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She’s fighting, her sketchbook crushed in the sand, her pencil lost to the waves.
Screaming.
For me.
My name, over and over.
He locks his arm over her neck and drags her. She’s a hummingbird, and he’s too strong.
I hit the shallows and abandon the board. Run with everything I have. Water sucks at my legs. My feet.
Emerson. Emerson. Emerson.
Her voice breaks over the word. Daphne’s hand hooks onto the door of a nondescript black van. Someone else has driven it onto the lawn. A shadow behind the wheel. A second accomplice standing by to shove her in. My father slams the butt of the gun across Daphne’s knuckles and my vision goes red, the entire landscape tinged with rage. I’ll cut his hand off. I’ll make him understand what I’ve done before he dies. How dare he hurt her. How dare he touch her.
I get my feet on solid ground at the same moment the van door slams shut. They accelerate across my yard and turn, racing for the driveway.
Daphne is in that van. Her palms flash at the window. The outline of her palms is the last thing I see before the house blocks my view.
I sprint after it through the snow. The tires spin on a patch of ice in the driveway, and my brain takes over. It chokes out my heart. I want to catch the van, claw the doors open with my bare hands, and kill all those men inside it. Save her. Save her. Save her.
They’ll get free of the ice before I can reach her.
My second car is inside a detached garage off the main house. I punch through the window on the door and flip the lock. No time to punch in the code on the keypad.
The keys are inside the SUV. An extra pair of shoes I shove my feet into. Blood runs down the back of my hand. The glass cut my knuckles. I don’t fucking care. The garage door skims the top of the SUV on my way out.
Tire tracks in the fresh snow are all that’s left of the van.
The driveway’s not meant for me to take it at fifty miles an hour. I do it anyway. I brush past the open gate and turn in the direction of the tracks in the snow.
They’re getting away.
Fuck that.
Everything in sight is made from flattened brush strokes. Built from layers of oil paint. The road is garbage. One false move could kill us both. Me in an accident. Daphne at the hands of my father.
I put the gas pedal flat on the floor and take my chances.
