03-10-2019, 09:13 PM
Any sense of war within was tucked neatly away. Natalie avoided goodbyes with that same neatness, cold as fresh snow. She accepted the instruction without comment, betraying just a single flex of her jaw as she shut the car door. Contingencies marched a useless path through her mind, seeking even meagre advantage in the messy ruins of what had been a crazy plan in the first place. She didn’t turn to watch Jay pull away. Instead she ushered Cayli by the hand, sure the girl would need the anchor. They were going to stick out sorely in a place like this, alone, in the early hours of the morning.
She paused only when Cayli stuck her heels in, horrified to stone, like the panic erupted all at once as the jeep’s tail lights faded from view. The teenager’s eyes were wide and glossed beneath the stolen hood, her skin washed pale by the truck stop’s neon glow. A ragged breath spilled a sob that sounded frightened. “We can’t just let him go alone!”
Natalie didn’t bother to point out that he wouldn’t have been, if Cayli hadn’t been so stupid as to sneak into the boot of the car in the first place. But blame was pointless, and the last thing she wanted to do was alienate the kid enough to send her skittish into the dark.
“He’s protecting you the best way he can,” she said instead.
“I don’t need his protection!”
A morbid smirk caught her lips at the conviction, but found little kinship in the girl’s broken expression. She couldn’t fix these wounds, even if she understood the frustration of a pedestal. Bitterness discovered fertile soil in such miscommunications. Natalie never chose to wait behind willingly, but so often it was the mantle strung across her shoulders. Some things had to be weathered. Her arms folded, the solemnity of her expression probably of little comfort.
She knew what Jay wanted her to do. Alert Jensen. Usher Cayli to safety. Shore up the edges of a plan that made the self-sacrifice worth it. The pastor would come to get them, she was sure. Then all Natalie needed to do was convince Jay’s parents that the safest place for their daughter to be was the Custody. Jay’s gamble would pay off, or it wouldn’t. Either way, there would be a resolution. Unless she was wrong about his intentions, and thirty minutes from now his headlights flooded into the car park, the door opening to the damn grin that caught the breath in her lungs.
She sighed, balling up that well of emotion, a fantasy, until it felt like lead in her chest, and held out her hand.
The diner was small and worn. Cayli scooted into a booth, silent, hood still drawn up to disguise red-raw eyes. The gun felt obtrusive inside Natalie’s jacket, like a beacon for any who cared to look too closely at their entrance. Her gaze took fleeting inventory of the occupants as she sat, fingers smoothing the edges of her wallet. Her thoughts buzzed quietly. Jay had said Amengual was days away, even at his swiftest. If they took Jay tonight revenge would not be metered by the hands of another, a nauseating net of safety, at least for now. Alive was a low bar after all. But they would still be looking for Cayli. Axel’s assumed betrayal bled a dark stain over the sanctuary of the James’ mansion, but to disappear now would likely incite the Carpenters to hysteria at the sudden loss of both children. Cries that might have otherwise been lost to an uncaring system could instead draw weight from a governor's backing. Such furore would be an unwelcome complication.
Natalie checked the time, cataloguing how much of it she had before she would have to make a decision. It would be at least dawn before anyone was likely to notice Cayli’s absence from her bed. A few hours, then. She brushed a hand over her face, smoothing back her hair, then looked up to find a waitress with an equally tired smile crimping the edges of her eyes gazing down at them, curious. “Well, don’t y’all look about fit to drop.”
“We ran out of gas about a mile up the road.” The lie sailed smoothly. It wasn’t difficult to let some of the genuine worry flush through. Natalie gestured the wallet in her hands, offering a meagre smile in return. “I’m trying to get hold of our father.”
The woman’s head tilted, gaze skipping between Natalie’s face and the blonde hair spilled from Cayli’s hood, but if she sensed anything amiss she didn’t care to question. “Bless my soul, you two walk all this way in the dark? Let me fix you something while you wait. The coffee’s good. Our pie might even be enough to cheer you sister. You okay there, sweetie?” She paused, but only for a second, chuckling to herself, then added to Natalie, “I got teenagers of my own.”
Gut warnings died harder deaths when the game changed. As the waitress left, Natalie’s attention drifted back to her phone. A frown pinched her brow. Her father’s silence gnawed a wound she had no time to tend beyond the fleeting hope he might have been able to help. Such a thought swirled nauseous as much as it plucked at the strings around her heart, reaching out for something she was never going to find. Least of all in that direction. She wouldn’t risk pulling the remainder of her family into this mess. Allies beyond that were sparse. But being helpless beat the blood at her temples. She refused to submit to it.
Find someone for me? Not a favour this time, since you’re a lousy friend. Name the price.
She laid the wallet flat after the message sent. Watched until the screen darkened.
Silence burned as they waited. Cayli picked at the pie for a while before she pushed the plate away. Beside it the wallet buzzed sudden notification of the transfer, ghosting ice through Natalie’s stomach. She ought to call Jensen. She’d promised to keep Cay safe, an oath she would not break while she had breath. But the power hovered at the edges of her mind, a balm for any faint guilt at the thoughts now in her head. She knew what Jay needed her to do, but he couldn’t feel the crashing storm in her chest. Fate ushered her into a corner, crooning softly, but when it came to it Natalie snapped. Defiance won.
She would do what she needed to do. She would do what she promised. But she couldn’t just leave him.
“I need you to trust me,” she murmured as she stood, taking her empty mug to the counter. It wasn’t a manipulation she was proud of; the soft and fretful bite of her lip, the wide spill of worry in her pale eyes. The waitress looked up. “He’s not picking up. I can’t get hold of anyone. God, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what to do.”
The woman reacted predictably, warmth filling up her expression for two such lost souls. She blinked and leaned over to pat her hand over Natalie’s. “Oh well hey now honey. Where’d you say you left that car? Two hoots and a holler away, and all you’re needing is gas? This ain’t nothing we can’t fix.”
She let the woman fawn and comfort, sparing a glance at Cayli. But the girl’s face was unreadable.
The trucker made idle chit chat in the cab, and Natalie flowed through the motions, only half listening. His name was Ethan, a friend of the waitress and a regular at the stop (plus an ardent fan of their raspberry jelly donuts, far superior to the pie). Two little kiddies waited at home, and a picture of his wife dangled from the rearview, her smiling face cast in the shadows racing past outside. Natalie told him in turn that they were visiting family following a funeral, a declaration that invited little question. Beside her Cayli sat stiffly, staring out the window.
The signal had not moved. Her heart pounded distraction, thrumming in her palms, where her nails bedded a tight grip. To the outside world her hands lay neat in her lap.
Ethan frowned when she directed him off the highway, and leaned to knock a finger against her wallet like the faulty tech might respond differently with a little persuasion. “You sure? Nothin’ but abandoned railroads down that way.”
“I’m sure,” she said. “GPS must have malfunctioned. I thought it was the turning for the service station.“
He shrugged, apparently appeased. Her accent spoke well enough of an outsider. “Well, my baby won’t make it down there. Let me park her up. I’ll give you a hand with the gas.”
Natalie didn’t argue, though guilt buried sharp barbs at the thought of what might still wait in the darkness ahead. She didn’t even know for sure that the car would be there though, and it would have seemed odd to refuse. The power drifted close at hand, coaxing confidence. When she finally let it seep into her skin she felt Cayli’s attention perk, and after a moment a twin glow blurred her edges. The trucker’s flashlight beamed against eerie chain-link as they trudged along the gravel road. He continued pleasant conversation, filling up the silence until they discovered the dark edges of the jeep, then set about refuelling the tank while Natalie held the light. She stared out at the looming carcasses of the trains, but nothing stirred. If Ethan noticed the car hadn’t been running on empty he didn’t say.
They drove him back to his truck.
Relief was harder to feign with the cold gripping her insides, but Natalie thanked him genuinely enough. He flicked the rim of his cap before he slammed the door, wishing them a safe onward journey, though clearly glad to leave the dark of the train graveyard behind. Their engine idled as the truck roared back to life and peeled slowly away from the hard shoulder. Natalie’s pale gaze found Cayli’s in the rearview mirror. The girl was shivering, though it wasn’t cold.
“I won’t ask you to wait behind.” The words were quiet. Cayli was a kid, but her innocence was but a burnt shadow of what it was. Or would be. Fairness didn’t enter the equation. Natalie shouldn’t have brought Cayli back here at all, not with everything at risk, and not with everything she had promised. But survival would require a deeper strength than ignorance allowed. They’d run out of good choices a while ago. If she was cutting corners, it was only to the inevitable.
“Jay killed someone important," she said bluntly. "Justice demands like for like. They’ll try to take someone he loves in return.”
“They want me first.”
Natalie didn’t answer that, though her gaze remained unblinking. Honesty stared back, allowing the time for process. A heavy cross for someone so young to bear, and a burden likely to fuel recklessness in someone with Cayli’s spirit. She was too much like him. “He didn’t think they’d try to kill him tonight. Not until they've punished him first. But we need to know, one way or another. The signal from his wallet is still out there. I don’t know what we’ll find, Cay. Think before you decide.”
The road crunched up under the tyres as she turned the car around. Her thoughts flattened under the prospect that she might be dutifully tugging Jay’s sister straight into a trap, but doubt circled the paranoia. If anyone was waiting, it would’ve sprung when they’d first approached the car, not banked on them turning around. The power fired back through her veins, blocking out the bite of concern. Defiance rode in its place. There wasn’t room for anything else.
The car parked up. Natalie’s limbs felt like iron, but she didn’t pause, just glanced up as she got out, unsurprised to hear Cayli’s door open too. A halo marked her grip on the gift, determination carving a rigor of her young face beneath the dark of the hood. Braced. Heavy shadows loomed like a presence, and the chain-link creaked in the wind like ghosts crowded to watch such a morbid parade. The first spark of uncertainty lit a fire in Natalie’s chest, the fear of a loss she could not wholly explain. It didn’t slow her.
But there was no body.
Relief dropped but never seemed to land. She bent to scoop up the cracked wallet, reminding herself that this had been the plan. Or the one she had suspected might brew a holy grail in the back of Jay’s mind -- the quickest route to a chance of cutting the head from the snake direct, risk damned. Her own wallet vibrated as she brushed the dust from the screen. Cayli’s hand patted her shoulder from above, and Natalie flinched hard, the shadows of something else breaking up her expression before her gaze settled on the object in Cay’s outstretched palm. The blood drained as she stood and plucked free the small dart. A memory skittered like the rustle of bones, of Nox’s plaintive fear of the needle, and the insistent command of the police to sedate him.
Cay’s small voice pierced. “What do we do now?”
Only Natalie still didn’t have an answer.
They drove. Circuitous in route, stung by the awareness that Axel, at least, knew Cayli was not tucked up safe in the James’ estate. He’d know the plates, but she couldn’t just ditch the car and strand them to another’s mercy. By now Cay dozed exhausted, curled up under a fire blanket that had been in the emergency kit, her hands wadded up in the hoodie bundled under her head. It was still hours before sunrise, those small and usually peaceful moments before first light. Back in Moscow it’d be late morning by now, perhaps early afternoon. Either way her own weariness fled beneath the weight of concern that Jay was potentially without the one armament he’d planned on having on his side, tucked direct in the heart of his enemy. Alone.
Surprisingly Alvis had ceded to a transaction. The number was ringing. Meanwhile, as darkness raced past the windows, Natalie considered her options before dawn; to return to the house and confide in Jensen; hope he might smooth any difficulties with Cay’s parents; deal face on with Axel’s loyalties. Or bypass the complications in favour of entirely different ones. It wouldn’t even be the first time she had essentially contemplated kidnap.
She eased back on the accelerator, aware she’d been speeding. Aware too of the gun tucked in her jacket, licensed to another, and of her passenger, a minor unrelated by blood.
Frustration seethed.
She paused only when Cayli stuck her heels in, horrified to stone, like the panic erupted all at once as the jeep’s tail lights faded from view. The teenager’s eyes were wide and glossed beneath the stolen hood, her skin washed pale by the truck stop’s neon glow. A ragged breath spilled a sob that sounded frightened. “We can’t just let him go alone!”
Natalie didn’t bother to point out that he wouldn’t have been, if Cayli hadn’t been so stupid as to sneak into the boot of the car in the first place. But blame was pointless, and the last thing she wanted to do was alienate the kid enough to send her skittish into the dark.
“He’s protecting you the best way he can,” she said instead.
“I don’t need his protection!”
A morbid smirk caught her lips at the conviction, but found little kinship in the girl’s broken expression. She couldn’t fix these wounds, even if she understood the frustration of a pedestal. Bitterness discovered fertile soil in such miscommunications. Natalie never chose to wait behind willingly, but so often it was the mantle strung across her shoulders. Some things had to be weathered. Her arms folded, the solemnity of her expression probably of little comfort.
She knew what Jay wanted her to do. Alert Jensen. Usher Cayli to safety. Shore up the edges of a plan that made the self-sacrifice worth it. The pastor would come to get them, she was sure. Then all Natalie needed to do was convince Jay’s parents that the safest place for their daughter to be was the Custody. Jay’s gamble would pay off, or it wouldn’t. Either way, there would be a resolution. Unless she was wrong about his intentions, and thirty minutes from now his headlights flooded into the car park, the door opening to the damn grin that caught the breath in her lungs.
She sighed, balling up that well of emotion, a fantasy, until it felt like lead in her chest, and held out her hand.
The diner was small and worn. Cayli scooted into a booth, silent, hood still drawn up to disguise red-raw eyes. The gun felt obtrusive inside Natalie’s jacket, like a beacon for any who cared to look too closely at their entrance. Her gaze took fleeting inventory of the occupants as she sat, fingers smoothing the edges of her wallet. Her thoughts buzzed quietly. Jay had said Amengual was days away, even at his swiftest. If they took Jay tonight revenge would not be metered by the hands of another, a nauseating net of safety, at least for now. Alive was a low bar after all. But they would still be looking for Cayli. Axel’s assumed betrayal bled a dark stain over the sanctuary of the James’ mansion, but to disappear now would likely incite the Carpenters to hysteria at the sudden loss of both children. Cries that might have otherwise been lost to an uncaring system could instead draw weight from a governor's backing. Such furore would be an unwelcome complication.
Natalie checked the time, cataloguing how much of it she had before she would have to make a decision. It would be at least dawn before anyone was likely to notice Cayli’s absence from her bed. A few hours, then. She brushed a hand over her face, smoothing back her hair, then looked up to find a waitress with an equally tired smile crimping the edges of her eyes gazing down at them, curious. “Well, don’t y’all look about fit to drop.”
“We ran out of gas about a mile up the road.” The lie sailed smoothly. It wasn’t difficult to let some of the genuine worry flush through. Natalie gestured the wallet in her hands, offering a meagre smile in return. “I’m trying to get hold of our father.”
The woman’s head tilted, gaze skipping between Natalie’s face and the blonde hair spilled from Cayli’s hood, but if she sensed anything amiss she didn’t care to question. “Bless my soul, you two walk all this way in the dark? Let me fix you something while you wait. The coffee’s good. Our pie might even be enough to cheer you sister. You okay there, sweetie?” She paused, but only for a second, chuckling to herself, then added to Natalie, “I got teenagers of my own.”
Gut warnings died harder deaths when the game changed. As the waitress left, Natalie’s attention drifted back to her phone. A frown pinched her brow. Her father’s silence gnawed a wound she had no time to tend beyond the fleeting hope he might have been able to help. Such a thought swirled nauseous as much as it plucked at the strings around her heart, reaching out for something she was never going to find. Least of all in that direction. She wouldn’t risk pulling the remainder of her family into this mess. Allies beyond that were sparse. But being helpless beat the blood at her temples. She refused to submit to it.
Find someone for me? Not a favour this time, since you’re a lousy friend. Name the price.
She laid the wallet flat after the message sent. Watched until the screen darkened.
Silence burned as they waited. Cayli picked at the pie for a while before she pushed the plate away. Beside it the wallet buzzed sudden notification of the transfer, ghosting ice through Natalie’s stomach. She ought to call Jensen. She’d promised to keep Cay safe, an oath she would not break while she had breath. But the power hovered at the edges of her mind, a balm for any faint guilt at the thoughts now in her head. She knew what Jay needed her to do, but he couldn’t feel the crashing storm in her chest. Fate ushered her into a corner, crooning softly, but when it came to it Natalie snapped. Defiance won.
She would do what she needed to do. She would do what she promised. But she couldn’t just leave him.
“I need you to trust me,” she murmured as she stood, taking her empty mug to the counter. It wasn’t a manipulation she was proud of; the soft and fretful bite of her lip, the wide spill of worry in her pale eyes. The waitress looked up. “He’s not picking up. I can’t get hold of anyone. God, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what to do.”
The woman reacted predictably, warmth filling up her expression for two such lost souls. She blinked and leaned over to pat her hand over Natalie’s. “Oh well hey now honey. Where’d you say you left that car? Two hoots and a holler away, and all you’re needing is gas? This ain’t nothing we can’t fix.”
She let the woman fawn and comfort, sparing a glance at Cayli. But the girl’s face was unreadable.
**
The trucker made idle chit chat in the cab, and Natalie flowed through the motions, only half listening. His name was Ethan, a friend of the waitress and a regular at the stop (plus an ardent fan of their raspberry jelly donuts, far superior to the pie). Two little kiddies waited at home, and a picture of his wife dangled from the rearview, her smiling face cast in the shadows racing past outside. Natalie told him in turn that they were visiting family following a funeral, a declaration that invited little question. Beside her Cayli sat stiffly, staring out the window.
The signal had not moved. Her heart pounded distraction, thrumming in her palms, where her nails bedded a tight grip. To the outside world her hands lay neat in her lap.
Ethan frowned when she directed him off the highway, and leaned to knock a finger against her wallet like the faulty tech might respond differently with a little persuasion. “You sure? Nothin’ but abandoned railroads down that way.”
“I’m sure,” she said. “GPS must have malfunctioned. I thought it was the turning for the service station.“
He shrugged, apparently appeased. Her accent spoke well enough of an outsider. “Well, my baby won’t make it down there. Let me park her up. I’ll give you a hand with the gas.”
Natalie didn’t argue, though guilt buried sharp barbs at the thought of what might still wait in the darkness ahead. She didn’t even know for sure that the car would be there though, and it would have seemed odd to refuse. The power drifted close at hand, coaxing confidence. When she finally let it seep into her skin she felt Cayli’s attention perk, and after a moment a twin glow blurred her edges. The trucker’s flashlight beamed against eerie chain-link as they trudged along the gravel road. He continued pleasant conversation, filling up the silence until they discovered the dark edges of the jeep, then set about refuelling the tank while Natalie held the light. She stared out at the looming carcasses of the trains, but nothing stirred. If Ethan noticed the car hadn’t been running on empty he didn’t say.
They drove him back to his truck.
Relief was harder to feign with the cold gripping her insides, but Natalie thanked him genuinely enough. He flicked the rim of his cap before he slammed the door, wishing them a safe onward journey, though clearly glad to leave the dark of the train graveyard behind. Their engine idled as the truck roared back to life and peeled slowly away from the hard shoulder. Natalie’s pale gaze found Cayli’s in the rearview mirror. The girl was shivering, though it wasn’t cold.
“I won’t ask you to wait behind.” The words were quiet. Cayli was a kid, but her innocence was but a burnt shadow of what it was. Or would be. Fairness didn’t enter the equation. Natalie shouldn’t have brought Cayli back here at all, not with everything at risk, and not with everything she had promised. But survival would require a deeper strength than ignorance allowed. They’d run out of good choices a while ago. If she was cutting corners, it was only to the inevitable.
“Jay killed someone important," she said bluntly. "Justice demands like for like. They’ll try to take someone he loves in return.”
“They want me first.”
Natalie didn’t answer that, though her gaze remained unblinking. Honesty stared back, allowing the time for process. A heavy cross for someone so young to bear, and a burden likely to fuel recklessness in someone with Cayli’s spirit. She was too much like him. “He didn’t think they’d try to kill him tonight. Not until they've punished him first. But we need to know, one way or another. The signal from his wallet is still out there. I don’t know what we’ll find, Cay. Think before you decide.”
The road crunched up under the tyres as she turned the car around. Her thoughts flattened under the prospect that she might be dutifully tugging Jay’s sister straight into a trap, but doubt circled the paranoia. If anyone was waiting, it would’ve sprung when they’d first approached the car, not banked on them turning around. The power fired back through her veins, blocking out the bite of concern. Defiance rode in its place. There wasn’t room for anything else.
The car parked up. Natalie’s limbs felt like iron, but she didn’t pause, just glanced up as she got out, unsurprised to hear Cayli’s door open too. A halo marked her grip on the gift, determination carving a rigor of her young face beneath the dark of the hood. Braced. Heavy shadows loomed like a presence, and the chain-link creaked in the wind like ghosts crowded to watch such a morbid parade. The first spark of uncertainty lit a fire in Natalie’s chest, the fear of a loss she could not wholly explain. It didn’t slow her.
But there was no body.
Relief dropped but never seemed to land. She bent to scoop up the cracked wallet, reminding herself that this had been the plan. Or the one she had suspected might brew a holy grail in the back of Jay’s mind -- the quickest route to a chance of cutting the head from the snake direct, risk damned. Her own wallet vibrated as she brushed the dust from the screen. Cayli’s hand patted her shoulder from above, and Natalie flinched hard, the shadows of something else breaking up her expression before her gaze settled on the object in Cay’s outstretched palm. The blood drained as she stood and plucked free the small dart. A memory skittered like the rustle of bones, of Nox’s plaintive fear of the needle, and the insistent command of the police to sedate him.
Cay’s small voice pierced. “What do we do now?”
Only Natalie still didn’t have an answer.
They drove. Circuitous in route, stung by the awareness that Axel, at least, knew Cayli was not tucked up safe in the James’ estate. He’d know the plates, but she couldn’t just ditch the car and strand them to another’s mercy. By now Cay dozed exhausted, curled up under a fire blanket that had been in the emergency kit, her hands wadded up in the hoodie bundled under her head. It was still hours before sunrise, those small and usually peaceful moments before first light. Back in Moscow it’d be late morning by now, perhaps early afternoon. Either way her own weariness fled beneath the weight of concern that Jay was potentially without the one armament he’d planned on having on his side, tucked direct in the heart of his enemy. Alone.
Surprisingly Alvis had ceded to a transaction. The number was ringing. Meanwhile, as darkness raced past the windows, Natalie considered her options before dawn; to return to the house and confide in Jensen; hope he might smooth any difficulties with Cay’s parents; deal face on with Axel’s loyalties. Or bypass the complications in favour of entirely different ones. It wouldn’t even be the first time she had essentially contemplated kidnap.
She eased back on the accelerator, aware she’d been speeding. Aware too of the gun tucked in her jacket, licensed to another, and of her passenger, a minor unrelated by blood.
Frustration seethed.