She stares at him and then nods, looking around. He points to the back of the plane where there's a door leading into a bedroom, which I found out when I did my recon on the way to the UK.
She disappears into the back of the plane, face blank.
'There's no fucking way both of them dying was an accident,' I say.
'The bodies are piling up,' Mav mutters, then looks apologetically at Shade. 'Sorry.'
'No,' Shade says. 'It's okay. It's just unexpected.' His brow furrows. 'It means Andy's in charge now, though.'
'Is that going to be a problem?' I ask.
'I haven't seen him in months. Not since Daisy arrived. He's been at Harvard all this time. He hasn't come back once, not even to see Pop.'
'Well, he'll definitely be coming back now,' I say, raising a brow and turning away. 'You’re right. We should get our story straight before you go see the cops. Figure out what Sauvage wants you to say. Maybe we decided to take Daisy on a little jaunt to London for four days. A birthday trip.'
'Her birthday's not ’til March.'
'Early gift,’ Mav says with a shrug. ‘It's almost mid-February, isn’t it?'
I check my phone. ‘Fuck.’
‘What?’
‘It’s the fourteenth. Valentine’s Day. With everything… I didn’t even realize.’
‘Me neither,’ Mav says quietly. ‘We should do something. Even if it’s not today.’
Shade nods absently.
I think Mav wants us to give our girl some space, but I decide to go to the back of the plane to check on her. She’s not showing much, and I want to make sure she’s okay… well, as okay as she can be.
I hear her in the shower, and sit on the bed to wait, leaning back and trying to relax. I think I've been in fight-or-flight mode since she was taken. I've slept, but not well, and I feel like my heart is only just starting to go back to its baseline. My body is finally uncurling, my muscles relaxing. I crack my neck, trying to ease the tension.
A few minutes later, I close my eyes, willing myself to remember that Daisy is here with us, and we're not letting her out of our sights again.
I hear the water shut off, and Daisy comes out of the bathroom wrapped in two towels, one on her head and the other around her body. She looks surprised that I'm in the room, but she doesn’t tell me to leave.
'Do you want some alone time?' I ask carefully. ‘I could go. You could get some sleep.’
She doesn’t move, just seems to consider my words, but then shakes her head.
'I… I don’t know what to do,’ she confesses. ‘It feels like it’s been months since I've been by myself. But it’s been just over two weeks. I was kept drugged for the first few days.'
My knuckles crack as my hands ball into fists and she winces at the sound.
'I'msort of afraid that I'm going to wake up and this was all a dream. That I'll still be back at The Heath, freezing my ass off in the cell downstairs.'
'Those fuckers,' I snarl at the reminder of how she was treated, but she just shrugs.
'I hate that you think this is normal,' I say.
'It's not that I think it's normal,' she says, sitting on the bed next to me. 'In fact, I think I finally understand hownotnormal that place is. But for ten years, it was my reality. I wasn't corrected much once I learned the rules. I’d forgotten…' Her lip curls. 'But while I was there, I saw firsthand what they’d done to me when I first went there, how they broke me down and tried to remake me into what they see as normal.’ She snorts. ‘Like normal is a box to fit into so that you can be a part of the world.’
She looks at me. ‘I want that place gone, and I'll do anything I have to do to make sure there's nothing left of it.'
‘I’ll help you. I’ll start on that flash drive as soon as I can.’
She nods. ‘I found those documents, made copies. I just hope that reporter is able to do something, too.’
