“I guess we’re going to have to nab the sister too,” he says before towing me up the stairs. I can’t take my eyes off Jaxon until Peter kicks at the hatch. It slams down, cutting him off from my view. The last thing I see is Jaxon’s body falling forward.
I start flailing my arms, kicking and screaming at this horrible man. How could we have missed the signs of what he truly was? He was around us for years, yet we never realized he was a psychopath. If only we’d seen the truth, none of this would have happened.
Pain rips across my skull as Patricia grabs my hair and yanks me off Peter. He cocks his fist back and slams it into my jaw. Pain explodes, then darkness takes over.
My head and jaw are throbbing when I wake, stuffed into the back of their fucking trunkagain. Tears stream down my face as I remember my last view. Jaxon! One of the loves of my life, gone. How am I supposed to go on? He was killed trying to protect me. How is Jacinta ever going to look at me again when she finds out I killed her brother, her twin? How areanyof them going to be able to look at me again? I wish he’d killed me, too.
Sobbing, my body shudders, unable to control myself. I don't care what happens now. This has gone on too far; the cost has been too high, My mother, Luke, Cecelia, Raquel, Julia, and now Jaxon. It’s too much.
Gritting my teeth, I get a hold of myself, a wave of ice cold fury washing through my veins. I’ll mourn later, but now, I plot. They haven’t tied me up this time; I guess they figured it wasn’t necessary since I was knocked out. I feel around in the truck for something I can use as a weapon, my heart racing when the car slows, but then it bumps up and down like the first time we went to our place. Why would we be going back there? Surely that place is crawling with agents now, and they know there’s no other book there.
My heart sinks as the car stops because I haven't been able to feel anything I could use as a weapon. I was hoping for a tire iron or a crow bar, but I guess that was just wishful thinking. When the trunk finally opens, Patricia grins gleefully at me.
“Behave, Harlow, or I’ll put a bullet in every family member I see. Just like lover boy.” If there was anything she could say to keep me in line, this was it.
When she helps me out of the trunk, I look around, but I don’t recognize where we are at all.
“Where are we?” I ask them as she pushes me along after Peter. He’s leading us into a grove of pine trees, which totally isn’t the perfect place to dump a body or anything like that.
“You obviously haven't explored every part of this property yet,” Peter calls back as the trees surround us. They’re so close together that not much light gets through. The bright moon-lit night is filtered through dense branches, so it’s almost as if there’s no moon. Peter curses as he trips over something on the ground, then he rights himself, his phone in his free hand. The flashlight app shines, lighting up a little shack in front of us. It looks like an old wood shed or something. Peter tries to pull the door open, but tree debris has built up around the door, making it hard. He curses and uses his foot to pull everything away, finally yanking the door open. Inside the shack is a concrete box with familiar-looking elevator doors. He pushes a button, and it lights up. I can hear the whirring of machinery, and before long the doors open to us.
Patricia shoves me in after Peter before squeezing herself in. There's not a lot of room, so it’s a snug fit, but the doors close behind her, then we move downward.
“This is one of the escape tunnels. It leads back to the house, but there’s another that branches off and leads directly under your dad’s place, coming up on the far side of it. The back of your dad’s property has a matching shed just like this one. We’ll come up there and have the element of surprise because no one will be expecting us. Idiots think it belongs to the gas company. I guess money doesn’t buy intelligence.”
The elevator doors open, bringing us into the tunnel system. There are no automatic lights in this one, so Peter continues to use his flashlight app to light our way. Before we go any further, though, Patricia yanks me to a stop. She’s got a bag over her arm, and she pulls a roll of tape out of it.
“Sorry, Harlow, can’t have you making any noise to give us away.” She smirks as she pulls off a piece of tape, practically slapping it across my mouth, then she ties my hands together with cable ties. “Right, let’s get moving.”
I don't know how long we walk. It feels like hours, but it can’t have been all that long. When we exit the shack, the moon is high in the sky. A sound has me looking up to the sight of the family helicopter winging away from Dad’s home.
“Yes!” Peter whisper-yells. “They fell for it. Come on, let’s hurry. I want to be in and out.”
“We don't even know where the book is,” Patricia hisses as we follow after him. The ground is uneven, and it’s hard to go fast because I keep stumbling.
“Carmen told Julia the only room they weren’t able to ransack was Brad’s office. It was locked the day they broke in, and they didn't have time to break the door down. That’s where we’ll start.”
“Why did Carmen tell Julia all those things?” Patricia asks exactly what I had been thinking. How stupid was the twins’ mother?
“Carmen thought they had a solid partnership even though she had betrayed Julia by giving the twins to Brad. She never outright said she was looking for a book, and she probably thought Julia was too stupid to realize the break-in was about more than just making an easy buck. Now that we know the book we have is incomplete, this is the only answer. Lucky for us, with both Julia and Carmen out of the way, it’s more profit in our pockets.” Peter’s tone is gleeful, the sick bastard.
Again, Peter is happy to share everything in front of me. I just know I’m not going to get through this alive, whether he shoots me or because they sell me off into their trafficking ring when I don’t end up pregnant.
I look around us, and I finally recognize the cross-country course that we had ridden what feels like years ago now, though in reality it was only a few weeks. A few weeks since Holden had been shot. God, I was responsible for that, too, even though it was Luke who pulled the trigger. I’m just toxic for this family. If we all somehow get out of this alive, I’ll move far away, run a little practice in some podunk town, and be an old cat lady. I’m sure they’ll be able to find homes for the cubs and Nyx. I don't think I could stand to live in the house Jax gave me without him.
The tape stops another sob from leaving my mouth, but the tears continue to stream down my cheeks as I blindly follow Patricia and Peter. They must have made this trek before because they seem to know where they're going. Finally, we make it to the stables, and I peek up at where I know there’s a camera. The little red light is blinking, and I can only pray that there’s someone monitoring the feed full time at the moment.
As Peter peers around the corner of the building, Patricia yanks me close. “Remember, one wrong move and you will be responsible for the deaths of anyone we come across.”
“Let’s go,” Peter whispers, gesturing for us to move. Patricia keeps her gun at my back. As we cross the open section of grass that’s used as the helipad, I frown. Where’s all the security? There should be at least someone positioned on the back patio, if not a couple more, but there’s no one.
There are lights on in the living room, but I can’t see anyone in the house. We creep past the pool and across the back patio until we get to the glass doors. They’re closed, but they easily open when Peter tries the handle. Theclickis deafening to me, like a gunshot, but the space around us remains disappointingly empty. Goddamn it, why don't we have a dog? A big vicious attack dog. Patricia pushes me through the doors, and Peter gestures for me to go ahead.
“You first. Take me to your dad’s office.” There’s nothing to do but bring him where he wants me to go. I look at one of the cabinets that I know hides a gun, but I can’t take the risk that there might be people in the other wings of the house. If I tried for it, Patricia wouldn't hesitate to shoot anyone who interfered.
So I lead them down the hallway, praying no one is in there and that they may be distracted enough that I can get my hands on the gun in his bottom desk drawer. How I’ll manage that with my hands tied is a problem for future Harlow.
Breathing deeply through my nose, I push the door open and step in.
