Violet continued to vibrate with tension and excitement I think she thought she was hiding, and I felt it too. Another opportunity to fuck Rafe’s shit up. He was about to see what we could really do.
A few hours later, when we were halfway through a half-assed game of I-spy I’d forced on Violet to focus her mind, my phone buzzed. Christian.
Our plan was solid, but there was a final variable. We didn’t know which route they’d take.
“I know where they’re headed. You need to get there now,” he told me, no hellos, no pleasantries. “Your uncle is going to meet you there.”
“Tell me,” I said, hackles immediately up, gesturing for Vi to pay attention.
And he did. Christian knew where they were going and when. Tonight, eight hours from now, they were moving her from a location near the airport to Rafael’s compound, to where Violet had suffered her worst.
I put my foot down on the accelerator and silently thanked my friend again.
I was saving another sister.
Sixteen
Violet
Sittinginthebackof Theo’s car with a gun in one hand and a protein bar in the other was anticlimactic after the day we’d spent traveling and planning. Or rather, Uncle Connor and Theo had planned while I sat there. We met him only a few hours into the drive, picking him up from what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. Then they sat in the front while I listened, resentment trying to chip away at my resolve.
It was strange seeing Connor again after the last time. Mine and Theo’s decision to run from him after the train station, after what had happened there, well, I can’t imagine it did anything but anger him. He’d expected us to be waiting for him, but we’d stolen from him and disappeared.
When he climbed into the car, he stared at me, turned around in the front seat to let his eyes skirt over all of me, picking me apart. After a few heavy moments, he said nothing, turning back to the front and beginning his talk with Theo. Leaving me to sit and stew and worry.
Theo bristled but let it slide. This was another thing to bury until there was time. Including the brewing resentment in me.
In the back of my mind, trying to break to the forefront, was the question of why they didn’t do this for me? Why they left me to suffer for so long? The more I thought about it, the angrier I got, but I bottled it up. Breathed through their planning and plotting instead of losing my mind. Kind of.
They were coming for Margaret. It took a long damn time for anyone to come for me. Theo was so achingly full of regret for his lack of action, had begged and pleaded with me for forgiveness, so I’d given it. And I meant it. It was him, after all, that had burst through those cabin doors and carried me away to relative safety, to healing. No one had known how bad it could get. Now we did. But still, resentment lingered.
Now it was dark, and I was alone. And that resentment continued to eat at me.
Theo and Connor had left me in the car, tucked up between a heavy copse of trees, demanding I lock the doors and sit tight with no noise and no light. Sit tight. Hide. Be ready to fight with the gun in my hand or flee in the car I hardly knew how to use.
The look on Theo’s face before he turned and left was pained, scared. He didn’t want me alone, but also didn’t want me near any of the danger. He’d given me a hard, demanding kiss, ignoring the shout of horror from Connor, before shutting the door and giving me one last look through the window.
They weren’t far, but it was far enough. A mistake, I think, to leave me alone.
It didn’t fit right, that it was all so close, but out of sight. I needed to see.
I needed to see.
Each time an owl hooted or an animal chirped or a tree branch rustled, I damn near leaped out of my skin I was so jumpy, too much pent up energy they weren’t letting me release. I had a tracker behind my ear at Theo’s insistence, remembering how they’d found me the last time we’d been separated, but I still felt more exposed and alone than I thought I would. Action was calling to me, need crawling under my skin.
Theo’d asked Christian if they had anything that would work to track me, and he directed my brother to a drawer in the surveillance room. Ten minutes and a syringe later, I had a fresh wound behind my ear, a little tracker.
For a moment, I’d wondered what kind of person, what kind of family, we were getting help from, but then I remembered my own and found it just didn’t matter. I didn’t care. As long as Christian was good, I didn’t care.
Ten minutes had wandered by, alone in the car, and still nothing. With the windows wound down, against Theo’s instructions, I heard only the animals and the wind.
Nosiness got the better of me, and against all judgment, I climbed out of the car, through the window, still holding onto that gun, enjoying how heavy it felt in my palm. I stretched out, gave myself time to second guess this stupidity, but I had to know, had to see. I’d killed two men already, one by mistake but the other on purpose. They didn’t need to hide me from the dark side of what they were doing. I’d lived in the black. I started moving.
“Holy crap,” I muttered to myself when I got a little tangled in some brambles, but it was the most direct route, the fastest way just to follow their path, my feet carried me forward, toward the road. I just had to know.
What was happening? Had the cars come by? Was my sister about to appear from behind a tree, bewildered and rescued? Would she be relieved or angry? Spitting feathers or fawning over her family for freeing her from the hell?
I itched to know, felt that blackness settle over me that was becoming too familiar. My palms were crawling with the desire to hurt, to make someone suffer. A person who’d hurt me first. I moved closer to the road, fantasies rolling around my mind as I picked my way through the bushes, wondering how the men had managed it without making noise.
