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She looks startled. “What? No! Wait, what’s happening?”
For a second, I wonder if she actually is stupid. Then I realise she didn’t understand that whole conversation.
Tourists.
“You can’t drive,” I recap. “Your car is totalled and you have a head injury. Which means you have to come with us. There’s a storm coming. We need to move now.”
She takes a step back, crossing her arms over her chest. She’s already shivering in her flimsy pink coat. “But where are you taking me?”
“Home.”
Her eyes widen. “I don’t know you. I’m not letting you drive me to your home!”
“Fine. Die here, then.” I slam the truck boot closed.
Eli wraps his coat over her shoulders. “You don’t really have a choice, babe,” he says apologetically. “You’re freezing already. When the wind picks up, you’ll get hypothermia pretty fast. Promise we don’t bite.”
“I can just call someone to tow the car.” She eyes me. “Someoneprofessional.Not just some stranger on the street.”
“Good luck with that.”
“No one will be coming out in this weather,” Eli explains. “Right now, everyone’s headed home to wait out the storm. I doubt you can even get signal.”
I hold out my hand again. “I’ll ask one last time. Give. Me. Your. Keys.”
She stares up at me, jaw working, anger burning in her pretty brown eyes. Snowflakes fall down between us, the flurry already getting faster. Without thinking, I reach down and tug up the hood of her coat again, covering her head.
She presses her lips together. Slowly, she opens her gloved hand and offers me the key. I take it and stick it back in the ignition of her car to unlock the steering, then head back to the truck, tugging the handle on the back passenger door. “In.”
She gives me one last hard look, then climbs in wordlessly. I slam the door shut and head to the driver’s side.
“Would it kill you to benice?” Eli mutters, buckling in next to me. “She was just in a car crash.”
“I’m saving her life. I think that’s pretty fucking nice of me.”
“She’sscared,” he insists.
“You can cuddle her when we get there.” I turn on the engine. “Do up your seatbelt,” I order over my shoulder, then start the car.
Three
Daisy
I probably should have argued harder, I reflect, as I watch the snow-covered forest roll by outside the window. I think I read somewhere that your chances of escaping a kidnapping drop by ninety-five percent once they get you in the car. I don’t know these men. They could be anyone.
Honestly, though, I’m really starting to not feel well. Now that all of the adrenaline has flooded out of me, I can’t stop shaking. My brain is all slow and foggy, and my neck iskillingme. I guess it’s an after-effect of being slammed back against my seat.
“You’re sure you can’t take me back to the town?” I ask Cole, peering through the windshield. The terrain is getting steeper as we climb through the mountains. Fear clutches me. How high up do these guys live? I was told Kiruna, where I’m meant to be staying, is the northernmost town in all of Sweden, but we’ve been driving for a while now without any signs of stopping.
His hands clench on the steering wheel. “No.”
“How do I know you’re not kidnapping me?”
“You don’t.”
“Great,” I mutter. “Fantastic.”
Whatever. I figure I don’t really have a choice. If he’s right, and a storm is coming, I would’ve died anyway. At least getting axed into little pieces will be quicker than suffocating under several feet of snow.
