Page 112 of Merciless Prince
We headed outside. There was a chill in the air now, and the sun was dipping low on the horizon.
“What’s the address?” Cooper asked once we were in the car.
I covered my mouth and yawned before replying. “3631 Massapequa Cove Drive.”
As Cooper typed it in to the GPS unit on the dashboard, I let out another yawn and rested my head against the seat. My eyelids felt heavy, and my limbs were sluggish with exhaustion.
Cooper glanced at me. “You can sleep if you want. I don’t mind.”
“Thanks,” I murmured, closing my eyes and letting my head loll to the side.
When I awoke again, night had fallen, and Cooper was slowly pulling into the driveway of my family’s vacation home. I sat up straight and stretched my arms. “Did I sleep that whole time?”
“Yup. Out like a light,” he replied. “This is it, right?”
I nodded as I looked up at the two-story Cape Cod-style house in front of us. The sight of the white clapboard walls, gray shingled roof, and dark green shuttered windows brought on an immediate rush of nostalgia that filled me with warmth.
Cooper and I got out of the car and headed toward the front garden. I stooped to pick up a rock and peeled off the spare key taped to the bottom.
“Ah, the old fake rock trick,” Cooper said with a grin. “I can’t believe people still do that.”
“Hey, it’s worked fine so far,” I said, returning his smile.
I unlocked the front door and quickly typed in the alarm code before it started blaring at us. Then I went through the main passageway and started turning lights on.
The house was a cornucopia of memories with family photos and little anchor motifs adorning the walls. There was a thin layer of dust on a few pieces of furniture—I hadn’t visited for a year, and neither had Leonie—but apart from that, it was perfectly habitable.
“Where should I put this?” Cooper asked, holding up a stack of mail. He’d collected it from the mat on the front doorstep before following me in.
“It’s probably just junk mail, but I’ll look at it later,” I said, holding out a hand.
He handed the stack to me, and I put it down on the island counter in the kitchen. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of the colorful text on the top envelope.To the homeowners at 3136 Massapequa Cove Drive – Don’t miss out on this fantastic deal!
I laughed and rubbed my forehead. “God, I’m so tired that I forgot—”
I abruptly cut myself off as my skin prickled with sudden unease. I was about to say that I was so exhausted that I gave Cooper the wrong address in the car earlier… but we ended up here at the summer house anyway.
So how did he know where to go? How did he know to put 3136 into the GPS and not 3631 like I told him?
I frowned and turned away from the counter, trying to brush the whole thing off. Perhaps I gave Cooper the right address after all, and I was just remembering the conversation incorrectly. That made sense, because I’d experienced a lot of trauma recently, and I knew that could play havoc with short-term memory capacity.
“Forgot what?” Cooper asked.
“Oh, um… I forgot where the towels are. But I just remembered. Upstairs linen cupboard.” I turned back to face him. “Do you mind if I go and take a bath?”
He smiled. “Of course not. I’ll have a look around the house while you’re doing that. Maybe watch some TV.”
“Cool. I’ll be down soon.” I returned his smile before heading up the stairs.
When I was halfway down the upstairs hall, I stopped and ducked into the study. I headed over to the desk and rifled through the bottom drawer, searching for my old iPhone.
Back when I was a selfish teenager, I’d begged my parents for a new one after I dropped it on the boardwalk at the beach and cracked the screen. It was only a small crack near the top, but I couldn’t stand it. My parents gave in and bought me a new model instead of making me get the screen replaced with my pocket money, and I stashed the old one in the drawer in case I ever needed to get anything off it.
I finally found it, along with its charger. Then I grabbed a towel from the linen cupboard in the hall and went into the bathroom. While I ran the hot water in the bath, I plugged the charger into the outlet near the vanity and tried to turn the phone on.
A couple of minutes later, a bright white image of an apple appeared on the black screen. I breathed a sigh of relief. It still worked.
I connected to the summer house Wi-Fi and climbed into the bath, carefully carrying the phone with me. Before I logged into any of my accounts, I downloaded a VPN and turned it on. That way, even if Killian was tracking my email and social media logins in an attempt to find me, he wouldn’t be able to track my location. The incorrect IP address would make it look like I was signing in from somewhere in Germany, which was obviously impossible, given that I’d only escaped from the castle a few hours ago.
