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The drive to the airport is silent. Every once and a while, I catch Caleb wipe away tears, and I fight my own. He and Jude, they’ve come to feel like family to me. Caleb is like a little brother I never had. The last thing I want is to leave them both. By the time he parks in the deck, I’m all but numb. He takes my bag and shoulders it, placing an arm around me as he escorts me inside the airport.
“Jude asked me to do this because he thought it would be easier. On you both.”
I’m not sure anything could make this easier, but if Jude were here, I’m not sure either of us would ever let go.
“He loves you…”
Tears well up to my throat, and I squeeze my eyes shut. “I know,” I whisper.
Caleb stays with me as I check in and walks me to the point at security where he can go no farther. “I’ll miss you, Ria,” he says, throwing his arms around me and pulling me into a hard hug.
And whatever bits of myself I’ve managed to hold together, they fall apart here. For the past few months, Jude and Caleb, and Marney have been all I’ve known of life, and while the reasoning behind how I ended up in their world is twisted beyond words, I’ve never known love the way I did there.
He lets me go, and I hand my boarding pass and fake passport to the TSA agent, and when I step through the turnstile, I know I’ll never see him again. When I look back, he’s gone, and I’m suddenly all alone in the world.
I fiddle with the strap of my bag—Jude's bag—trying not to cry. I hate everything about this, and it feels like my entire world is crumbling. I should be rejoicing in my freedom, but I can’t because it feels as though there is no freedom in a world without Jude.
I maneuver through the boarding gate and almost run into the man in a dark blue uniform now blocking my path. "Ma’am, can you please come with me?"
My heart drops to my stomach. They know the passport is fake. I'm going to go to jail, or worse, they'll find out who I really am. They'll find out I'm supposed to be dead, which will lead them to wonder why, when a body has already been found, am I now here trying to leave the country under a different name? I swallow around the lump in my throat. “Of course.”
The officer leads me across the airport to a doorway beside the duty-free station. He unlocks the door and motions me inside, only instead of following me in, the moment I’m across the threshold, it slams behind me. A lock clicks.
“So nice to finally meet you, Victoria.” The voice draws my attention from the locked door, my alarm rising when a man in a suit separates from the shadows, a slight smile on his face.
I don’t know who this guy is, but he doesn’t look like a customs officer, and a knot of unease settles in my gut.
He steps toward me and grabs hold of my chin, forcing me to look up at him. I fight to pull away from him, alarm bells blaring in my head. This is not an interrogation about my fake passport. Before I can open my mouth and scream for help, he reaches for something in the waist of his pants. A gun. I freeze.
"Tell me, little bird, do you think it will hurt Jude Pearson to watch you break?”
Tom. I know it with every fiber of my being.
_____
A pounding headache wakes me, and I roll onto my side, searching for Jude’s warm body, but I find nothing except cold concrete. The smell of damp sets in as a shiver works over me, and when I open my eyes, instead of seeing early morning sunlight dance across Jude’s ceiling, I’m met with pitch black—and it all comes rushing in like an avalanche. He let me go, and Tom caught me.
Distant footfalls break through the silence before a latch clicks and hinges creak. Dim light cuts across the concrete floor, silhouetting the figures looming in a nearby doorway. I scramble to my feet when the light cuts on, illuminating an empty warehouse. Panic settles in my chest as they approach. One of them I recognize as the man from the airport. Tom. He goes straight to what looks like an old furnace settled amongst rusted machinery and chucks some logs in. Within moments, a fire roars to life. The warm glow of the flames dances over the walls, bringing the other two men out of the shadows while I stumble backward. I’ve never been so aware of my own fragility as I am right now.
