When she came back she handed me two bottles of water and a small bag of snacks that included Doritos, a honey bun and a chocolate bar. Graciously, she opened the water for me and I chugged with the quickness. I was so thirsty because it had been damn near 24 hours since I had something to drink.
9
Quest
I made it to the O’Brien Rest Stop off 97 in twenty-three minutes. I don’t know how fast I was going and I didn’t care. Every red light was a suggestion and every speed limit sign was a conversation I wasn’t having.
I saw her before I parked.
She was sitting on a concrete bench under a fluorescent light near the entrance of the rest stop with her knees pulled up to her chest and her wrists chained together in her lap. There was blood on her face, blood on her clothes, blood dried dark on her forearms where it had run down from her wrists. Her feet were bare and cut up and she was holding a half-eaten honey bun in her bound hands and chewing slowly like her jaw hurt.
I pulled the Maybach into the closest spot and got out. My legs moved but the rest of me was somewhere between fury and something I didn’t have a name for. I’d seen a lot of things in my life. I’d sat across from men begging for their lives and felt nothing. I’d pulled triggers and slept soundly the same night. But seeing Mehar sitting under that light looking like something that had been dragged through hell and then left at a rest stopwith a vending machine snack broke something in my chest that I couldn’t put back together by the time I reached her.
She looked up at me and her eyes were swollen and exhausted and relieved all at once, and for a second neither of us said anything. I crouched in front of her and put my hands on her knees and my hands were shaking.
“I’m here,” I said. That was all I could get out at first.
She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against mine and closed her eyes. The chain between her wrists clinked against my jacket and I could smell fear and stress all over her. But she was still in there. Under all of it, she was still my Peach.
I helped her to the Maybach and opened the passenger door. She climbed in and I watched her pull her bloody bare feet up onto the leather seat and curl into herself. I took off my jacket and laid it over her because the night air was cold and she was shaking. Then I got behind the wheel and pulled out of the parking lot heading toward my vacant estate in Middleburg, Virginia. I bought it a few years ago and go out there when I need a break from the city. But it was time that I bought something new.
We drove in silence for the first few minutes. I kept one hand on the wheel and one hand on her knee because I needed to feel her breathing. She sat curled against the door with my jacket over her shoulders and the chains resting in her lap and her eyes half open, staring at the road ahead without really seeing it.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. It came out of nowhere, unprompted, like she’d been holding it since before the warehouse and it finally found its way out.
“For what?”
“For Dame CoCo. For the dungeon. For all the shit I hid from you. I should’ve told you and I didn’t because I was scared you’d look at me different and I couldn’t handle that. But I’m done. That life is done. I just need you to know that.”
I glanced at her. The bruise under her left cheek was deep purple and swollen, her lip was split on one side, and there were red marks on the corners of her mouth from the gag. This woman had been chained to a ceiling for twenty-four hours and the first thing she wanted to talk about was the secret she kept from me.
“That’s in the past,” I said. “All of it. We ain’t going backward.”
She nodded and something in her shoulders released, something she’d been holding since the night I said “cool we done” and walked away from her. I could see it leave her body and I hated myself for putting it there in the first place.
A few miles passed before she spoke again.
“I need to tell you something,” she said. “I left Janelle on the floor and I don’t know if she’s breathing. Thad’s finally dead. I killed him.”
She said it with no emotion, the same way she’d told me about Ahmad, the same way she’d told me about the cage. Like she was reporting facts that she’d already processed and filed and moved past while the rest of the world was still catching up.
“Where’s the warehouse?”
“I don’t know exactly. It was off a gravel road somewhere. It’s off 97 somewhere south of here, maybe twenty or thirty minutes.”
I pulled out my phone and called Justice first.
“Is Mekhi with you?”
“Nah, he left about an hour ago. Didn’t say where he was going. How’s Mehar? Did you find her?”
“Yeah, I got her. She’s safe. I need you to stay with Bryce and don’t let him out of your sight. I’ll hit you later.”
Mekhi left an hour ago. I filed that and moved on because I could only deal with one crisis at a time and Mekhi’s movements were a problem for tomorrow.
I called Prime next.
“I need you to check a warehouse off 97 in Maryland. Mehar escaped from there tonight. There’s a body inside, possibly two. I need you to handle it.”
