Chapter 40
Bastiaan
The fire is just embers now, a soft orange glow painting the cabin walls in slow pulses.
Every time the logs settle, a tiny red eye opens and closes, like the room is trying to stay awake for us.
My body is wrecked—shoulders aching, eyes grainy—but my mind…
it won’t quit. It’s been running since the first rattle of a door handle earlier, and it hasn’t slowed once.
Every time I shut my eyes, Marieke’s in the hospital corridor—smiling when they wheel her past because she doesn’t want me to worry. Then Amber in this chair by the fire, face pale, trying to be brave. Then nothing. Just the cold feeling that comes after a door closes and doesn’t open again.
Somewhere between guilt and fear, sleep finally drags me under.
It’s not real sleep—more like dropping into a hole and hitting the sides on the way down—but it’s enough that the ringing hits me like a slap.
Harsh and mean in the stillness. I flail for the noise, my hand knocking into the table, fingers sliding until I catch the burner vibrating against the wood.
The number on the screen is unfamiliar. I blink hard to focus and swipe.
“Yeah?” My voice is rough, sleep glued.
“Where the fuck is Amber?” Jack’s roar detonates against my ear. I jerk, the phone nearly slipping from my hand.
“What? She’s here. She’s—” The words die as I turn and look at the bed. The other side is empty—the sheet’s cold where her body should be. I blink like that will change what I’m seeing.
No.
I throw the blanket back and stand too fast, everything swaying for a second. My eyes rake the room the way you do when you’ve lost your keys, except this is her—boots, coat, bag—gone. My chest tightens so hard it’s like my ribs are a fist around my heart.
“Bas!” Jack shouts. “They’ve got her. The MC picked her up not far from your damn cabin.
They called me. They want me to know they have her.
My daughter is in their hands because you weren’t fuckin’ watchin’ her!
They wanna meet midnight. Oslo docks. My crew should make it; I won’t be far behind.
You need to clock the place. I wanna know where their men are positioned when I get there. ”
The words hit like physical blows—each one landing and leaving a bruise. I shove my legs into my jeans, nearly hopping to get them up, the phone trapped between my shoulder and ear. “Jack, listen to me—I’ll get her back. I swear to you, I’ll get her back.”
“You better, Van der Meer,” he growls, the anger barely masking something rawer underneath. “Because if she dies—” His voice cuts, like it hits a jagged edge. “If she dies, you won’t have to worry about the MC. I’ll put a fuckin’ ‘.38’ between your eyes without breakin’ a fuckin’ sweat.”
The line goes dead.
I’m left standing in the middle of the cabin with my chest heaving and my mind a blizzard. The embers glow dumbly in the grate; the blanket we shared is twisted on the floor. She was here. She is not here. That’s all my brain can handle for a beat.
Then everything else floods in at once. Panic. Guilt. A hot, dizzy fury at myself. I promised I’d keep her safe. I promised, and I fell asleep.
I grab at anything that looks like a solution.
Gun. Extra cartridges. Keys. Wallet. Phone.
Coat. Boots. I shove my feet in without socks, jam my heels until they thud down.
There’s a flashlight on the shelf; I take it.
The van keys bite my palm. The door slams behind me, and the night slams into my chest—so cold it steals whatever breath I had left.
The forest is a smear of black-on-black, the snow a pale mistake under my boots.
My breath comes out in torn pieces. I stumble to the van, yank the door open, and fall into the seat, hands shaking so hard the keys clack against the steering column before they find the slot.
The engine coughs awake, and I grip the wheel until my knuckles ache.
The track is half-buried, rutted and mean; the tyres spit snow as I jerk the van onto it.
The headlights cut two white tunnels through the trees, lighting up branches heavy with powder as if they’re ducking out of the way.
The world outside is a blur of movement and shadow.
Inside, all I can hear is Jack’s voice: They’ve got her.
I try to pull in breath. It catches high in my chest and stays there, small and sharp.
Images snatch at me as I drive: Amber barefoot in the cabin, pad of her thumb on my cheek; Amber looking out the window when we heard the footsteps; Amber laughing once, days ago, head thrown back, because I told her one of Abel’s knock-knock jokes that wasn’t a joke at all.
Her body hot and tight around me, her nails clawing into my shoulders, and all I could think was that nothing in my life had ever felt as raw, as consuming, or as fucking right as being buried deep inside her.
How long has she been gone? How long was I asleep? Thirty minutes? An hour? Two? My brain claws at the numbers and comes up with nothing but a lot of white noise.
The phone vibrates against my thigh again. I don’t look—just fumble it up to my ear, eyes locked on the ribbon of road.
“Jack?”
“She’s alive,” he says. The words land, and my grip on the wheel tightens with relief so fierce it hurts. “They called again. Tauntin’ me. Big fuckin’ mistake.”
“I’m on my way.” I don’t ask how I’m supposed to fix this because there isn’t an answer. “Text me the exact spot.”
“I’ll forward what I got.” His voice grinds. “Bas, don’t screw this up. They want leverage. They want to make me bleed. But if they so much as scratch her—” The hard-edge falters. “She’s all I’ve got, man. Bring my daughter home.”
“You have my word.” It comes out low, shaking with something that feels like rage but sits too deep to burn off. “I’ll do everything I can to bring her back.”
He hangs up. A second later, the phone buzzes with a message—an address, a pin dropped on a map I don’t need to open to know it’s cold and empty and built for things that don’t care if they crush you.
I push the van harder. The back fishtails, and I correct too fast and then back again, a pendulum swing, the tyres skittering before catching. “Hold on, Amber,” I whisper to the empty seat, because I have to say it somewhere. “I’m coming.”
The forest slides away in chunks. The road widens, then narrows, then snakes past a black line of water shining under the moon like a slit in the world. My thoughts are a snarl—fear, fury, guilt, all wrapped around a single corded thread: go.
I think of Abel. He’ll be sleeping now, sprawled across his little bed with his spaceman pajamas twisted around his legs, one foot always kicked out like he’s trying to touch the world even in dreams. I see his small hand in mine on the way to school, the way he looks up when he has a question and trusts I’ll know.
What if I don’t see him again? What if I’m making the wrong moves in a game I don’t understand?
No. I force the thought back. I can’t carry that and this at the same time. Failure isn’t an option. Not tonight. Not with her.
Hours later, Oslo creeps up out of the dark, a slow swell of streetlights and angled shadows. The roads widen into something that feels like promise and threat at the same time. My phone buzzes again—another message from Jack.
Jack: We’re an hour out. Be smart.
I follow the blue spot of my nav past sleeping warehouses and long, low buildings with corrugated sides that look like they’d sound awful in the wind.
Puddles freeze in thin skins over blacktop, crack under the tyres with small, mean snaps.
The docks are a world built for other people’s business—no one here after hours except the ones with reasons not to be seen.
I kill the headlights a block early and crawl the van forward in the dark.
It’s stupid and makes no real difference, but it feels like something.
When I reach the last corner before the pin Jack sent, I pull over and put the van in park.
The engine ticks like a bomb running out of seconds. I make myself breathe.
Okay. Think.
I’m not a fighter. I’m not a strategist. I don’t have a plan that looks good on paper, even if I had paper.
What I have is a glove compartment full of nothing useful, my gun and spare ammo, a half-used roll of duct tape under the seat from when the side mirror kept rattling, a flashlight, and the tyre iron in the back.
I stuff the gun in the back of my jeans and fill my pockets with the spare cartridges and reach for the tape like an idiot, then stop.
I am not going to tape anyone. I’ve watched too many films. This is real life, and in real life, you bring what you can carry and you hope you don’t need it.
I text Jack.
Me: Here. Waiting. I’ll take a quiet look around if I can. Keep the line open.
I start a call with him and leave it on mute so he can listen if he wants, finger hovering over the speaker icon, then put the phone in my inside pocket where it won’t clatter to the floor if things go wrong. If I go down, at least someone will know.
A wave of feeling hits me so fast I have to put my forehead on the steering wheel.
It’s not just fear. It’s the memory of the nurse—her kind eyes, her careful words—telling me there were complications.
We’re doing everything we can. There’s a chair.
Sit down. The way I couldn’t. The way the corridor clock moved and didn’t move.
How I didn’t get to say goodbye. How I walked out with a baby and a hollow on the other side of me where his mother should have stood.
I can’t do that again.
Why are fragments coming back now?
I lift my head and force my hands off the wheel. The metal is slick with sweat even in the cold. I check my watch—ten past eleven. The meet is at midnight. Forty-nine minutes I need to fill with anything but screaming.