3. Caleb
Chapter 3
Caleb
I curl my fingers into the hat on my lap. It’s hard not to critique Eli’s driving. For one, he’s driving my car. And we’ve been going in circles for hours. Literally and figuratively.
After he picked me up at the school, the detective sufficiently ditched, he pried the entire story out of me. At some points, I let information go willingly. But others… He slowed the truck, and out my secrets came. It was impulsive, like vomiting. I couldn’t have stopped the words if I tried.
They now float between us, although I’m suffocating.
We have made no progress searching for her. We started near the prison. I stood on the corner of an intersection three blocks away, bits of shattered glass under my shoes. The car had already been towed. Robert…
I don’t know. Hospital, I imagine. The detective didn’t mention anything else.
“Just so I’m reading this right… your folks hate Margo because of something her dad did?”
“Basically.” I run my hand over my face.
“And your mom just… left. She dropped you off with Uncle Evil and said, bye honey, see you…?”
“She went upstate. To some sort of… I don’t know. She called it treatment, but I’m pretty sure it was a resort.” I laugh at the memory of her selling it to me that way. That she needed this place to recalibrate and deal with her grief . “She’d call every once in a while, drop in when she needed more money from my uncle. She’s been around more recently, although I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.”
“Oh, Lydia.” Eli scowls. “And meanwhile, you were a punching bag for your uncle.”
“He’s a twisted fucker,” I mutter.
“Karma will get him.”
He’s confident in that assessment, but he’s wrong. Rich men don’t often bow to fate. They’re the exception to the rule. Always have been… always will be. I’d love nothing more than for my uncle to pay for what he’s done, but it just won’t happen.
I feel as helpless as ten-year-old Caleb.
My phone buzzes. I freeze at the text from Unknown, but it’s just a string of numbers.
Followed by…
Unknown
Time’s ticking, Asher.
“What the hell is this?”
Eli pulls over to get a better look. He copies the numbers over into his phone’s web browser, and a location pops up as the first result.
In Rose Hill.
I sit up straighter. “Is this—did they?—?”
“I mean, it looks like it.”
He zooms in on the area. It’s an old, abandoned farm. The owner was a bit crazy, totally believed in the end of the world, and built a bunch of bunkers in one of the pastures. An old hay barn is still standing, and I think the place is littered with rusted equipment.
It would be the perfect place to hide Margo.
“Fuck.” Eli squints at it. “What if we actually find her here?”
Time’s ticking, Unknown said. Which makes me think they did something to Margo. I withhold my fear, my throat closing, while Eli taps on his phone again.
He puts the location into the maps, and it routes us there.
Ten minutes away.
I glance at him. “What did you mean, what if we actually find her?”
Eli chews his lower lip. “The detective seems to think you’re involved. Suddenly finding her…”
“It’s better than not finding her,” I argue. Consequences be damned. “Go.”
He nods and hits the gas. We fly toward the swath of no-man’s-land between Rose Hill and Stone Ridge. Rumor has it this area is haunted, but every story is different. Some say the owner of the bunkers was convinced the apocalypse was coming and locked people in. Others say we had a cult on our hands and it was mass suicide. Ghosts, buried bodies…
None of it is true, but the temperature seems to noticeably drop when Eli turns onto the gravel driveway.
Coincidence. The bunkers are in the distance, the roof of the barn just visible over the hill. There’s swampy, dark water on either side of the road. Feeble stalks of grass poke out, waving in the wind.
He stops the car just shy of the top of the hill. “What if they’re there?”
I laugh. “You’re asking me this now?”
“I mean, they could be armed.”
“That’s not stopping me.” I raise my eyebrow. “And your headlights give us away.”
“Shit.” He lets off the brake. “If we get shot, you owe me.”
We crest the hill.
Nothing.
Nothing visible in the darkness anyway. My car’s headlights only illuminate so much. The barn is the first thing, and beyond that, remnants of a fence and the first bunker beyond.
I shove all my emotions down. I can’t afford to be hopeful or nervous or… terrified. We’re going to be smart about this. Logic over emotions. I want to burst into the buildings, scream her name, get her back.
What are the chances this is a trap?
I find the folded knife he keeps in his glove box and flip it open. With the tip, I point to the white-walled bunker just behind the barn. “You check that bunker. I’ll take the barn.”
“You want to split up?”
I glare at him and hop out without answering. With a groan, he follows.
We split up. The barn is old. It creaks and rattles in the wind, like it’s protesting even still standing. There’s a chain on the huge sliding doors, a thick, rusty padlock hanging from the center.
I keep moving. If someone got her in here, there would be a sign. Knife in one hand, my phone in the other, I use its flashlight to search for any disturbance on the ground.
All the while keeping my ears open for Eli. His shout of success could come at any moment.
My heart races. It might burst before I find her.
I come to a smaller door. Without hesitation, I kick it in. The frame splinters with a crack , and the door bangs against the wall.
I step into what was once an office. There’s a desk in the corner, heavily tilted to one side. Thick dust covers everything. I creep through the door, into the main part of the barn. There are some stalls, but the rest is open. My attention goes to the hay stacked along one wall. The debris on the dirt floor.
And then… her .
My hopes soar. I rush to where she lies on the floor, curled on her side.
Her dark hair covers her face, and her hands are bound in front of her with duct tape. Her ankles are bound, too.
I fall to my knees in front of her and brush her hair back. Her eyes are closed, but she’s breathing. There’s a gash on her head. It’s not bleeding anymore, the trail of it down her temple and jaw tacky to the touch. It’s down her face and neck, soaked in her shirt collar.
No jacket.
No shoes.
“Margo,” I whisper, rolling her onto her back. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
She groans. My heart jumps at the sound.
Her lips are nearly blue, her skin too pale.
I swing my light around, making sure we’re alone in the barn. I need to get her out of here. She was in a car accident, and then who knows what happened to her between now and then. I pick her up, wincing at how cold she is.
She’s been out here for hours. I didn’t notice the bite of the wind, but for her to be alone, with no coat or shoes…
She could’ve almost died.
I cradle her head to my chest and hurry back the way I came.
I almost crash into Eli. His flashlight sweeps across my face, then Margo’s. His eyes widen, and without a word he leads the way back to my car.
He opens the back door for me. I slide in without releasing her, holding her close, and he makes sure her feet are fully in before he shuts the door. His eyebrows hike when he makes contact with her skin.
Without asking, he blasts the heat. He cranes around. “Hospital?”
“No shit.”
He lifts a shoulder. “Just making sure you don’t want to do this the private way.”
I scoff.
The private way would probably land me in more hot water with the Rose Hill Police Department, and it would involve asking my uncle to call his physician. That old man has patched me up a few times in the last seven years…
But since Uncle has a grudge against the Wolfe family, I think he’d rather enjoy denying her care.
I stroke Margo’s hair and will her to wake up. Her face is peaceful—minus the blood—and she could almost pass for sleeping. Still, it doesn’t negate that some asshole abducted her and left her for dead. Without a coat or shoes.
I’m going to kill them.
I shift and slide my phone out, thumbing a message to Unknown.
Me
I’m going to find you.
“You don’t think your family was behind this, do you?” Eli glance back.
The ride is smoother now that we’re back on the main road.
I tug at the tape on Margo’s wrists. “We’ve been operating under the assumption that Unknown is our age. I think that is still accurate. My uncle wouldn’t be so…”
Sloppy comes to mind.
As harsh as it sounds, I don’t think he’d leave Margo alive, let alone somewhere I could find her. Even more unlikely that he’d point me in her direction.
He grunts. “Does she have her phone on her?”
I shift her, feeling her pockets. “Nope.”
“How’s she doing?”
“It’d be great if you could drive faster,” I grit out.
I’m not a doctor, but Margo being unconscious isn’t a good sign.
It’s probably a really fucking bad one.
Eli’s already driving fast, but he stomps down on the accelerator and learns what kind of engine is under the hood of my car. It whines as we climb faster and faster, and he barely makes the turn into the hospital’s emergency entrance.
“We’re here, we’re here.” We coast to a halt.
As soon as the car stops moving, I fling the door open and maneuver out. I keep Margo tight against my chest so she doesn’t bounce.
Eli follows me inside, the car forgotten.
I should’ve taken the tape off her arms and legs .
A nurse rushes toward me. “What happened?”
“I—she was abducted. We found her.”
Chaos.
We’re swarmed with nurses or doctors—maybe both. One instructs me to set her on a gurney. Another leans over her with a penlight, cracking open one eye, then the other. They shuffle me backward, but the first one’s gaze stays on me.
“This is the missing girl?”
I nod woodenly. “Margo Wolfe.”
“Sit down, son,” someone orders. “We’ll take good care of her.”
The original nurse leads me to a chair in the waiting room. “Is that your car?”
I open my mouth to say it is, but Eli puts his hand on my arm.
“I’ll go move it,” he says.
“It’s in the way of the ambulance bay,” she explains. “There’s a parking?—”
“I know. I’ve got it.”
He leaves, his back straight. He was just in Chicago with his parents… we didn’t talk about his trauma—or family drama. Seems like it was better left in Illinois. But I imagine he won’t be eager to rush back here, after spending so much time in a hospital only weeks ago. He’ll be gone for a while.
It doesn’t matter. He helped me by getting Margo here, and that’s all I needed.
I hunch lower in my chair and eye the people going in and out of the emergency department. Margo is behind a locked door. Just when I had her in my arms again…
Eli’s dad bursts into the waiting room, gaze swinging around before he finds me. He’s usually a composed man, but right now… he hurries in my direction, motioning for me to stand up.
“Where’s the fire?” I ask.
He grimaces.
The next person through the sliding glass doors is Detective Masters.
“His goal is to make a scene,” Mr. Black says to me. “He wants to trip you up because he has no evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“He wants to bring you down to the station for questioning. He thinks you—it doesn’t matter. It’s best if we go along with it, let him talk to you with me there. He’s threatening to get an arrest warrant if you don’t go amicably. It’s a bunch of bullshit, if you ask me, but it’s harder to scrub that from your record.”
“I can’t leave Margo.” I grab Josh Black’s wrist. “I just found her.”
“Mr. Asher,” Detective Masters calls.
He’s got a gleam in his eye like he’s about to enjoy this next part. I wish I knew what I did in our ten-minute interview to make such an impression. I’ve never met the man before—and Masters as a family name doesn’t sound remotely familiar.
“You need to come down to the station with me,” he says.
What will be the first thing Margo sees when she wakes up? Someone who doesn’t give a fuck about her? Her social worker, or worse, the detective himself? No . She needs to know it was me who found her?—
“I need to be here for Margo,” I say.
“Now, Caleb, I doubt Margo would want to hear that you refused to help on her case.” He sighs. “Just imagine how hurt she might be by that information.”
“Come on, son,” Josh Black whispers.
I feel the detective’s sharp eyes on me, waiting for some hint of my guilt. It’s no different to how my uncle looks at me—although I’m not so sure Masters would take a swing at me just for the sake of it.
Maybe only if no one was watching.
It’s clear I’m not going to win this fight. The sooner I answer his questions, the faster I can return to Margo’s side.
“Fine,” I grit out.
The detective grips my upper arm. His hold is strong, his fingers digging into my muscles, and he forcibly guides me out of the hospital. At the curb beyond the ambulance bay, his unmarked police car flashes blue-and-red lights.
Lenora, Margo’s foster mom, nearly crashes into us on our way out. She grabs my shoulders, stopping my forward movement.
“Caleb! D-Detective Masters!” Her attention bounces back and forth, and her brows furrow when she realizes he’s still holding my arm. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Just have a few questions for Mr. Asher here,” the detective says.
I would very much like to punch him in the face.
Break his nose maybe.
“But—”
“We’ve got to get going.” He sounds apologetic. “I’ll be back to the hospital once Margo is awake.”
She nods, scanning my face, then steps to the side. Mr. Black pauses beside her, and I crane around when she says something to him. I can’t make out their words.
Masters hauls me along faster, and his grip gets tighter. “Like that little show, did you, boy? You have a grim look on your pretty face. Heh. Not used to getting caught, more like.”
I say nothing, even if he couldn’t be farther from the truth.
He puts me in his car, his hand heavy on the back of my head.
He hasn’t arrested me, but it sure feels like he’s about to cart me off and lock me away. My mind jumps ahead to the implications, and what my uncle would do when he finds out, then circles back to Margo.
Uncle David will get me out if Josh Black fails to negotiate with the detective. Even if he has to pave my exit in gold.
It wouldn’t be the first thing the Asher family has covered up.