Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BAILEY - BEFORE
I hold a finger to my lips and they nod. The only sound is the wind against a loose shutter, rattling outside with each gust. We stand frozen, barely breathing, waiting.
One breath.
Then two.
His shadow shifts, followed by heavy footsteps leading away from us.
Only one thought rushes into my mind. Cat.
“What do we do?” Lydia asks, her voice low. She’s dropped my arm, but hasn’t left my side. I roll my cracked lip between my teeth, channeling confidence I don’t feel.
“First, we help Cat. Then we figure out the rest,” I whisper back. “She’s got a plan to get us all out.”
Elise shakes her head immediately. “I can’t. I’m not—I need my meds, Bailey. Without them, I’ll be sick. I’ll slow you down.”
“And my kids,” Lydia adds, her voice cracking. “If something goes wrong, if we get caught... what happens to them?”
I bite my lip so hard that I hiss. What am I supposed to say to that?
Before I can respond, a dull thump comes through the wall. Then another, louder this time.
“Shit,” I breathe. “We have to help her.”
I yank the door open and run to the other bedroom. Cat’s voice is muffled in the hallway, but I hear the strain in it, the plea. Whatever game she was playing with Erik, it’s over now. She needs me.
I reach the door, breathing hard and feeling dizzy. I don’t hear footsteps behind me, but part of me hopes Lydia and Elise will follow. It doesn’t matter. Drawing in a deep breath, I swing the door open.
Erik has her pinned against the wall, her clothes disheveled, and her hair a mess. Her eyes find mine, wide with fear. At the same moment, he notices he has company. Erik’s hand drops from Cat’s throat and she coughs.
“Fucking bastard,” she says, rubbing her throat and scrambling back a step.
“Didn’t know you wanted to join the party.” He steps toward me, his eyes narrowing. “I knew you weren’t just some newbie. Time to find out what you’re really about.”
“No.” My voice shakes, but only at first. “No,” I repeat louder. And then I turn and sprint out the door.
“Bitch,” he spits under his breath as Cat yells for me to run. I pass Lydia and Elise, frozen in their doorway, watching.
“Come on,” I plead, urging them to follow, but I can’t spare a second to stop and wait. He’s right behind me.
His voice is at my back. Too calm, like he’s practiced it before.
“I’m not gonna hurt you. Ask Catalina. We’ve been having fun together.” He grabs me by the hair as I reach the top of the stairs. Stinging pain explodes across my scalp and I scream, reaching up to grab his wrist on instinct.
“Please,” I cry. “Let me go, I won’t run.”
“You’re making me hurt you, newbie. He put me in charge… Me. I can’t let anything go wrong.”
He starts dragging me back toward our bedroom, my feet scrambling for traction against the smooth floor. I pry at his fist but he only tightens his grip, twisting his fingers in my hair. Each step sends fresh waves of agony through my scalp.
“Stop, please!” Tears blur my vision as I claw uselessly at his hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
Through my sobs, I make out Lydia’s voice begging him to stop, to let me go.
“Should’ve thought about that before you tried to run.” His grip tightens, pulling harder. “Now I have to—”
His words are cut off by a choked gasp.
What the—
His hand goes slack in my hair and I stumble forward, falling to my knees as he releases me.
When I turn around, Cat is standing behind him, her chest heaving, and a kitchen knife buried deep between his shoulder blades.
His eyes are wide with shock as one hand waves through air, desperately trying to grab the handle.
“That’s for all the fun we had,” Cat says in a voice cold as ice.
Erik staggers toward me, but I slide back, narrowly avoiding his body as he collapses face first onto the hardwood.
“Oh my holy fuck,” Lydia says as she hurries into the hallway.
I ignore her though, focusing on the pool of blood soaking through Erik’s T-shirt and dripping onto the floor.
“What did you do? Shit, shit, shit!” The words pour out of me. I crawl toward him, my hands landing in his warm blood, and check for a pulse. It’s there but it’s weak.
“Is he dead?” Lydia asks.
I shake my head. “He’s still alive.”
Elise makes her way into the hallway, quietly sobbing. “We’re so fucked.”
“He was gonna kill Bailey,” Cat says. “I had no choice.”
My eyes fix on the knife sticking out of his back. “Where did you get the knife?”
“At breakfast, but that doesn’t matter. We gotta get the fuck out of here.” She rushes back into the bedroom and I want to follow her. I know I should. But my legs won’t move.
“We can’t let him die,” Lydia says quietly. “They’ll kill us.”
She’s right. Letting him bleed out on the floor in front of me is wrong.
But what he did to Cat was wrong too, what he did to me.
His phone sticks out of his back pocket, it would only take a second to call 911.
I could leave an anonymous tip, considering I have no clue where we are.
The paramedics will come, the cops… We can tell them what happened to us. We’ll be saved.
Lydia spots the phone at the same time and grabs it. “I’m calling my kids.”
“Wait,” I say. “Shouldn’t we call 911?”
War rages in her eyes. She’s reluctant, just like me. “They’ll arrest Cat for attempted murder. It’s too risky.”
Cat storms into the hallway, dressed in layers. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you getting up?”
Maybe it’s the resolve on her face that snaps me into action. Or maybe it’s that I don’t want to be an accomplice to murder. Either way, I find the strength to stand and run for my shoes.
“You’re staying?” she calls to Elise. “I can’t protect you if you do.”
She slides down the wall, crying into her hands. “Just go.”
When I get back with my shoes on, Lydia’s turned away from me, speaking quietly into the phone. I glance once more at Erik’s still form before stepping around him and following Cat down the stairs.
She heads straight for the front door, but I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “Should we grab anything else? Maybe go get the phone from Lydia or raid the kitchen?”
“They can track us on that thing. No, let’s go. We’ll find the nearest house or store or something and ask to use a phone.”
“To call the cops?” I ask, panting.
Her face falls. “I don’t know, B.”
Her way of saying no… She won’t talk to the cops. I guess I can’t blame her. She just stabbed a guy.
Cat twists the deadbolt and darts out the door.
At the first touch of cool air against my cheeks, I shiver.
It’s been so long since I’ve been outside.
It smells like smoke and pine, so crisp compared to the staleness inside the house.
I suck in a mouthful of cold air, willing it to reach my chest. Cat calls my name. Tells me to follow.
But I can’t move.
My feet are frozen at the threshold, and I realize one of my hands is gripping the doorframe hard enough to hurt.
The yard stretches out in front of me, so vast after weeks of cramped rooms and narrow hallways.
All that open space should feel like freedom, but instead it feels exposed, dangerous.
My chest tightens as my breathing becomes shallow and quick.
Too much sky. Too much space to run, too many places to hide, too many ways this could go wrong.
Where will we go? What if they find us?
I’m hyperventilating. What the hell is wrong with me? Cat’s voice sounds like it’s reaching me through miles of water.
Then she’s there, grabbing my hand and pulling me forward. “B, it’s okay… I’ve got you.”
“Yeah, okay,” I mumble.
It must be dusk, judging from the setting sun peeking through the muted gray clouds. I force myself to focus on the solidness of Cat’s hand in mine and the way our footsteps scrape against the long gravel driveway.
“Where?” I ask as we get closer to the end. There’s nothing but heavily wooded forest surrounding a dirt road—pine trees and bare oaks. We’re in the middle of nowhere.
“Road’s too risky,” she pants. I follow her pointed finger toward the trees. “Through there. We can follow the road from the woods until we reach help.”
I nod, too out of breath and shocked to vocalize anymore thoughts, but they swim through my head in waves.
We actually got out.
But we might have killed a man.
I can see my family.
Just a little further, then we’ll be safe.
I’m a killer. Or may as well be.
No. I shake the image of Erik’s blood out of my mind. It’s not the first body I’ve seen here, but now we’ll be safe. It’s over. I can move on. I just hope Elise and Lydia are okay.
We’re only a few yards from the tree line when I hear it. The roar of an engine growing louder. “Cat?” I can barely get the word out with fear choking me.
Her grip on my hand tightens as we both turn to see headlights breaking through the darkening sky and getting closer by the second.
“Run!” Cat screams, pulling me forward.
I slip on the icy gravel as we sprint up the rest of the driveway. The safety of the woods is only feet ahead. I don’t know if we’ll make it.
Brakes squeal as tires skid to a stop on the dirt road.
Car doors slam.
I keep looking ahead. Keep running.
We crash into the tree line, scraping against branches and scrambling over rocks. Cat stumbles over a pile of frost-covered snow and falls to her knees, but I keep my grip on her sweaty hand, pulling her up. “Come on!”
Behind us, heavy footsteps pound against the forest floor, getting closer. I can’t make out the figures, but my legs start to shake.
“Fuck! My ankle,” Cat cries, as she struggles to stand. I pull her again, holding her up. “B, you should go… run and find help.”
“No, no fucking way. Come on, just keep going. I’ve got you.”
But as I say it, I hear them gaining on us. Cat’s limping so badly now, each step has me carrying more of her weight. I can barely stay upright myself with the panic setting in. There’s no time for that though. I push through, between trees that scratch my skin, over a snowy rotted log.
But the voices behind us are getting clearer. They’re angry, spitting foreign words I don’t understand but recognize.
“There’s nowhere to go!” one of the men yell.
“Bailey, please,” Cat gasps, tears streaming down her face. “You can still make it.”
“Don’t make me shoot!”
Crunching footsteps and snapping branches are so close.
I make a desperate sprint, barely holding onto Cat, ignoring her pleas.
But as I round a bend, a hand grabs my shoulder and one of the men spins me around.
Then another grabs Cat, yanking her away from me.
Her fingers slip from mine, the weight of her ripped from my side.
“No!” Cat screams.
I push and pull, trying to get free, but his grip on my shoulder tightens. He seethes against my ear, his warm breath stinking of booze. “Don’t fucking move.”
Then I feel him cram his gun against my back.
“Let her go! Please, just take me!” Cat thrashes against Yuri, but he tosses her over his shoulder, spewing angry words in Russian. Coins spill from her pockets onto the forest floor. She pounds his back, fights with everything she has left.
I should fight too. I should try something, anything. But watching Cat’s plan shatter, seeing the terror in her eyes, something inside me just... breaks. Any amount of fight I have left drains out of me like the blood flowing from Erik’s wound.
I don’t resist when he jabs the gun against my spine, telling me to move. I don’t scream when he pushes me into the backseat of the car. It would be pointless. After the planning, the hope, the taste of freedom—it’s over.
Some part of me always knew it would end this way.
They shove us back into our room, my body already limp from the tranquilizer. I hear them talking as they drag something heavy down the hallway. Erik’s body, probably. Cat hasn’t said a word since they drugged her. She’s curled up on the bed, staring at nothing, her eyes glassy and unfocused.
I don’t know what to say, but I kneel at the side of the bed, taking her injured ankle in my hand.
My movements are slow and sloppy, and vision blurred but it’s easy enough to see that it’s already swelled up to double its size.
Without speaking, I grab a thin undershirt from the pile, pull her shoe off, and wrap the injury tight, tucking the fabric into itself.
“Is that okay?” I ask softly, not really expecting an answer.
I climb up onto the bed, not caring about my bloody palms or my dirty scratched up face. Not caring about anything, because caring means feeling, and I’ve had enough of that today. Whatever they do to us, it won’t be worse than the sinking pit I’ve fallen into.
As I get settled in, ready to let sleep pull me under, Yuri’s distinct voice sounds through the closed door. “Yes. Uh, huh. The blonde one. Yes, the junkie.”
He must be on the phone, judging from the one-sided conversation. I tiptoe across the room and put my ear to the door, my heart hammering.
“She was so desperate for her next fix, she would have sold out her own mother. Called the moment they made their move.”
No. I can’t be hearing what I think I’m hearing.
“If you’d like. Yes, I can do that. No, she’s useful here… a good informant.”
Informant? I turn back toward Cat to see if she’s hearing this, but she hasn’t moved.
“Erik is dead. Yes. I’ll take care of it.”
I wait for more, some kind of explanation that negates what I think I heard, but his footsteps move away.
Elise. She called Yuri.
I’m frozen at the door, replaying that moment. Her staying put while we ran, quietly crying into her hands, and suddenly it all makes sense. She wasn’t scared, she was waiting. Waiting for us to leave so she could make her call. If Cat finds out, she’ll kill her, and I don’t think I’d stop her.