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But the red flash of hair on those two people in the forest nagged at me.
No, I wouldn’t risk going there, either.
“You’re right. Let’s go south.”
Hugo helped me up and I moved the seat forward, rubbing my belly absently as I scanned the fields and mountains beyond the gate.
Not a fly flickered out there.
“Let’s go, baby Ciel,” I said, to make myself brave.
I pulled down the sun visor and a little piece of paper fluttered into my lap.
“What’s this? It’s got some numbers on it.”
Hugo grabbed it and snorted.
“Just like my idiot brother. Looks like we won’t have to actually ram the gates at all. He’s left the security code here.”
What a lucky break, I thought. . .
The code opened the doors immediately, and I drove out almost wonderingly under the gates that had kept me prisoner for so long.
My hands trembled with excitement. I didn’t drive very often. It just wasn’t done in my family.
But what else hadn’t been done and for what reason?
Just as I took my first breath of free air, something hit the right front tire with a terrifyingly loud pop and the truck pitched wildly in that direction.
CHAPTER 13
Léonie
“Steady on!” Hugo cried, but I’d already stomped in panic on the brake, the truck spinning sideways and stumbling off the gravel road, headed directly for a massive, thick tree trunk!
Hugo’s hands were on the wheel, trying to steady it, and we just barely managed to avoid the tree, the lower branches scraping across the windshield and the trunk snapping off the mirror on my left side.
As we shuddered to a halt, the passenger side window exploded and I saw my cousin Laurent, big, broad-shouldered, looks like an ox Laurent, reach through and unlock the door.
I had last seen him as my baby shower and for a moment I stared dumbly at him.
What the hell
“Léonie, run!” Hugo ordered, sliding a tire iron across the seat at me.
Laurent wasn’t here to help me at all.
My heart pounding, I scrambled out of the seat just as my cousin Margot reached my side of the car.
Foolishly, I couldn’t stop a shocked gasp. Margot was almost the exact same age as me, the pair of us so similar with our long red hair and freckled faces that our Mme used to dress the two of us alike and try to fool the rest of the family, make them guess which of us was which.
It felt like a wound deep in my flesh to see her with a knife pointed at me.
The girl who had chased fireflies with me. The girl who had hunted for fiddleheads. The girl who had sat beside me on fall evenings shelling peas, our freckled legs side-by-side.
“What are you doing?”
Margot only gave me a sharp smile.
