33 #3
The floor tilts, even though I’m standing perfectly still.
For half a second, I can’t make my limbs obey.
Pure panic blows up in me, followed by a cold, sinking horror that crawls up my spine and knots at the base of my throat.
My mind scrambles, uselessly replaying the moment I’d found it, the childish certainty that I’d gotten away with something.
But the look in his eyes now? Not surprise.
It’s the exact same one he gave me in the plane when I almost reported him.
He has been watching me hold my own leash.
My fingers move numbly. A click. A rip of Velcro. I pull the phone from my inside pocket, and present it to him.
‘Unlock it.’
I glower.
‘Leah.’
With a sigh, I use my thumb to bring up the card in my wallet, and I hand him the phone.
‘Doesn’t it need a signal?’ I ask, trying to undo the anxiety clustering beneath my collarbone.
A soft beep sounds and a green light flashes as he brushes it over the device.
‘The terminal’s online,’ he says simply.
The cashier smiles awkwardly as Elias tucks it inside his jacket instead of returning it to me. He doesn’t even look at me as he does it.
‘Takk skal du ha,’ he thanks the cashier, then turns, herding me out into the cold again with the sheer pressure of his presence. He doesn’t grab me or push, but I move like someone being led back into a cage either way.
I stop several feet away as he mounts the snowmobile, the light glaring harshly off the snowbanks. The darkness is beginning to thin, and though the growing light brings more clarity, it does little to warm the world.
He exhales heavily as he eats half the chocolate bar and settles back into the seat – the sigh of a disappointed parent. Resigned.
Smacking his lips once, he glances up at me, his pale blue eyes almost aglow against the washed-out white of the landscape behind him.
He looks like the snow has claimed him as one of its own. As if Sunna’s spirits could pass right through him.
Then he holds the rest of the bar out to me.
One meal. Shared.
I stare at it for several breaths. Consider even throwing the chocolate. Consider throwing a tantrum. But in the end, I bend down and bite off a piece.
‘There is nothing you can do, Leah,’ he says calmly against the gentle wind. ‘No way to run. No way to get out of here until I show you how to.’
The words settle in my chest like lead.
Something thick and hot gathers at the base of my throat again, pushing against my swallowing reflex. My eyes sting from the sheer pressure of it. The helplessness. The way he can say something like that with the same tone someone might use to comment on the weather.
‘What the hell do you want with me, Elias?’ I ask again, the question roughening as it leaves my mouth because speculation is beginning to tire me. ‘I think it’s time you told me that.’
He looks down at his hands briefly. That pause, the tiniest delay… as if he isn’t sure how much truth he can afford to hand me.
‘I don’t believe you’ve brought me here just to bully me. Just to punish me or use me,’ I push, forcing the words out. ‘So what is it? Why?’
His gaze travels over the snowmobile’s front, past the handlebars, until it disappears into the distance where the land dissolves into white.
‘Why not?’ he asks, and pulls his gloves from his pocket. ‘I’m a murderer.’ His eyes flick up to mine. ‘Right? A rapist. A kidnapper. A bully.’
My gut twists, but I don’t let it hurt.
‘Are you?’ I cut in quickly, because I’ve learnt the language of the Cranes now. I’ve learnt the shape of his deflection, the way he tries to make himself monstrous so I’ll stop looking for the parts of him that aren’t.
His mouth closes with a sharp click, jaw setting. He watches me for a long moment, still as stone, until he jerks his chin once in silent command for me to get back on the vehicle.
I plant both feet firmly on the ground. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me—’
‘Get on the fucking seat, Leah.’ Blunt. Not loud – but heavy enough to rush the air out of the space between us.
‘There’s no grand reason. No tragic composition you can photograph until it looks less than what it is.
’ He leans forward slightly, his gaze pinning me in place.
‘I’m a sick man. You’re the prey. There’s nowhere for you to run.
You’re in the bear’s cave now.’ His breath fogs in front of him as he adds, quieter but sharper still, ‘So sit down while I still have the patience.’
My pulse knocks against my ribs until I feel it echo in my spine.
I sit down fast and hard, making the machine jolt beneath us.
My movements are clumsy with anger and adrenaline.
Elias reaches for the scarf in his pocket, but I wrench it from his hand and tie it over my own eyes myself, pulling the knot tight enough to hurt.
Then I wrap my legs around him as tightly as I’d wrapped the scarf, and violently drag myself into him.
A dull sound knocks out of him. ‘That’s mature.’
‘I’m done playing nice with you,’ I growl, tightening my legs around him to underline it.
‘About time,’ he whispers.
I wrench the goggles down hard enough for the frame to bite through the blindfold, grateful for the small sting that keeps me tethered to sanity.