranoid the past week. I felt like everywhere I went, somebody was following me. Watching me. Stalking me. Kaleb kept a close eye on my movements, having Brent watch me when he couldn’t—as if I had my own personal bodyguards—but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that somebody sinister was keeping tabs on me.
Tonight, Hannah, Josh, Ty and I were heading to a Christmas fair—much to Kaleb’s displeasure. He claimed it was risky, but we knew I couldn’t remain hidden away inside the house forever. I had to live my life, and we’d agreed he’d come but keep his distance.
“I’ll be with Brent,” Kaleb told me in the parking lot. “I better not see any wandering hands from your waiter friend tonight.”
I rolled my eyes at the teasing. “He has a name.”
“And I don’t care to use it.” He placed his hand on my lower back and pushed me in the direction of the fair entrance, where I had arranged to meet my friends. “Now go and have fun.”
I flashed the security guard my wristband, squeezing through a small crowd until I saw my friends huddling under a large glistening Christmas tree—a fake snowy log cabin with plastic elves surrounding it to their right.
Hannah and Ty engulfed me in hugs while Josh nodded in my direction as he stuffed his face with his mustard-covered hot dog. Apparently, he was only here for the food.
We spent the next two hours perusing the Christmas stalls, ordering an obscene amount of curly fries and burgers, and ride-hopping. Although I was having fun, I was continuously watching my back, locking eyes with multiple large, beefy men who only stared back with confusion, their significant others ushering them away while shooting me cold glares.
I hadn’t caught sight of Kaleb or Brent, but I knew they were watching us. The fact that I couldn’t see them reassured me because I knew it meant that if somebody else were spying on me, they wouldn’t have spotted them either. The boys were trained to blend into crowds and go unnoticed when needed, and they were doing just that.
“Anyone want to do the Christmas maze?” Hannah yelled over the booming live music, the musicians tickling their electric guitars and piano keys up on the brightly lit stage.
My eyes rounded. “Yes! Let’s go.”
Ty and Josh groaned from behind us, and when Hannah and I saw that the line for it was practically non-existent, we smirked at each other.
The maze was huge, and the paths were separated by tall, thick Christmas trees and wooden fences. Its dirt paths had been sprinkled with colourful gravel to make the attraction appear even more festive—it was as if an elf had thrown up all over it.
Hannah and I scurried through, and even though Ty and Josh did their best to keep up with us, after a couple of minutes, we’d lost them.
“This way,” Hannah instructed me, pointing toward a narrow path with bright red lights shining down it, lanterns hanging from the trees and arching over the top.
Nope. Dead end.
There were others in the maze, and they appeared just as confused as we were, rushing around like working bees as they pushed past each other in an attempt to find the exit first, causing me to almost topple over.
“Do you know which way we need to go?” a woman asked me, looking frustrated as she called over her shoulder for her children, the little demons scampering off in different directions, screaming in excitement.
I shook my head, holding back a laugh. “No, I’m sorry. We’re lost too.”
The woman rushed off to follow her kids, and I turned around with an open mouth, ready to ask Hannah what our next move was, but my face fell when I was met with nothing but the swaying baubles on the tree in front of me.
“Hannah?” I called as I glanced around, cursing and hurrying down a path in a direction I was pretty sure we’d already tried.
She’d just disappeared. What the hell?
The air was suddenly icy cold, and I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered as I continued advancing across the gravel, meeting more than a few dead ends, forcing me to turn back around.
My heart picked up its pace when the familiar burning sensation accumulated at the back of my head—as if someone was boring into my soul—causing me to whirl around and peer through the darkness. The lanterns and fairy lights were bright, but there were parts of the fence they didn’t stretch to, leaving holes of blackness for me to wander through warily.
“Where the hell is the exit?” I muttered to myself, becoming increasingly frustrated and concerned. Hannah wouldn’t have just run off without me. “Hannah!”
Snapping my head to the side when I heard footsteps approaching, I quickly made my way down a path, the spines of the trees grazing against me painfully, marking my skin red.
If this was a dead end, I was going to have to become Spider-Man and start climbing.
I breathed a sigh of relief once I reached a split in the path, and after biting down on my lip and praying to whoever was watching me up above to help me decipher the correct direction to choose, I turned left, sprinting down it.
But I screeched to a halt when I spotted a figure in front of me moving slowly in my direction, their appearance tall and stocky. My throat dried, and I gasped, turning on my heel—only to release a loud scream when someone’s chilly hand gripped my wrist, yanking me back.
I was face to face with a beast of a man—a creature painted with gnarly scars and eyes so dark they were almost black. A wicked smirk was plastered onto his face, and he tilted his tattooed head at me and chuckled, the glint of a gun in his large hand catching my eye.
I blanched as I attempted to pull myself away from him, but he merely dragged me down the path after clamping a dirty hand over my mouth. I kicked at him, and he released a grunt of pain when my foot collided with his chest, but he was quick to recover, jerking me closer to him.
It looked as if he was going to speak, and I took the opportunity to pull my fist backwards, launching it towards his face. Blood splattered onto my face, and I stared in horror—and also pride—to see that I had broken the man’s nose. He growled, grabbing me by the back of the neck.
“Let me go!” My muffled demand seemed to fall upon deaf ears as the man leaned down to whisper in my ear.
“You’re going to come with me, or your friend dies.” His voice was like venom—sharp and acidic—and I grunted as he shoved me back against the maze wall harshly, his forearm pressing into my throat and constricting my breathing.
“Where’s Hannah?!” I managed to gasp.
No, no, no.
My legs felt numb as I was dragged down the path, trying to put as much distance between the man and myself as possible, but when he turned to me with a snarl and clicked his gun, I ceased trying to fight.
If I died, Hannah would too. What good would that do?
“When we get to the maze exit, you’re going to walk nicely and leave the fair with me,” the bleeding man ordered, wiping his nose. “Then and only then will your friend be released by my colleague.”
I bit down on my bottom lip, tears brimming my eyes.
He wasn’t working alone.
God, I wanted to knock his front teeth out so badly.
This was the man who’d been hunting me. He fit the vague description perfectly. He had tailed me in my car. Watched me at the grocery store. Followed me on my walk back from the dentist. Stalked me after I'd left my teaching session with the kids.
I’d felt him there—his presence eerie—but the sensation would never last more than a minute, meaning Kaleb and Brent could never pinpoint exactly who it was.
I was his prey, and he’d finally pounced.
My brown eyes enlarged when we approached the exit of the maze. Sweat trickled from my hairline, and I snuck a glance at the man to see that he’d hidden his gun from sight. However, I could feel it pressed against me through his thick, blood-stained jacket.
I observed people as we passed them, longing for someone to pick up on my tense posture and the man’s meaty snarl and to say something, but no one paid us any mind. It was as if we were invisible.
He had blood smeared across his face, for God’s sake.
He roughly guided me over to where we were further away from the crowd, his thick fingers slicing into my flesh as he held onto me tightly, speeding up his steps.
Was this going to be the last time people saw me alive? I didn’t know what to do. Scream? Run? Kick him in the balls and attempt to grab his gun and shoot him in the chest? I’d fired a gun before. I knew vaguely how they worked.
I didn’t have time to weigh up my options before the man was suddenly yanked back into the open door of a storage warehouse beside us, his tight grasp on my wrist sending me flying with him, landing on the dirt with a harsh thud .
A groan escaped my mouth, my ankle pulsating beneath the weight of my body. I peered through the dimly lit room to see Kaleb standing with his gun pointed at my abductor’s chest, his eyes full of rage. Brent had his own gun drawn, but it was aimed at a different man, who had dark hair and was also smeared with crimson liquid, looking like he’d been socked in the face a few times.
“Hannah,” I breathed out in relief once I spotted her in the corner of the room. She rushed over to me with a wheeze, crumbling to the floor next to me and wrapping her arms around my body. She was fine, besides a tiny gash to her eyebrow, but it wasn’t deep.
“Why are you bleeding?” Kaleb questioned my abductor, his eyes flickering to me for a brief second. “Did you do that?”
I nodded, and he hummed, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Was that approval?
“Care to share what you planned to do with them?” Kaleb seethed, taking a step forward and tilting his gun to the side along with his head, keeping it aimed at the man’s chest. My abductor huffed, eyeballing the firearm he’d dropped on the muddy ground mid-fall, his fingers twitching. “Don’t even fucking think about it,” snapped Kaleb. The room was silent besides the sounds of heavy breathing and erratic heartbeats.
“He won’t stop.” The dark-haired man next to Brent chuckled as he coughed up blood, collapsing into a crouch and groaning, clutching at his side. “You think killing us will stop him from taking her?”
Kaleb’s back tensed, and he shot me a firm look before turning his attention to the two men again, his smouldering eyes causing my heart rate to soar. He looked menacing—as if he was ready to lodge ten bullets into the guy’s skull for his attempt to snatch me up.
“ We may have been unsuccessful, but someone else won’t be. He’ll keep going. He won’t give up.”
“Who?” demanded Brent, but he was ignored, both of the men sucking on their teeth, the noise grating.
They weren’t going to talk beyond what had already been said.
My eyes widened as the man who had stormed me in the maze tilted his shoulder down towards the ground, his arm snaking out to grip his gun, and Brent cursed loudly at him to stop.
I watched in horror as he lifted it, pointing the barrel towards his accomplice, the dark-haired man’s forehead slick with sweat as his eyes bugged out of their sockets.
“We’re as good as dead anyway,” he told his quaking friend, clicking his neck from side to side. “Might as well keep our pride and do it ourselves. Before he does.”
I knew the he that he was talking about wasn’t Kaleb or Brent.
“Don’t shoot!”
I released a gasp as the bald, tattooed man pulled the trigger, cutting off his colleague’s words, the bullet soaring through the air and hitting his accomplice square in the chest. It caused his bleeding body to tumble to the floor, a loud grunt escaping from between his parted lips as he landed in a heap.
Hannah squeezed my arm tightly, a loud cry falling from her mouth as the killer then turned the gun on himself. But before I could see him blast his brains out, Kaleb moved to stand in front of me, blocking my line of vision.
I flinched as the trigger was pulled, my hands shaking, and Kaleb turned around and quickly scanned my body, crouching down in front of Hannah and me, pulling his car keys from his pocket. “Leave the fair. Go and wait in my car. Do not speak to anybody, and keep your hoods up. Lock the car when you’re inside. There are two spare guns in the glove compartment. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I stared at him, stunned, adrenaline seeping from my pores, my mind completely blank. I couldn’t fathom what we’d just witnessed.
“Freya, for God’s sake, will you just listen to me for once and do as you’re told?” he growled, his eyes darkening, and I launched to my feet, snatching the keys from him.
Dragging Hannah out of the warehouse along with me, we hurried towards the exit. We tried to remain calm as we weaved in and out of the crowd, my ankle still throbbing and Hannah’s body rattling against mine.
“Freya,” she whispered breathlessly, yanking her grey hood over her head. “Shit.” She took a deep breath. “We almost died.”
“It’s okay.” I covered my own head with my hood, glancing at my friend with unsettled eyes. “Almost.”