Chapter 20
FREDDIE
Bianca has only been asleep for a few hours when the bus pulls away from the ferry terminal, and I can already imagine her waking up.
She’ll find our note and curse us out.
The ferry’s lights shrink through the rear window. I watch until the road turns and the terminal disappears behind a row of dark buildings.
Owen shifts beside me. The bus is mostly empty.
“She’s going to hate us.”
Owen doesn’t bother looking away from the window. “No, she won’t.”
“We just had a whole conversation about honesty and this doesn’t feel honest.”
“She’ll be pissed, but she’ll get over it.”
The roll of cash digs into my thigh through my pocket.
I pull it out, count it again, then push it back where it was.
The burner is zipped into Owen’s jacket with the routes Mason sent us, along with every photograph of the house and every scrap of a schedule his investigator managed to put together.
We have enough information to get there. Hopefully enough to get inside.
No idea if we have enough to get Mom out.
I look back through the window even though Wrecker’s Point has been gone for several miles. “She could go into heat while we’re gone.”
“Weller and Tristan are with her.” The answer leaves him on a tired breath. “She’s safe where she’s at, Freddie. That’s the point.”
I hate how easily he says it. I hate that he’s right more.
Bianca could have helped us. She wasn’t exaggerating about that, and none of us thought she was. I’ve seen her move through dangerous situations with ease.
But then Charles would have had access to the one thing valuable enough to make us hand Mom right back if it came to that. At least long enough to try a new strategy to free her. But there’s no option where we give up Bianca. Which makes her presence especially dangerous.
“We waited until she couldn’t argue anymore,” I say. “Seems unfair.”
Owen finally looks at me. There isn’t much apology in his face, but there hasn’t been much of anything since we walked out of that bedroom. “Yeah.”
The photo of my mom flashes through my head.
Owen settles his head against the seat. The movement catches in his shoulder, and his mouth tightens before he smooths it away.
“You’re doing the thing,” he says.
“What thing?”
“Taking every bad option and making it your fault.”
His eyes close, ending the discussion the way only Owen can, as if deciding he is done speaking removes the rest of us from the conversation too.
I kept my mouth shut while Weller told her we’d all decide on next steps in the morning. Then I waited for her breathing to deepen before I left the bed.
I didn’t kiss her goodbye because I was too scared to wake her. It’s too late to play the what if game now, but the thought of never feeling her lips on mine again keeps my hand at the back of my neck.
Our first transfer leaves us outside a twenty-four-hour store with forty-three minutes before the next bus. The enormous blue sign turns the mostly empty parking lot the color of a swimming pool, and the automatic doors open on air-conditioning cold enough to raise goose bumps over my arms.
The clothing department is quiet. Owen throws dark sweatpants, hoodies, work gloves, and two black face coverings into the cart with no interest in whether anything fits beyond being big enough.
Halfway to the register, I stop beside a rack of women’s clothes.
Mom was wearing a white nightgown in the photograph Mason sent. No shoes that we could see. I put a soft cotton set she’d like in the cart, a pack of thick socks, and a pair of slip-on shoes.
We pay cash at the self-checkout and stuff everything into a cheap backpack.
After that, the trip becomes bus stops. We wait beneath fluorescent lights in one town and outside a closed laundromat in another.
Somewhere after three, Owen sleeps for thirty minutes with his head tipped back. I don’t sleep at all.
Every connection takes us closer to Mom and farther from Bianca. By the time the final bus leaves us beside an empty dark road, the sky has begun to pale behind the trees.
We walk the rest of the way.
Owen carries the backpack on his good shoulder until his stride changes. I take it without asking and ignore the look he gives me. The road narrows as the houses spread farther apart, each one hidden behind walls or hedges that tower over us. We change quickly behind one of the looming hedges.
I pull the hood up over my head and look at Owen.
“Dressed like a burglar and you still look friendly, Freddie. How is that possible?”
Usually I’d have an answer. This morning, I tug the mask higher and keep walking.
“You nervous?”
“About saving my mom or facing Bianca?”
Owen scans the road behind us.
I pull the mask away from my mouth. “Fuck yeah. To both.”
I hate this. I hate going against her wishes. I hate the thought of her already awake, realizing we left her. That I left her. Disappointed her.
My father’s crash pad sits behind a stone wall and a black metal gate, larger than it looked in Mason’s photographs. In the quiet, the box beside the road gives off a faint electrical buzz. And somewhere inside this place, my mother.
We could be walking into a trap. But I can’t let him sell my mother’s body to strangers on the internet. I couldn’t live with myself.
I’ve managed his properties for years. The girlfriends never surprised me. This did.
Owen touches my arm. “We get your mom. We get out of here and go home to our omega.”
The words pull me away from the upstairs window. The curtain is closed now. Every window is dark.
His hand remains on me until I look at him. Whatever he finds must be enough, because he releases my arm and checks the road again.
We wait behind the wall while night drains out of the sky.
Ten minutes pass, then twenty. I keep my attention on the gate and try not to imagine Bianca awake, Mom upstairs, or my father touching either of them.
The camera turns a few degrees, pauses, and turns back.
Owen tracks the rhythm against the schedule on the burner.
Headlights flare against the drive.
The gate begins to open, and a dark vehicle rolls toward the road, wide enough to block the camera’s view of the far pillar for a few seconds.
Owen moves first. I follow him out of the trees and across the damp pavement, keeping the vehicle between us and the lens as it turns onto the road.
The gate is already closing when we reach it.
Owen catches the edge with his good hand, and I squeeze through the narrowing space before taking the weight from him.
The gate seals behind us.
Bianca
I wake on my stomach with one leg thrown over a pile of pillows and stickiness between my thighs.
My body aches in all the good places, the slow, used-up kind of sore that makes me want to stretch with satisfaction and then not move for another hour. Weller’s knot kept me full until I couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore.
I smile into the blanket.
The nest is perfect. Honey and cedar, blackcurrant and spice, amber, teakwood - every one of them worked into the pillows and blankets. My omega is still half asleep, warm and smug and pleased with herself.
I reach behind me for whoever is supposed to be there.
My hand finds a cold sheet.
The space in front of me is empty too. I lift my head. Pillows, tangled blankets, the dent where somebody slept beside me. No bodies.
Someone is cooking sausage.
My stomach growls so hard it almost hurts. Of course Freddie is making breakfast. Apparently the mountain of pastries he brought home yesterday did not satisfy his need to feed me until I require assistance rolling from room to room.
I push up slowly. The soreness between my legs practically screams, along with the fact that I am naked and mildly disgusting. A shower can wait until after food. I drag one of the blankets around me and step off the mattress.
The den is cool and washed in pale morning light. The balcony doors are closed, the ocean gray beyond the glass, the distant hiss of frying and music too low to make out.
They must be letting me sleep.
Which is sweet. Suspicious, but sweet.
I pull on a shirt from the edge of the nest. It falls to the middle of my thighs and smells like Tristan.
Water runs somewhere down the hall. I follow it to one of the bathrooms and find the door partly open. Steam curls through the gap.
Tristan stands beneath the shower with his back to me, both hands working shampoo through his hair. Foam slides down his shoulders. His eyes are closed, his mouth relaxed in a way it almost never is when he’s thinking.
My libido rears its head, but I tamp it down. Absolutely not. We need food.
Classical music grows clearer as I cross the hall. Strings and piano, soft enough that the ocean still pushes beneath it. Weller stands at the stove with his back to the doorway. He’s fully dressed, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, one hand turning sausages in a pan.
He doesn’t see me.
Watching Weller when he doesn’t know he’s being watched feels unfairly intimate.
Mine.
I could walk up behind him and put my mouth between his shoulder blades. Slide my hand into the front of his pants. See if all that control survives me on my knees while the sausage burns.
My stomach growls again.
Fine. Sausage first.
I look toward the island, expecting Freddie to pop up from the pantry. The counter has been cleaned. Yesterday’s bakery boxes and mess are gone.
They must be working on the cameras. I back away before Weller notices me and check the office, then the lower landing. Both empty.
I return to the den to check the balcony. The balcony is empty.
I turn back toward the nest. A piece of paper sits on the table beside the flowers. I don’t remember it being there last night. Then again, I was busy arguing about the plan for Colleen, getting knotted, and losing consciousness.
The note is folded once.
Sorry, Princess. Do not try to follow us.
I read it again.
The words stay the same.
Sorry. Do not try to follow. Us.
The paper crushes in my fist.
They left while I was asleep.
No. They waited until I was asleep.