Taking a deep, agonizing breath, I push myself up into a sitting position, bracing against the throbbing inside my skull. I’m numb everywhere else. I still can’t believe it. She’s alive. Laura is alive, and Ocho has been helping her. I have so many questions. Too many. If I start asking them now, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop, though. Getting to my feet is seriously fucking shitty. If I could, I’d lie down in the dirt for the foreseeable future, until everything quits spinning like a merry-go-round, but I can see the worry on Laura’s face and her fear is all too real.
Once I’m upright, Ocho’s grabbing at the sleeve of my suit jacket, trying to hurry me off, deeper into the forest. I jerk myself free, and then I’m taking hold of Laura, pulling her to me, crushing her in my arms. I remember the last time I cried. It was two days after Laura disappeared, when I realized that she wasn’t coming back. When I realized that she was gone, and that someone had clearly taken her.
Now, holding her in my arms, I cry again. “Fuck, Laura. Seven years. Seven fucking years.” I want to tell her about the countries I visited, the people I’ve killed, the thousands and thousands of miles I’ve traveled while I’ve been looking for her, trying to bring her back home. Instead, all I can do is squeeze her tightly, stroking my hand over the back of her tousled hair.
“I know,” she whispers. She’s crying too, now, allowing her tears to spill; I can hear how choked up she is in her voice. “It feels like half a lifetime.”
I don’t want to let her go. I can’t. Ocho doesn’t appear to be willing to sit through our emotional family reunion, though. He yanks on my sleeve again, making yet another anxious gurgling noise. Laura releases me, sniffing.
“We have to leave now,” she insists.
She’s right. I came to find her, and here she is, found. I shouldn’t risk another moment standing around on the side of this mountain where Fernando could capture us again any second. But when I think about slipping off in the dark and leaving, I know I just can’t do it. I turn to Ocho, steeling myself for what I’m about to say. “Take her. Get her out of here. Look after her. I’ll be right behind you guys, I promise.”
Laura grabs my hand again, her grip almost painful. “Please, Cade. I—” She’s about to beg me not to remain behind, but her eyes settle on mine and something hardens in them. A kind of resolve she never possessed back in Alabama. “No. You’re right. No one should have to stay here against their will. Go and find her, Cade. Find her, and get her out.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
REVELATION
I took a shit load of drugs in my youth, but I never took acid. I think this is probably what it feels like to trip balls, as I sneak back onto the estate. Nothing feels, looks, or smells real anymore. I’m trying to focus on the nightmare scene in front of me, but all I can think about is the fact that Laura wasn’t buried in one of those mass graves. She wasn’t buried at all. I have no idea how Ocho managed to convince not only Fernando that she was dead, but Natalia, too. However he did it, it obviously worked. If Fernando suspected for even one second she was alive, he would have turned over every stone, and chopped down every single tree in the forest in order to find her.
As I predicted, there are dozens of dead bodies on the lawn. I don’t see their faces, don’t recognize who they are. I hurry past them, my focus directed toward the house and the people who still remain inside. Fernando is nowhere to be seen. I enter through the open doorway, straining to hear or see anything, but the entire lower floor is choked with smoke, and the only sound to reach my ears is the crackling roar of the fire that’s taken hold.
Where would she be? Not on the second floor. The fire must have started early on, before I hit the alarm, so it’s unlikely she would have gone up there. Not when the smoke was obvious. So downstairs, then. Not Fernando’s office. Not the kitchens. Not the—
It hits me all of a sudden. The library. Of course. She said that’s where she used to go when she was little to escape her father. It makes sense that she would go there to hide from him now, when everything is disintegrating into madness. I cover my mouth with my arm as I run down the hallway, heading in the direction of the library at the other end of the house. Left. Right. I have no idea where the fuck I’m going. I know I’m heading north, though, and the library overlooked the northern most aspect of the lawn, so I have to be getting close. People rush by me in the hallway, nothing more than dark shapes headed in the opposite direction, out, toward the main entrance, choking and coughing as the smoke settles on their lungs. I ignore every single one of them as I continue to hunt.
“Natalia!” My shout is deadened as soon as it leaves my mouth. “NATALIA!”
Shit. Please let her be safe. Please let her be safe.
I open door after door, not finding what I’m looking for, only smoke and more smoke. I can’t breathe. My eyes are stinging, running like crazy, and my lungs are on fire themselves. My body is telling me that I need to leave immediately, but I can’t. I refuse. Until I find her, I will not leave this house. I should have told her what I was going to do, but really what good would it have done? I didn’t plan on there being a fucking fire. I didn’t know I was going to be running blind through the house, screaming her name, unable to find her.
I try three more doors.