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Chapter Nineteen
Emerson
It’s not an ideal time to drive. The muscle memory remains, likely because learning to drive in the first place was a monstrous ordeal that took months and nearly killed both me and Sin. We agreed it was a necessary evil. That didn’t make the process less harrowing.
Part of me questions every move I make, sending jolts of anxiety through my arms and legs. More pressing is the panic. My mind has very little practice with prioritizing in situations like this. The world keeps getting heavy with brush strokes, and then snapping out of them, as if my nervous system has caught up to the fact that I’m in control of a two-and-a-half-ton SUV.
Another part of me is coolly steering the vehicle over slick, icy roads covered in a fresh layer of now.
This is how people die. Accelerating beyond the speed appropriate for the conditions. I am far beyond that speed now and only gradually catching up with the van. Anger nails itself to the gallery all in a steady, relentless beat. Whoever the fuck is driving that van should be doing it more carefully.
My little painter is with them.
They have her.
My lungs recoil, switching to half-capacity.
It doesn’t matter if I die. All that matters is that she lives.
You have to keep looking in all directions, snaps Sin, clinging to the door handle on the passenger side. You have to look at it like it’s fucking real, Em. Not so hard on the brake. You’re going to get yourself killed.
I can see him on canvas, too.
Step one. Get a firm grip on the wheel. Step two. Get my phone.
It’s in a waterproof pocket near my right up. I undo the zipper and take it out. Trying to decide which of my brothers to call shakes the gallery wall. The names in my contact list swim under an ocean surface. Dangerous to do this while I’m driving. No other choice.
One name lands in the middle of my screen. I stab my thumb down on it and drop the phone into the nearest cupholder. The call connects through the SUV as I get both hands back on the wheel.
“This is Leo.”
“Daphne’s been taken.” Ice and salt shove themselves down my throat. It tastes like panic and despair. I cannot, cannot, lose the power of speech. “My father came for her. Two men with him. They put her in a van.”
There’s a crash, like a desk’s worth of objects hitting the floor. “Do they have her now?”
A woman’s startled voice says Mr. Morelli in the background, followed by a metallic thud. A body running into a door with a push bar at high speed.
“Yes. I’m following them. In my car.”
The echo of his footsteps taunt my nerves. They’re so fucking loud. “Did they make any demands?”
“No. They took her off the beach.”
Leo curses. He keeps hitting landing after landing, the pattern changing as he does. “Can you see the van?”
“Yes.”
“You need to keep up with it. How long do you have before you can’t? Don’t bullshit me.”
“I don’t know.”
It’s the truth. I don’t know whether my mind will stand up to the stress of what my father’s done. I want, very fucking badly, to be a hero in this moment. I want to rescue Daphne from the clutches of evil and emerge without a scratch, and without my brain shutting down. It would not be heroism to pretend that all my limits have conveniently disappeared. It would be hubris. She could be killed.
And anyway, those limits are very much alive.
Voices echo across the call. Somewhere made of high ceilings or concrete. A car door slams. It’s engine revs. The character of the sound shifts.
“Which direction is the van headed?”
