Chapter 21 Megan
MEGAN
Nikki has been shot.
I can’t think straight. I can see her body bleeding out on the ground, but she shouldn’t be outside. What was she doing? Why didn’t she say something instead of just opening the door like that?
It doesn’t…
I can’t…
I feel numb, and the world is spinning. But then Amber’s voice jolts me back to reality, and my body reacts accordingly even though my brain is stuck on the sight of my best friend’s body on the ground.
Her body.
A sob wells inside my chest making it hard to breathe, hard to focus, hard to believe that this is even happening to us. But Amber has been my driving force for so long that survival instinct kicks in without me having to think about it.
I chase after Amber.
My heart is plodding inside my chest like it has forgotten its own tune. My pulse is racing out of control. I don’t want to look at my best friend’s body, but I can’t drag my eyes away from it, and I know that I can’t let Amber see it too.
“Amber!” I scream as she stumbles over a rock and her knees hit the ground.
Her body keeps on moving with the force of her momentum, and I have a mental image of the time she fell off her scooter when she was four years old and scraped the skin off both knees.
I grab her arms and heave her upright, turning her around so that she is facing away from Nikki.
She’s sniveling, sniffing back tears, her words getting stuck in her throat. But there’s no time. We can’t do this here. I’m suddenly aware that we’ve done the one thing Ric told me not to do: we’ve left ourselves exposed outside the cabin.
“Amber, listen to me.” I grip her upper arms tightly.
I can’t think about Nikki. If I do, I’ll dissolve into a sloppy mess of blood and bones and tears, and he’ll just walk right in and take Amber. And after everything that we have done to protect her, I’m not giving up now.
“We can’t stay here.”
“B-b-but—” Tears stream down her face.
“It’s not safe. We have to leave. Now!”
I’m waiting for another gunshot. I don’t know if it will hurt, or if it will all be over so quickly that I won’t even realize I’ve been hit. But Amber will know. I can’t let that happen to her either.
“Amber, we need to run.” I squeeze her arms until she squirms beneath my grip. It’s the only way. “I’m going to count to three, then we’re going to run, okay? One. Two. Three.”
I can’t believe he hasn’t caught us, but I’m not going to waste time counting our blessings until our luck runs out.
So, we run.
I don’t know what I’m thinking or where I’m going, but I do know that the cabin door is wide open, and we can’t go back inside.
He could’ve snuck in there while I was trying to stop Amber.
He could be watching us right now from just inside the doorway, waiting to pounce the instant we cross the threshold.
Instead, I turn around and pull Amber in the direction of the next cabin up the mountain slope.
I’m doing everything wrong. Ric told me to stay inside, relocate to the bunker.
I feel sick knowing that I’ve exposed Amber to the danger we’ve been trying to protect her from, but it’s too late to turn around now.
All I can do is keep going.
It’s tougher than I thought it would be navigating the gentle slope at the base of the mountain. We can’t keep climbing; it will slow us down too much, and we’d basically be like the ducks on the target range at the carnival.
I have to drag Amber along with me. I don’t look around. I don’t even glance at her. One look at her tears, and I’ll be tempted to stop and pick her up, and we won’t even reach the first cabin if I’m carrying her.
One foot in front of the other.
Thud. Thud. Thud. In time with my heartbeat.
There are no lights on inside the cabin. No sounds either. I don’t even know if the door is locked.
Closer. I keep praying that Ric or one of the other bodyguards will open the door and take control of the situation, sheltering us inside while they hunt down Amber’s father and make this all go away. But it doesn’t happen.
I tug Amber around to the back of the darkened cabin and sink onto the damp ground surrounded by trees and foliage, breathing so heavily I can hardly speak.
Amber sits next to me, crying on my shoulder.
Blood is oozing from the grazed skin on her knees, and she yelps when she touches me with her hands.
I turn them over to find that she has scraped the skin from her palms too when she hit the ground.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her close. “I’m sorry I made you run, sweetie.”
I want to tell her that it will all be okay, but I can’t. That promise isn’t mine to make and, I realize now with a jolt that makes me feel nauseous, it never was. It feels like we’ve been living on borrowed time, waiting for him to make his move and stake his claim on his daughter. And this is it.
“M-m-my legs h-h-hurt.” Amber’s body shudders with her sobs.
“I know, baby, but I can’t make them better right now.”
We can’t stay here. The only thing I am certain of in this batshit-crazy situation is that we have to keep moving. It’s our best chance. Our only chance.
“W-why can’t we go back?”
“It isn’t safe.”
It’s all I can manage while my brain is frantically trying to figure out our next move.
I can see the cabins higher up the mountain slope, all in darkness.
To our left, there’s another cabin occupied by the security team.
Down below, I can see Stowe lit up for the evening, and the golden lights shimmering across the surface of the lake.
We need to reach the town. More people. Someone will help us when they see that Amber is hurt, and it will be more difficult for him to abduct her if there are witnesses.
The only problem is, I have no idea how far away it is.
I don’t even recall how long it took to reach the town by car because I was too excited about Nikki being here to pay attention.
The lights look like tiny fireflies from here which doesn’t fill me with confidence.
It occurs to me then that he shot Nikki, but there are no police sirens heading this way.
I don’t move, trying to blank out the sound of my blood gushing through my ears and listen for the sound of movement from inside the cabin. Something. Anything.
Silence.
Where are the bodyguards? I didn’t keep a head count, but there’s a whole team of them trying to shield us from one man, and now that we need them, there isn’t a single one of them to be found. A terrifying thought steals inside my head and makes my heart skip like a child wearing her mom’s shoes.
What if he has killed them all?
“Meggie, w-where’s Auntie N-Nikki?”
The innocent question sucks the tears that I’ve been trying so desperately to contain from my eyes. “She’s gone, baby.”
“Gone w-where?”
“Away.” I move Amber away from my shoulder so that I can see her face. “We have to keep moving, okay? We can’t get back into the cabin, so we’ll find somewhere else to stay in town.” I try to make it sound like an adventure. “Maybe we’ll get pizza and ice cream, would you like that?”
“Okay.” She sniffs loudly.
“Good girl.” I stand up and help her onto her feet. She cries when I take her hand again, but I can’t let go. “I know it hurts, sweetie, but we’ll run faster if we hold hands. You know, like when you had sports day at school, and we did that race together.”
She nods.
“Do you see that cabin over there?” I point to our left. “We’re going to run that way and hide in the trees out the back. On three. One. Two. Three.”
I don’t give her a chance to think about her sore knees and the blood squishing between our palms. I hold on tight and sprint towards the trees. I don’t look left or right. I keep my eyes fixed straight ahead and murmur a silent prayer that he can’t see us in the dark from wherever he’s hiding.
I almost can’t believe it when branches sting my face. I drag Amber down onto the mulchy ground and take shelter behind a dense clump of thorny bushes.
The next cabin will bring us closer to the road that leads down to Stowe. I’ve no idea how exposed the route is, something else I didn’t pay attention to from the safety of the car, but we’ll have to figure it out as we go.
There is still no sign of Ric and his team, but I thank God that there has been no more gunfire.
Did he mistake Nikki for me? Did she get shot because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time?
My heart breaks for her parents, but it’s one more thing that I can’t allow myself to think about right now.
A glimmer of light catches my eye near the next cabin, and my heart starts racing.
Placing a finger to my lips to keep Amber quiet, I focus on the spot where I thought I saw the light. The cabin is in darkness again, and despair floods my chest. But just as I’ve convinced myself that I must’ve imagined it, I see it again.
“Come on, Amber.” I drag her back onto her feet, still gripping her bloody hand tightly. “We’re going to the next cabin. Do you think you can do your best running?”
“I-I’ll try.”
I swallow my tears and kiss the top of her head. “Ready?”
She nods. This time, I don’t bother counting down.
We pick our way carefully through the trees surrounding the cabin until we reach the exposed area between the two buildings. The light has flickered out, but I’m certain that I didn’t imagine it.
I don’t even consider that it might be him when I drag Amber along behind me. We’re almost there, the vacant windows staring back at us, when someone steps into our line of vision from behind the cabin.
I almost cry out with relief when we’re close enough for his face to come into focus.
It’s Ric. He’s holding a gun, and my heart reacts to the sight of help.
He’ll save us. He must’ve been waiting for us since Nikki got shot, tracking our movements until we got close enough for him to show himself. Ric will know what to do.
“Ric!” I yell between heaving breaths. “He shot Nikki.”