Chapter 24 – Ferrin #2
Me: I say we threaten the girl and get whatever money the mother has then we kill them both.
Sven: That works too. You good to take care of that?
Me: I’m good. You find the tiara.
Sven: And Rhys. I’ll find his ass and kill him.
Me: No loose ends.
Sven: No loose ends. Text after you ransom the girl.
Me: Later.
I wipe my hand across my mouth. Jesus fucking Christ. What a goddamn mess. One thing is certain. I’m glad I killed Lars. And if I could kill him all over again, I would.
I text the princess’s mother. The meeting point is farther north than we are now by a decent amount.
It’s far beyond the forest or the cottage.
It’s almost near the Italian, Swiss, and Messalinian borders.
I wonder why she wants to meet there. Is there where she lives?
Desta said she didn’t know the details of her mother’s life.
Yet I can’t imagine she’d give them an address that could be tied to her beyond a swapping point.
Me: I have the girl. I’ll be at the meeting point in six hours.
She too replies immediately.
A: Four. You’re not that far from it. You don’t need six.
Me: Five hours. Not a minute before.
Sven has Lars’s location set, and it won’t take long before word about the unknown body spreads.
I can’t bring the phone with us. It’s too risky.
I reset the phone to factory mode so it’s untraceable as his, then wipe it down completely so there’ll be no prints and wrap it in a towel.
Then I get changed, pack up my shit, and return to her room.
She’s ready to go, and we don’t waste time.
I grab the bloody towels she used to clean herself up along with her bloody clothes. I don’t have a way of disposing of them now, so we’ll have to figure that out.
I need to talk to her more about her mother. About what’s happening. And I need whatever information she has, both from memories and anything she knows about her mother.
She takes my hand, her bag on her shoulder, and we stay close as we head downstairs. At this early hour, the lobby is quiet, and the person at the desk is sitting in a chair engrossed in a paperback.
We don’t check out. Both of our rooms are paid through the festival, and that could work in our favor when they come looking for us.
We make it outside without being stopped, and I take her around the block to where I parked the car.
I shake out the towel with Lars’s phone into a random bush and keep going.
“We’ll stop for food on the road.”
“What are you hiding from me?”
I hold in my grin. How can she tell that? “What makes you think I’m hiding something?”
“Because you weren’t this jumpy until you went back to your room. Is it”—she looks around—“the man from last night?”
“Part of it.” We reach the car down a residential street. I hit the button to unlock it, and we climb in.
“We could go to the police,” she says, and I throw her a look. “I know. But we could tell them it was self-defense. That he followed and threatened me, and you stepped in and saved me. We’d give them one of your aliases.”
“You know that can’t happen, right? It wouldn’t take much until they figured out who I am—my face is fucking everywhere, even if it looks different—and they’d figure out that I worked with him.
I’ll go to jail.” I start the car but turn to her.
“Are you having second thoughts? Do you not want to stay with me through the festival?” I work to keep my expression neutral, but the thought hurts more than it should for only knowing her for four days.
“I wouldn’t blame you. Being with me puts you at risk.
If you want to go to the police, I won’t do anything to stop you.
Just give me a few hours’ head start and don’t give them my real name. ”
I get a head tilt. “I don’t want to turn you in.
I want to stay with you. It was only a thought.
I don’t know. It was a dumb thing to say.
You’re right. We can’t go to the police.
I just don’t know what happens to me after the festival.
It almost seems like a frivolous and trite dream given everything that’s happening now. Given who, well, who I could be.”
I grip the back of her neck. “I don’t think it’s frivolous or trite. I think if you have a dream you can make a reality, you should. That’s not something most of us get. After that, we’ll have more to talk about.”
She swallows. “Okay. Let’s go.”
I pull away from the curb and take us out of town. The spot I’m thinking of is tough to get to and therefore more remote than others. We’ll have to camp out and will need supplies for that to happen, but that feels safer than testing out another hotel. I’m running out of personas anyway.
The festival will be tricky. Her mother and Sven, when he catches up to what I’ve done, will be looking for her there. They’ll know immediately that Desta didn’t slit Lars’s throat. They’ll know it was me. So any bullshit we tell them that we’re apart won’t fly.
As if reading my thoughts, she says, “I’m going to text my mother and tell her that a man tried to attack me, and I killed him. I’m going to tell her that he told me she sent him to kill me.”
I blink at the road ahead, thinking that through. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I don’t want her to know you’re with me.”
“Why?” I press.
“It’s safer for you. I’m in this no matter what. But you don’t have to be.”
“Except I texted both of them as Lars this morning.”
Her breath shakes. “So… my mother really did send him for me?”
Shit. “Yes. She did. He was supposed to take you up to a meeting point about a four-and-a-half-hour drive from here all the way up by Switzerland. Do you know any reason she’d be that far north?”
She shakes her head. “No. I never knew where she went. She wasn’t going to have him kill me?”
“Doesn’t seem that way.”
She nods and turns to the window.
“Sven and Lars were going to, though. Your mother paid a ransom for you and was going to give them more upon your delivery. They planned to get the money, then kill both of you and tie up all loose ends. I texted with him about it this morning as Lars.”
“Can I see her texts to him?”
“I don’t have the phone. That’s what I dropped in the bushes this morning. I cleared the phone so there’s no record of anything from that end.”
Her shoulders rise and fall heavily. “I guess I should be relieved my mother doesn’t want me dead.
Maybe she does love me. If I’m Desta, I don’t know why she took me from the woman who had me before, and I don’t know if that woman is who originally took me from the palace.
Why keep me alive all these years if she’s not my actual mother?
I have so many questions, and I want answers.
But one thing is clear. It’s dangerous for you to be with me.
I was seen with him last night. You weren’t. ”
Fuck. Killing him the way I did is getting messy.
She’s the princess. Having her take the heat for killing a man and running won’t look good.
Then again, Lars has a rap sheet longer than my dick.
The world won’t be sad he’s gone, and the bartender can likely corroborate that she tried to push Lars off and he followed her.
The issue is the texts.
But I don’t care all that much if her mother and Sven know I’m with her, though if they think I’m not, it gives me the advantage of surprise.
“What are your thoughts about your mother?” I go with instead because I’m still working this through, and I don’t want to do anything rash.
“I don’t know,” she admits, honesty, resentment, and grief tangling in her voice. “I’m so torn about everything.”
I want the tiara, but I likely won’t get it now.
Not with it actually being hers. I’ll settle for the necklace and what that will give me.
Originally, I was going to use her to get the royal family to pardon me in exchange for bringing home their lost princess.
Possibly even cash in on the reward for her.
Now… I’m not sure.
I should have kept my distance. I needed to be ruthless, and now I can’t be.
I’m fucking her, but I won’t lie to myself and say it’s not more than that. Because it is. She’s more than that and doesn’t deserve me using her. Not again. I won’t seek the reward, and I won’t ask for a pardon. I can manage on my own. I was going to anyway.
I never believed in hard limits or lines I wouldn’t cross, and I made sure my enemies and the people I created temporary alliances with knew that. Then she came along, and suddenly I’m burning down shit I never would have taken a match to before.
And I have no plans of stopping now.