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Urgency pumps into my blood. “No.” I don’t like this. “What are you going to do?” Brad releases me, and I feel so pathetic without him holding me up. Holding me at all.
“Pearl, come on,” Beau says, encouraging me away. Short of clinging to Brad’s suit and begging him, I have no choice but to go. “It’s going to be okay.”
How can she say that? How? I search Brad’s face as I’m guided back to the car. It’s no longer soft. There’s no love.
Only hate.
And I am the most terrified I have ever been.
I drop into the back of the car and stare at the head rest.
Pumpkin.
* * *
I feel his rough hand rest over my nape, holding me, as I stare at my mother’s coffin being lowered into the ground. Birds tweet. The leaves on the trees rustle in the breeze. It’s a sunny day, whereas it feels like it should be raining. Dark. Desolate.
Like how I feel.
Why did she do it? How could she leave me?
“Don’t be sad, pumpkin,” he says, his cigar smoke making clouds before me. “She’s with your daddy now.”
“And what about me?” I ask, almost scared to know. For three years, Mother protected me from him. She was the barrier between him and me.
And now she’s gone.
“Now,” he says, directing me away from her grave by my nape, “I look after you.”
I reach for my neck, feeling at Mother’s necklace, hating that this is all I have left of her.
55
ROSE
* * *
Esther is on the steps when we pull through the gates, waiting, Doc by her side. I get out and unclip Maggie’s seat, passing it to Tank. Esther meets him at the bottom of the steps and takes over, and Tank returns to help Fury with Ella.
I’m reeling. The information I have is sketchy, but I am completely reeling. A virgin. She was a virgin. Was being the operative word here because Brad took her virginity. But more shocking than that, he loves her. And he didn’t mind who heard him say it.
This is serious. Not just Brad and Pearl’s situation, but the whole situation. My question is, though, who does she belong to? Because that’s what this is. Ownership. Someone, the man who called all of our cells, owns her. Controls her. And he wants her back. And if my obliterated spa and Nolan’s kidnapping is anything to go by, he’ll do anything. I shudder. She’s been here for over six months. Praying to never be found. Or found out. Did her naïveté put us all in danger?
Pearl gets out of the other side of the car, her face vacant, her movements robotic, as if she’s going through the motions. I glance at Beau, just as she glances at me. I can see we’re both thinking the same thing and, frankly, we have a nerve to think it. But Pearl has got to pull herself together. Curling up into a ball of anxiety isn’t an option in our world.
I go to her, slipping an arm around her shoulders. “I know you probably won’t believe me when I tell you this,” I say gently, “but it will be okay.”
She looks at me, and I can see clearly that I’m right. She doesn’t believe it. “What if they don’t find Nolan?” she asks. I have no answer for that. I just hope for everyone’s sake they do, because I would not want to be in Brad’s way. “It will be because of me.”
“They will find him,” I say surely, despite the horrible feeling in my bones. This is all unexpected, and the men weren’t prepared. God knows what could blow up next. The house and its grounds. It’s been targeted before. Another shudder. “Come on, we have things to do.” Distract her. I don’t know who I’m trying to kid. I’ve been in Pearl’s shoes, more than once. And I’m here again now. Distraction doesn’t work. But strength and faith do.
“I never spoke to him,” Pearl murmurs. “I never shared anything about anyone here.” I hush her, believing her, as we follow the Vikings up the steps. I drop my bag by the door.
“Nolan’s room?” Tank asks over his shoulder, Ella lifeless in his arms.
“Yeah.” Beau runs ahead and opens the door, standing back, and we all follow them in. He lays her down on the bed, and I move in on one side with Beau, while Doc assesses her on the other side to determine what we’re dealing with. Doc takes her pulse. I check her head. Beau’s cell beeps, and her thumbs work across the screen before she slips it onto the nightstand and starts scanning Ella's body. “Brad. He was checking that we’re back.”
Pearl sits on a chair in the corner, watching. “Her pulse is good,” Doc says, moving to her head. I give him space. “Whatever she was hit with, it was blunt. There’s no blood.”
