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In the car, lights off, and cloaked again in shadows, Drake put a hand out. “Let me see the phone.”
I handed it to him, knowing what he was about to do. He skimmed the contacts until he found the one he was looking for. Uncle Owen.
“Let’s see how he likes this,” Drake said through gritted teeth and began typing out a message:
You fuck with my family? I fuck with yours. I wonder how much he’ll scream before we’re done with him.
He then attached all the pics I took and sent it before handing the phone back to me. “We’ll see how he responds to that.”
“Where to now? We can’t just drive around with him back there,” I said, nodding back toward the unconscious Blaine. “Even tied up, he’ll make a hell of a lot of racket.”
“Can’t go back to the boat. It’s too small,” Drake said. “Only option I know of is to go to my parents’ house. They have one in Savannah. It’ll, uh, I guess it’ll be unoccupied now.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
Another house? My god, how much money did these people have? I wondered at the sheer amount of wealth Drake had as he drove away from the college. The entire trip he stayed three miles an hour below the limit, used his turn signals more than necessary, and stopped for a solid three seconds at each stop sign. The last thing we needed with a tied-up body in the back of our car was to get pulled over for something stupid.
By the time we arrived at the house, I was getting tired. The high of kidnapping Blaine had sent a surge of adrenaline through me, but now that was wearing off, leaving me to suffer the crash. Though my eyes did widen as we came to the ornate wrought iron gate in a very swanky part of town. Like Charleston and New Orleans, Savannah was one of the oldest towns in the country, and it looked like it. The piece of property we pulled into looked like it had been pulled out of a book about the Reconstruction era south. Oak trees draped with Spanish moss lined a two-hundred-yard-long driveway that led to a massive house that would have looked at home in some epic movie like Gone with the Wind or something. My mouth hung open as we pulled up to the circular parking area in front of the entry door.
My initial shock at the grandeur of the place was pushed away as I spotted signs of neglect. The grass was extra shaggy, and the garden beds were more unkempt than they should have been. Drake noticed too. He stared out the windshield at it all with a pensive look on his face.
“He must have had them for a while,” Drake whispered, not taking his eyes off the grounds. “Maybe weeks.”
“Come on, let’s go inside,” I said, trying to get his mind off of it. “Can we leave Blaine here?”
Drake seemed to shake himself out of whatever awful thoughts he was having and nodded. “He should be out for at least another thirty minutes if I estimated his weight correctly. Let’s find a spot for him.”
We got out of the car, and I took his hand as he led me up the walkway to the front door. In another situation, I’d have felt like a princess. Her prince escorting her to his castle to live happily ever after. Instead? We were nothing but animals being hunted and searching for a safe haven.
“How soon until Owen makes the connection?” I asked.
“It’ll take him a bit, I think,” Drake said, punching in the lock code on the front door. “He’ll assume we took Blaine and ran. He wouldn’t think we’d stay in Savannah. At least not at first. We should have a day or two at most. We’ll have to think of a new location if we don’t end this soon.”
He opened the door to a massive and sweeping staircase, marble floors, and an ornate hanging chandelier.
“A little dumpy, but I guess I can handle this for a couple of days,” I said sarcastically.
“No need to be a smart ass. Let’s grab Blaine. We’ll put him in the den.”
As we went back and hauled the limp body from the car, I glanced around the darkened grounds, and a chill went up my spine. It was so big, and so dark. Anything could be hiding in the shadows. After dragging the body inside and closing the door behind us, I breathed a sigh of relief, finally letting my guard down for the first time since we stepped off the boat earlier that day.
Chapter 15
Drake
Dahlia grunted with effort beside me as we pulled Blaine along the marble floor. His heels dragged on the smooth stone, one shoe slipping off and tumbling aside as we went. I did my best not to look around. With every square inch of the house, I saw memories. Each one flashing through my mind, and sending a bolt of heartache and rage through me. I couldn’t let my mind break me, though. Dahlia was counting on me to stay strong. Also, I had to stay focused so that when I finally had Owen in front of me, I could allow all my depraved and visceral thoughts to descend upon him in a storm of agony, pain, and screams. The thought of his torment at my hands was one of the few things keeping me going.
“For a skinny kid, he’s heavy as shit,” Dahlia said, face straining.
“In here, this should work.” I steered the body left into the den. She and I settled him on an armchair.
I knelt to use the last of my zip ties to attach him to the wooden legs and armrests of the chair. Done, I stood, and sighed.
“Now we wait. Has he sent a response text yet?” I asked, nodding to the pocket where Dahlia had shoved Blaine’s phone.
She only had it halfway out when the front door burst in. Bam. Adrenaline flooded my system in the half second I had to realize we’d, yet again, underestimated Owen. I spun, readying myself to fight. Owen was there at the door, face twisted in a snarl of rage, a gun in his hand, already raised. His finger twitched, and I opened my mouth to scream, but the pop of the gun stopped my voice, shocking me to silence.
Beside me, Dahlia fell backward, crumpling to the floor.
