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Breathe.
Easier said than done when my chest is tightening and my throat constricting. I’m shaking uncontrollably as the final bang happens and this time it’s more like a crash. Whoever was trying to get in has succeeded. I’m a sitting duck. My only defense is my hiding place, but the bottom of a closet is a pretty pathetic place to hide. It’s the first place anyone would look if they were breaking into a house and looking for a kidnap victim. It doesn’t escape me that hiding in a closet is a cliché, and that in every horror movie, there’s one stupid girl who chooses the closet to hide. She’s usually the first one to be murdered. I hold my breath to hear better, but there’s no way to stop the boom of my heart pulsing blood through my ears.
They are definitely inside the cabin.
Between ragged breaths, I hear their footsteps. There’s more than one of them. I try to unscramble the sounds, counting the different footsteps. Three, maybe four of them, and they are coming closer. It’s only a matter of seconds before I’m discovered.
One of the footsteps comes into the bedroom. I’d not even thought to close the bedroom door, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The whole cabin has drafts blowing through it as though it is made of holes knitted together. If they could get through the front door, they can get through the bedroom door... and the wardrobe door.
I try to hold my breath again, but my body is betraying me. My heart is hammering so quickly I’m afraid I might die from it. I’m having to breathe more of the damp air than usual to keep from fainting. I almost want to get caught so the anticipation will be relieved.
The wardrobe door opens slowly with a creak, and now I’m going to come face to face with the monster. And he will be a monster. All my father’s men are. Every single one of them, suckered in by the promise of money and power which will never come. My father likes to break promises as much as he likes to make them, and people are seduced by what he offers, failing to see he has them on a short leash and is giving them crumbs.
“What the fuck?” His voice is low. So quiet that I barely hear it. Then louder. “Hey Nix. I found your chick.”
Nix! There’s only one thing that will make me more afraid than hearing the sound of my father’s voice and that’s hearing that name. Joshua Nix. The man I’ve been in love with since I was fifteen and the man I both hate and fear more than any other. My blood runs cold, as though he’s already managed to creep into my veins. How is he here? Why is he here? He left without a word five years ago and now, unfathomably, he’s back. After what he did. After all these years without a word. It makes a savage sort of sense that he’d be the one to find me, but I don’t understand why. He hates my father more than I do. He can’t be in this for money and there’s no way I could imagine Joshua Nix as a police officer. So why then, after everything that happened, is he now here?
I press my thumb into the palm of my hand and squeeze three times. It’s a ritual from when I was younger and scared. When my father was at his worst. Three squeezes. I’m going to be alright. I have to be alright.
“She’s not my chick,” calls another in a snarl, and my heart almost stops. His voice is deeper, richer. He’s in the other room, still not close enough to see me. Maybe I can kick out at the first guy and escape before Josh finds me. It’s not likely, but I can’t just sit here like a sitting duck, waiting for Joshua Nix to inflict more pain. More cruelty. I punch out, causing the first guy to swear, and move as swiftly as I can, trying to remember exactly where the window is.
Another set of footsteps enters the room. My mind is foggy and unfocused, causing me to hit the window earlier than planned, and I almost run right through the glass. A pair of thick arms circle my waist and drag me back. I kick and scream, but he’s too strong.
“She’s like a fucking feral cat!” says yet another voice. This one has a clipped English accent. Almost like the Queen of England. His words don’t match the accent at all.
“Bitch punched me in the fucking balls!” guy number one says.
“For a million dollars, I’d kick you in the balls too, Mercier. Nix, get your arse in here.”
The air in the room shifts. My head pounds from where I knocked it on the window frame. Mercier. I try to remember if any of my father’s men have that surname, but it’s not familiar.
“Hey Nix. What’s up?” Guy number two. The one holding me. “Thought you’d be happy. We got her.”
There’s a moment’s silence. Even the wind whistling through the holes in the cabin seems to know to be quiet. “That’s not her. That’s not Lucinda Waldgrave.”
3
NIX
The girls’ cerulean eyes have the memories hitting me like a brick. They are so much lighter than I remember. The color of the ocean in Greece compared to the rich blue of a sapphire, but the shape of them, the curve of her eyelashes, it’s so familiar to me that it makes me sick with rage. An expression of pure terror fills those ghostly eyes. Lucinda was never scared of me. She made that perfectly clear right at the end. The last night with Lucinda. The shit that went down afterward. It’s like looking into a mirror to the past, but the girl, whoever she is, isn’t looking at me. Her stare just misses the mark by half an inch. I wave my hand in front of her face and her eyes don’t follow.
Fucking hell! She’s blind.
Another sucker punch to the gut.
What the fuck has happened to you? Is that why you are different than I remember? Could you really be Lucinda?
The unasked questions rolling around my head are twisting my memories, turning my anger into confusion, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that you don’t show weakness. I made that mistake with Lucinda Waldgrave once. I’m not going to do it again. I need to keep my shit together.
“Let’s go,” I order, turning around. I’d expected to feel nothing when confronted by Lucinda Waldgrave again. I thought I was over that shit. The years of anger I’d held back, but now it’s creeping back in. All the emotions I let go of, or thought I’d let go of a long time ago.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mercier grinds out, a sick grin on his face. “It’s Lucinda Waldgrave. The actual Lucinda Fucking Supermodel Waldgrave.”
I don’t need to look at him to know he has a raging hard-on for her. He always did like them scared. He isn’t known as No Mercy for nothing. I’m pretty sure he’s completely fucked in the head, but then again, we all are. Three fucking misfits. I stride from the room quickly, desperate for a pull on a cigarette while I decide what to do. Lucinda always hated it when I smoked. I pull one out anyway and let it rest between my teeth, then I bring out my lighter and light it. Fuck Lucinda Waldgrave and fuck whoever this ghost is too. Maybe I should let Mercier have her. It would be fun to watch the bitch suffer after everything she did to me. Maybe that girl is Lucinda and years of anger have twisted my memories. After all, she looks like her. Almost exactly. I if didn’t know every inch of Lucinda’s body, I wouldn’t have looked twice. Not even at the blindness. Shit happens. Her father probably finally hit her so hard, he caused her injury. Just the thought of her father touching her has my hands balling into fists. This is a mistake. I should have stayed at home, rode out the last weeks of Uni and ignored the fucking TV channels.
Dacre rests his hand on my shoulder as the door to the bedroom slams. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You were the one that wanted to find her. We need the money.”
I shrug him off. His soft voice and gentle touch might work wonders with the ladies who think that because he looks and acts like prince charming, he isn’t a complete psychopath, but I’m too on edge for any kind of touch. “We don’t need the money that badly.” I grimace, wishing I’d never seen the news about Lucinda.
