“If it’s money, I can get you money. Trent has more money than God.”
He leans forward, turning on the car radio and cranking it up to full volume. The speakers vibrate with the overload, making the tune crackle until it hurts my ears.
I slam my palm against the glass behind his head. “Nobody wants to come after you. Drop me anywhere you like, and I’ll make sure you’re never prosecuted, never attacked.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Take me to my mother’s hospice. We can both pretend this bit never happened. You turned up, and you drove me to be with her. I can say that the hospice rang me with an emergency.”
He’s not listening, and I slam my hand against the divider again and again, releasing my frustration. My increasing sense of despair.
“Do you know what that man did to me? Is he really a person you want to associate with?”
He ignores me except to put his foot down, the car moving so quickly that I reach for my seat belt, scared he’s riled enough to make a mistake.
I stare at my sneakers. Wonder if I could kick the glass out with them.
With a pang of instant regret, I see I could have taken out the laces while he wasn’t looking. Taken them out, tied them together, then dropped them over his head and choked him against the head rest.
Too late now. The divider put paid to that.
My hands scrabble through the seat pocket, searching for something,anything, I can use to fight him.
A few packets of crisps and a water bottle.
Perhaps MacGyver could fashion them into a tool to escape or a weapon to fight but I can’t. The only ideas my brain produces are visions of myself, dead.
The salt from the chips could go in his eyes? That would sting a bit.
Pathetic.
I lean my head forward, my aches and pains growing, pulsing, pushing me from discomfort into misery.
Those injuries will be nothing compared to what my uncle will do to me. I see Ceecee’s ruined fingers, see Harry’s gouged eye, and draw in a breath that’s mostly a sob.
That’s what he did to people who didn’t mean a thing to him.
I crossed him. I testified against him, landing him in jail. Not a place known to treat paedophiles with respect.
And Andy. Dead because of me. Andy who I don’t remember from back when I was young but who must have been there, on the periphery, the whole time.
Who was working for my uncle back then and now? Who must be close to him to do the things he did. To take the risks he did.
Close enough that a man who’s been sneaking around, planting cameras and tracking software, sending cards that could look innocent to anyone else, has now flipped out, escalating to committing torture and mass murder.
The car slows and turns into a long driveway, shielded on each side by dense rows of poplar trees. It pulls into an open garage, the door trundling down the moment we’re inside.
I undo my seat belt, shrinking away from the door when Edwin comes around the vehicle to open it. Shrinking back until he grabs my arm and drags me out.
“Don’t play silly beggars,” he snaps. “Just do what you’re told.”
Do what I’m told. Like I’m eight instead of eighteen.
Like I’m a small, frightened child with no good options.
I fall into step with my head bowed, waiting until we’re near the door to slam my palm against the door release, jam my elbow back into Edwin’s stomach, spin on my heel and run.
A metre away from the door it stops, reverses direction, and crashes back down to the floor, sealing my exit.
