“This isn’t your call,” she said.
“Fine, it isn’t, but I have a feeling he thinks it’s his and he won’t allow you to stay another second here.” I nodded to the corridor. “Either come nicely, or I’ll live up to my reputation and make you. Choose.”
She stood, eyes narrowed. “He’s here, isn’t he?”
I smiled. “Down the road. Waiting. Impatiently. I suspect if we take much longer, he’ll attempt to storm this place himself and you know how that will end.”
That did it.
“We have until mid-morning before they’ll notice I’m gone. I’m allowed to wander the property for a few hours then.”
I nodded. Cutting it close, but it was enough.
“I hope you have a way out of here.”
I grinned. “Front door.”
“And you expect to walk out of here with me?”
“No. You’ll take a slightly different route.” She frowned and had every right to because she wasn’t going to like it. “Kitchen. There’s a fish truck waiting out back. He just made a delivery and is waiting for the extra cargo.”
“You’re sneaking me out in a fish truck?”
I shrugged. “He’s a greedy bastard. And you might want a sweater.” Because she was going to have to hide in a refrigerated container filled with cold raw fish. The fish guy was also the man who removed dead bodies for Mother when needed; except this time, he was removing a live one.
“I really hope you know what you’re doing, Kai. Because you’ve started a war.”
“No, I’m ending the war.”
She scanned the room as if searching for what to take with her. But she didn’t take a single thing except the necklace she still had in her hand. She pushed past me and headed down the corridor.
TIRES CRUNCHED THE gravel into the dirt road and my head jerked up. I pushed away from the tree I’d been leaning against for the last two hours and jumped across the ditch to stand on the shoulder of the road.
I’d been calm, steady, determined and confident since I was fifteen and realized Chess wasn’t coming with me. I’d escaped the farm as a boy, but seeing her dragged away and knowing she’d sacrificed herself for me… it made me into a man. Age had no factor. I knew what I had to do and despite my world being blown apart, I’d do anything to get there. And I had.
That day was finally here.
My nerves sparked, nerves that had been dead for years. My heart drummed and my hands at my sides curled into fists as I saw the billow of dust in the distance.
Chess.
The fish truck appeared around the corner then stopped a few hundred feet away from my car. Kai pulled past and parked at an angle in front of it then got out. He spoke a few words to the driver then passed him an envelope, which I knew contained a shitload of money.
Kai disappeared around the back of the truck and everything inside me that had been stirring like wildfire—stilled.
The quiet before the storm.
Chess. My best friend, the girl who decided to save one boy. Who did fuckin’ save me.
Finally it was my turn. I’d waited for this moment. Dreamed about it. Prayed for it. Jesus. None of the money mattered. None of the houses or cars or trips. It was all to get here.
Underneath the truck, I saw her feet as she climbed out of the back. The doors slammed shut and latched, followed by a loud double knock on the back, and the truck rumbled away leaving a trail of dust behind it.
I stood waiting for the dust to settle. Waiting to see with my own eyes that she was alive. Our sporadic emails had been short, formal and gave me nothing of who she was now.
And nothing could’ve prepared me for this.
We were like an iceberg that had cracked and separated, floating on different currents until years later, the two pieces finally drifted back together and sealed perfectly.
That was us. Chess and I.
I’d imagined her. Every single fuckin’ day I imagined her, thought about her. She was what drove me to succeed when all the odds were against a homeless boy with nothing but a handful of change and a cesspit full of nightmares.
For years I hadn’t even known if she were alive and there was no way for me to find out if they’d killed her or let her live. But it didn’t stop me. I knew about her brother, Kai, from that day at the farm when he approached us. Took me years to track him before I finally found him in Toronto.
I set myself up in the same city. Watched him. Made my money. Made my way in the world knowing that one day, I’d be standing here staring at the girl who risked everything for me.
I walked toward her and it was the longest walk of my life. She stood still, eyes narrowed, arms crossed and her body vibrating from the refrigerated truck.
“You broke the pact,” she blurted, lips quivering.
God, the sound of her voice was like sucking in fresh oxygen. All these years I’d been suffocating under a dark cloud, breathing in soiled air. But Chess standing a foot away, stiff, cold and trying to be stoic and brave, was like being woken up from a nightmare.
It was relief.