1. Arden
Arden
I’m asleep until the car stops, but that’s nothing new.
At this point, I’ve been moved more times than I can count, and it’s always the same: I’m woken in the middle of the night and told roughly to put on shoes and get ready for a trip.
I stumble through the darkness of yet another faceless room with only a bed and a dresser, finding the few things I’ve been allowed to keep, and then I’m rushed into a car by a man I don’t recognize and taken to another house–another building–where I find another room exactly the same as the one I was in before.
Presumably a different city, but otherwise exactly the same.
I’ve lost track of how long it’s been going on.
Weeks? Months? I can’t remember the last time I truly saw the outdoors–the cars are usually in parking garages–but I know it’s been some time since that night in the cafe, when Professor Hawke hauled me and Stella out into the alleyway and then shoved Stella at a different group of men.
The image of her being carried away, her head lolling in helpless repose as the men hoist her up, flashes sharply across my brain, and I gasp, then realize the car has stopped and sit up.
“Where are we?” I ask immediately, the familiar terror rushing through me. Yes, I’ve been through this multiple times–too many times to count–but familiarity hasn’t bred comfort.
Not even close.
The men who have me have never touched me or even threatened me, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. Every time they move me, I fear the next location. Fear what I might find there.
“None of your fucking business,” the man behind the wheel snaps.
I shut my mouth at that, afraid to ask any more. Afraid that this might be the time when one of them actually reaches back and hits me for asking too many questions.
Punishes me for speaking when I’m not supposed to speak.
He gets out of the car and moves quickly around to my side, then yanks the door open and reaches for me. I pull back, terrified of being touched again, but of course it does no good. It never does any good.
I can try to run as much as I want.
I don’t have anywhere to go.
He pulls me roughly from the car and I somehow manage to get my feet under me before I hit the ground...
and then realize that my feet aren’t on pavement.
This isn’t the cold, hard press of concrete under my feet.
And there’s not echoing presence of a roof over my head.
No dull roar of a city around us. No sirens, no engines, no shouts.
Just pure, blissful silence.
Grass under my feet.
The smell of pine trees, sharp and pungent and glorious, in my nose.
Christ on a bicycle, I’m outside.
The thought brings a rush of joy so pure it almost drives me to my knees, and I look up and around quickly, trying to figure out where I am and how I got here.
It’s pitch dark, though, and I can barely see anything.
The outline of a forest around us and the lights of a building in the distance, penned in by the darkness of trees and the deeper black of the sky overhead.
I turn my face up to the sky and take in the vast array of stars over me, the air bright and chilly and free as it brushes across my skin.
Fucking hell, I’ve never been happier to feel fresh air, and it’s such a silly thing that I feel laughter bubbling up my throat at the thought. I let one huffed laugh out, incapable of keeping it, in, and the man jerks me to the side, growling a threat about me getting too comfortable.
That brings me sharply back down to Earth and I pull my thoughts back together, half furious with myself. I don’t have time to stand here staring up at the sky like some sort of dreamer.
Weeks or months ago I was kidnapped, and I still don’t know why. I don’t know where the fuck I am or why I’m here, and that alone is dangerous.
So is the fact that there don’t seem to be many buildings around.
That thought brings a surge of worry with it, and my brain suddenly begins to supply me with all the reasons there might not be buildings around.
My kidnappers being done with me and needing a place where no one can find my body is at the top of the list.
The man in charge pulls me forward and around him, and then shoves me up a walkway, and only now do I realize that I completely missed the other building in the area: a small cottage with a wraparound porch, one light twinkling in the window and honest-to-God flowers in the flower box below it.
The thing is charming in a way you only find in the country and is the last thing I’m expecting to see.
I’m used to being kept in what feels like basements and attics while my kidnappers do whatever they’re doing, and this time they’ve brought me to something that looks like it belongs in the English countryside.
What the actual fuck is going on here?
I don’t bother to ask–I already know how that will go–and walk forward when the guy shoves me in the back.
I don’t know what we’re doing here or how long I’m going to stay this time, but if it means I get to stay in an actual house rather than a basement, it’s an improvement. Maybe it means things are looking up.
Maybe it means I’ll finally be able to cobble together a plan.
It’s a pipe dream and I know it, but as I walk up the steps to the little house I let myself believe–just for a moment–that it might be true.
The place is decorated like a fucking vacation home.
Like one of those tiny cabins in the mountain you rent with your friends when you want a weekend away at the lake.
Rough wood floors matched by walls built out of whole logs, and throw rugs that look like they’ve been made by someone’s grandma.
A ratty couch takes up one wall and several overstuffed armchairs take up another, and in the corner sits a round table that looks like it’s seen better years.
I can see another room on the other side of this one, with a bed taking up most of the space, and to the left sits a tiny kitchen.
Barely big enough to hold an oven and a coffee maker.
But a kitchen.
It’s been weeks–months?–since I got to cook.
Months since I’ve had coffee.
The man, of course, doesn’t give me any explanation for any of this. He shoves me into the room and drops a bag of things on the floor with a clunk. “Stay here,” he snaps.
Like I actually have any choice.
“For how long?” I risk asking.
I turn and watch him carefully, looking for any sign that he might actually hit me this time, but he’s too busy sneering at his phone.
“Until someone tells me different.”
He doesn’t give me anything more than that. Just casts me one long, disgusted look, like I’m somehow disappointing him even now, and then turns and leaves me alone, slamming the door behind him.
I watch the door for a moment, confused at that look, and then shake my head.
Even my kidnappers are disappointed in me.
I can’t even manage to get kidnapped correctly.
Maybe they should have asked my father before they bothered taking me. Asked him if he’d ever found me satisfactory in any way or if he’s bother paying them whatever they were asking to get me back.
He would have told them no and we could have avoided this whole mess, and that’s the problem right there. Because I might be his only daughter, and look exactly like the wife who died years ago, but that’s never meant I was worth anything to him.
The opposite, actually.
I turn and make my way into the little house, cataloguing the furniture while I let my mind run through the facts as I know them.
I still don’t know who kidnapped me or what they’re trying to do, but I know I’ve been in their hands for some time.
I tried to keep track for a while, but without pen or paper, there was no way to count, and in the end it became too difficult.
I couldn’t tell day from night or Monday from Tuesday, and the constant failure started to wear on me.
One day, I stopped trying. And I never picked it back up again.
I wonder now, for the five hundredth time, where my friends are. I wonder if anyone went back for Taryn and if she’s been kidnapped too, or if she got away–and if she did, whether she sent anyone after us.
Probably not, I realize. She saw us leaving with a man we obviously knew. She wouldn’t have any reason to think we were in trouble. Hell, she’s probably angry at us for leaving her behind.
This brings the thought it always does, though; the memory of those men shooting up the cafe. Taryn might be mad, yes. If she survived.
If she wasn’t shot.
My heart gives three uneven beats at the thought and I double over, hand to my chest. If Taryn is dead...
No. Surely I’d know if she was. I’d feel it. Taryn is one of my best friends and we’ve spent nearly every minute together for years. If she was gone, something in my heart would have broken. I’m sure of it.
That’s what I keep telling myself about Stella, too.
Because I might be able to wonder if Taryn got away, but I can’t wonder that about Stella. I saw her being dragged into the night by men who had already stolen us out of the diner.
I can’t fool myself into think she was anything but kidnapped.
So thinking that I’d know if she was dead... It’s the only way I’ve been able to get any rest.
I turn and stalk down the hall, looking for distraction, but my brain is already taking off the way it always does.
Stella is valuable, and if these guys took us for ransom, I bet her family paid for her right away.
I bet her mother and father couldn’t wait to get her back and paid every last dime to make that happen.
She might not like her father, but he’s always known her value.
This brings another squeeze to my heart and I resolutely turn my thoughts away from that train.
I can’t afford for my heart to take off on me now.
Instead, I walk to the window in the bedroom, bypassing a bed covered in a handmade bedspread that makes me wonder again who decorated this house.
Where am I, and why is this place out in the middle of nowhere? Why have I been brought here?
How much longer are they going to keep me?
The window has a checkered curtain draped across it and I pull it to the side, expecting to see nothing but darkness outside.
Instead, I’m greeted with a series of lights that shows me streets and buildings in the distance.
Rows and of buildings that sit one and maybe two stories tall, with streets crossing through them neatly, every block a different length and the streetlights few and far between.
I see several streets’ worth of what must be businesses, given the signs hanging into the street, and around them, streets that are darker, the buildings sitting at uneven distances from each other.
No one is driving the streets but I can see lights in a few of the houses, shadows moving across the windows as people walk from one room to another.
As I watch those shadows, transfixed, someone somewhere turns on a stereo, and music drifts across the deserted ground between us.
Brown-eyed Girl by Van Morrison.
My grandfather used to sing that to me, though my eyes are hazel, not brown.
This brings a wave of memory so strong it nearly knocks me down. His rough, gentle hands as he held mine in his. The smell of pipe smoke and fires always on his skin. The way his whiskers tickled my cheek when he whispered a joke in my ear.
My heart cracks at the thought and I smile slightly, remembering the only member of my family who ever truly believed in loving me. Then I frown at the scene in front of me.
This isn’t the middle of nowhere. This is a small town, and a thriving one by the looks of it.
Why in the fuck did the kidnapper bring me here, of all places, when they’ve always kept me in the city before?
Why am I holed up in this charming cottage with a town the size of a postage stamp within shouting distance?
Not that it matters, I realize a moment later.
That town might be within shouting distance but that doesn’t mean I can shout at them. And even if I did, it doesn’t mean anyone would respond.
Because the people I call family have already proven they’re not coming for me.
Why the hell would anyone in a town I don’t know, full of complete strangers, bother?
I shut the curtain and turn from the pipe dream of help. I haven’t eaten all day, and there’s a kitchen in this place. I wonder if there’s any food there–and if there is, if I’m allowed to eat it.