Page 72 of A Touch of Dark
“Drive!”
Damien’s man is already pawing at the door, but the cabbie doesn’t need to be told twice. He plunges into the thick of traffic without waiting for a destination.
Not that I have one to give.
* * *
The driver refusesto take me beyond the city boundaries until I dial my accountant from his personal phone and have the man promise to pay a month’s wages in exchange for taking me where I want to go.
A lonely stretch of road four hours away.
I make him drop me at a rest stop, where I attempt to buy a cheap bouquet of carnations before remembering I don’t have a dime on me. Still, the cashier lets me have them out of pity, and I continue my pilgrimage on foot as the wind howls and nips at my hair and bared skin.
My flowers are frost-bitten when I finally reach a foreboding bend in a winding road.Sorry, Leslie, I mouth. They’re not even her favorites, lilies. Just dying, pink petals and crumbling leaves.
It’s so damn silent here, even now. Houses have sprung up close to this spot. There’s a newer development in this part of town, a hint of civilization where there used to be nothing.
I don’t have any trouble finding that small, dank crevice only a child could fit into. A matted layer of weeds has grown over the opening, remaining even as winter approaches. I perch my meager offering against a tree and then use both hands to tear the underbrush apart.
Twenty years later and it’s never felt realer. Leslie’s screams have never been louder. Simon has never felt closer.
I can hear him picking his way through the forest to find me and finish off the deed he taunted me with all those years ago. I hid here, holding my breath, shielded beneath a surging storm.
“You made the right choice,” he told me then.“You won’t be missed like this one will be—”
“Juliana!”
I jolt into awareness as reality makes itself known in varying degrees of pain. My burning, frostbitten skin. My cramping knees and my aching back. I’m hunched against the hillside, partially huddled within the crevice. Daylight stings my eyes as my ears catch footsteps prowling the woods nearby.
Fear grips my heart. Simon?
Whoever the figure is, he’s persistent. “Juliana!”
Wait. I flinch. That voice doesn’t belong here. Even the wind seems confused by his presence. It plays with the lilting notes of his accent, distorting them.
“Juliana! Answer me—”
“I’m here.” My voice is a whisper promptly swallowed by the wind as I fixate on the imposing man wandering the woods just a few feet away.
He stops, his head cocked, sensing me regardless. “Where are you?”
I can’t bring myself to move, even as he staggers within my reach, each step hesitant over uneven terrain. Somehow, he appears regal while tentatively feeling the space in front of him. He’s still wearing his suit from dinner, a sauce stain along the lapel.
“Where?”
I stand slowly, biting a groan back. Is he here to finish the game his brother started? Or because of his stupid wager? Or because…
“Juliana,por favor. Where are you?”
“Here.” I stagger toward him and grasp his outstretched hand in my own.
He’s an inferno, clamping down like a vise. “You’re freezing.” The next instant, his coat is around my shoulders and he’s shouting something into his headset.
“You…you found me?” I sound dazed. Iamfreezing. I don’t have my coat, and frost glitters on my dress.
Damien says something else into his headset. Moments later, a man I recognize as Julio appears, panting by his employer’s side.
“This way, sir.”
