Secret Triplets(22)

 

I stayed silent, my gaze locked on my motionless fingers.

 

“I”—his voice cracked—“I don’t know what to do. Kaya has lost hope in me. My friends have all given up too. I…I’m out of options, Miss Combs.”

 

As unseemly and unwelcome as I found Russell Snow, my gaze was inescapably drawn to him. His face was even hollower, even paler. The line on his forehead looked like a full-on dent. It was incredible, and yet there was no denying it. Russell Snow was telling the truth. He was broken up about it.

 

I swallowed and shifted my gaze to my other hand. Really, it was wrong of me to withhold information from my client. He had paid as promised after all, and it wouldn’t hurt telling him the address now.

 

I cleared my throat and turned to Russell.

 

“He was living in a cabin in the woods,” I said. “You get there from a street connected to the parking lot of the East Street Garage.”

 

His face softened, and I let out a sigh of relief.

 

A few minutes later, we were approaching the East Street Garage where it had all begun. My ache of nostalgia transformed into a twist of suspicion as our car made a turn into the lot.

 

I turned around, stifling my gasp at what I saw: two other blacked-out cars behind us, exactly the same model and make.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Ten

 

 

 

 

 

“You don’t mind,” Russell said easily. “Brock is the sneakiest bastard we’ve had yet. Time is of the essence if we’re going to nab him.”

 

I said nothing. Clearly, this was not the time to admit that I’d been counting on a way to help Brock escape ever since Russell had walked into that café.

 

“And turn him over to the police, of course,” he said with a smirk, like he knew he was lying and didn’t care if I knew or not.

 

As we turned onto the dirt road off the parking lot, I sneakily checked the door again. Locked, of course.

 

“Maybe you could just…”

 

“Don’t have time to drop you off, unfortunately,” Russell returned coolly.

 

He hit a button which made music blare through the car. It took a minute for me to recognize the angry song.

 

The song was jarring, the singer’s voice a rebellious rasp, the guitar a groaning, percussive hit to the gut, the percussion itself just slamming along. It was ironically appropriate, when the singer yelled “screw you, I won’t do what you tell me”, almost like the universe thumbing its teeth at my predicament. I had chosen money over righteousness, and now I was going to pay the ultimate price. I was going to witness first-hand what Russell and his goons were going to do to the man I may have just fallen for.

 

My gaze slid around the car dully. I noticed everything: the floor mat littered with beer bottles at my feet, the cup holder of cigarette butts by my elbow, the hand sanitizer flopped atop them like a joke. The whole car was a hotbox of smoke and my own idiotic failure. My hand grabbed the window handle.

 

“Can I?”

 

Russell responded by leaning over and, as the car bumped along, twisting the handle around and around. Once the window was down enough, I stuck my whole head out the window and gulped in the fresh air greedily. A light snow still coated everything, and some icy leaves brushed my eager face. This was the calm before the storm, and what was coming was inevitable.

 

When I pulled my head back inside, my glance slid to the glove compartment. Its door was ajar. Inside, what looked like a gun glinted. This was bad. This was very, very bad. I felt in my pocket for my phone. Maybe if I just dialed…

 

“You understand, of course, that my friends and I take our work seriously,” Russell said, his voice light. He shot me a significant look. “Very seriously.”

 

I let my phone go. I would just have to go along for the ride. I didn’t have any choice.

 

The drive took even longer than I remembered. Russell spoke to me just once to ask how far in it was.

 

At my “not sure, pretty far though,” he grunted and said nothing more.

 

He turned off the radio in the middle of a country song that liberally used a cowbell.

 

The quiet was even more stifling, and the occasional clank of beer bottles didn’t help things. I was on edge. Every little movement Russell made and every tiny sound from the car or outside frightened me. Meanwhile, our blacked-out clones were still behind us. We passed a twisted ruin of a tree trunk, and my heart fell. We were almost there.

 

By the time we pulled into the all-too-familiar parking lot, I felt like I was going to pass out with fear.

 

“Finally,” Russell said.