He should stay here. I can’t risk anything happening to him, for her and Saint’s sake. He doesn’t need to be dragged into the mess my brother-in-law has created, not like this.
When he turns to face me, the look he gives me tells me otherwise, and arguing just eats away at the time for me getting to my mom.
“Let’s go,” he says, passing me and through the open door. I pause at the threshold, turning to meet Regina’s eyes. “I’ll bring him back,I promise.”
“Stay safe, please.”
Turning for the door, I march through the snow-covered ground. Four SUVs and a large van are already lined up on the pathway to the entrance gate, it slowly creaking open against the grey sky as light snow flutters around us.
Dawson stops at the first vehicle, opening the passenger-side door for me, and I slide into the back. He rounds the car and slips in beside me, Holly up front handing him over a laptop.
Next, two Glocks are passed over, and I take them and place them in the seat between Dawson and I. Taking my jacket off to put on my vest, my hands still tremble.
Fuck, I’d rather have a rifle and go in like Rambo at this point.
“Tell me what happened?” Dawson asks, nodding to the driver to go, and the car crunches through the snow, deep into the single road wrapped within the woods, the denseness plunging us into darkness.
I pull my phone out of my jacket and hand it to him. “These are from an unknown number; it’s obviously Barry.”
He assesses the messages, looking through the text and examining the picture, glancing and hitting the keys on his laptop at the same time. “Where is this?”
“It’s my mom’s kitchen.”
He hands the phone back to me. “Type in the address for the navigation.”
Swallowing, I do as he asks, typing my childhood home address into my phone and handing it to Holly. When she sets the destination, the screen on the dash shows six hours.
Once we merge onto the freeway after an hour of driving in silence, that’s when the cars hit speed.
My phone burns in my hand, the urge to call my mom and ask her if she’s okay. Even Morgan pops into my head, but he’d call the cops, and that would be a sure way to trigger Barry to cause her more harm, if not worse.
It’s not as if they’d do anything to help anyway; they’re in the Omnia’s back pocket.
“Have you told Saint?” I ask, staring out the window and watching the snow-covered trees whip past in a blur.
He huffs a laugh. “No, I tried calling Rex, but it went straight to the voicemail. I’ll get a message to them, get them to divert on their way back and warn them it could be a trap.”
I sigh. “I got a tracker off Regina too; she’ll keep an eye on us from there.”
Saint’s at the airport, which is closer to my mom’s house than it is the Pit. If he finds out too early, this could all go to shit.
They’ll get exactly what they want.
Leaning my head against the cold window, I try to let the ice chill from the glass calm the thunderstorm in my mind, but it’s no use. It could rival the kind we see here in Kingstone all the way until we reach my childhood home.
17
Saint
fed up - ghostemane
Strollingthroughthearrivalsof the airport doors ahead of me, like he fucking owns the place, is my dad.
Malcolm Blackwood, the secret mastermind who built me Ultio.
He’s almost my height, same dark hair with a fox-grey beard, and his eyes are as dark as his soul. Mine were a match to my mother.
In my early teen years, I could tell it was hard for him to look too long into them; it was a gut punch of a reminder of what was taken from him. What he could still lose.
