Page 74 of You've Got The Love
“I’ll forward what I got.” His voice grinds. “Bas, don’t screw this up. They want leverage. They want to make me bleed. But if they so much as scratch her—” The hard-edge falters. “She’s all I’ve got, man. Bring my daughter home.”
“You have my word.” It comes out low, shaking with something that feels like rage but sits too deep to burn off. “I’ll do everything I can to bring her back.”
He hangs up. A second later, the phone buzzes with a message—an address, a pin dropped on a map I don’t need to open to know it’s cold and empty and built for things that don’t care if they crush you.
I push the van harder. The back fishtails, and I correct too fast and then back again, a pendulum swing, the tyres skittering before catching. “Hold on, Amber,” I whisper to the empty seat, because I have to say it somewhere. “I’m coming.”
The forest slides away in chunks. The road widens, then narrows, then snakes past a black line of water shining under the moon like a slit in the world. My thoughts are a snarl—fear, fury, guilt, all wrapped around a single corded thread: go.
I think of Abel. He’ll be sleeping now, sprawled across his little bed with his spaceman pajamas twisted around his legs, one foot always kicked out like he’s trying to touch the world even in dreams. I see his small hand in mine on the way to school, the way he looks up when he has a question and trusts I’ll know. What if I don’t see him again? What if I’m making the wrong moves in a game I don’t understand?
No. I force the thought back. I can’t carry that and this at the same time. Failure isn’t an option. Not tonight. Not with her.
Hours later, Oslo creeps up out of the dark, a slow swell of streetlights and angled shadows. The roads widen into something that feels like promise and threat at the same time. My phone buzzes again—another message from Jack.
Jack: We’re an hour out. Be smart.
I follow the blue spot of my nav past sleeping warehouses and long, low buildings with corrugated sides that look like they’d sound awful in the wind. Puddles freeze in thin skins over blacktop, crack under the tyres with small, mean snaps. The docks are a world built for other people’s business—no one here after hours except the ones with reasons not to be seen.
I kill the headlights a block early and crawl the van forward in the dark. It’s stupid and makes no real difference,but it feels like something. When I reach the last corner before the pin Jack sent, I pull over and put the van in park. The engine ticks like a bomb running out of seconds. I make myself breathe.
Okay.Think.
I’m not a fighter. I’m not a strategist. I don’t have a plan that looks good on paper, even if I had paper. What I have is a glove compartment full of nothing useful, my gun and spare ammo, a half-used roll of duct tape under the seat from when the side mirror kept rattling, a flashlight, and the tyre iron in the back. I stuff the gun in the back of my jeans and fill my pockets with the spare cartridges and reach for the tape like an idiot, then stop. I am not going to tape anyone. I’ve watched too many films. This is real life, and in real life, you bring what you can carry and you hope you don’t need it.
I text Jack.
Me: Here. Waiting. I’ll take a quiet look around if I can. Keep the line open.
I start a call with him and leave it on mute so he can listen if he wants, finger hovering over the speaker icon, then put the phone in my inside pocket where it won’t clatter to thefloor if things go wrong. If I go down, at least someone will know.
A wave of feeling hits me so fast I have to put my forehead on the steering wheel. It’s not just fear. It’s the memory of the nurse—her kind eyes, her careful words—telling me there were complications. We’re doing everything we can. There’s a chair. Sit down. The way I couldn’t. The way the corridor clock moved and didn’t move. How I didn’t get to say goodbye. How I walked out with a baby and a hollow on the other side of me where his mother should have stood.
I can’t do that again.
Why are fragments coming back now?
I lift my head and force my hands off the wheel. The metal is slick with sweat even in the cold. I check my watch—ten past eleven. The meet is at midnight. Forty-nine minutes I need to fill with anything but screaming.
I get out and let the cold slap me in the face. The air down here smells like brine and oil, like old rope, like a story about a ship that never came back. I tuck my hands into my coat sleeves and start walking the perimeter in a tight loop around the van, trying not to look like a man casing a place while also… casing the place. The dock Jack’s pin marked is a wide, flat space with a single sodium light burning jaundiced at the far end. Beyond that, black water knocks against wood in soft, regular hits.
There’s a stack of pallets on one side, a length of chain on another. A forklift sleeps outside a shed, its prongs hikedand crooked like a drunk deer. No people. Not yet. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.
I keep moving. Every sound is too loud—the scuff of my boots, the rattle of something loose in the van door when the wind shifts. I imagine what they’ll do. Make me stand under the light. Make me look at her to prove she’s there. Ask for Jack. Ask for money. Ask for something I can’t give. Hurt her to make me hurry up.
The last thought nearly folds me in half. I swallow hard until the burn settles. “I’m coming,” I whisper, because I don’t have anything else to say that won’t break me.
Headlights turn onto the far end of the lane and crawl toward the dock, too slow to be a stranger lost. My heart spikes and then refuses to slow down. I step back into the shadow of the van so I’m not a shape under the light and watch the car roll forward—dark sedan, plates salted white around the edges, one headlight a little hazier than the other. It pulls up just past the lamp and kills its lights. The engine stays on. A door opens.
Two men get out. Coats zipped to the chin, beanies, and gloved hands. They move like they know where their feet are—no hesitation. One leans against the bonnet and lights a cigarette, the orange dot flaring and then dimming. The other walks to the edge of the dock and looks out at the water like it might have an opinion.
No Amber.
The man with the cigarette looks around once, casually. His gaze skims over my van and slides off. They don’t lookanxious. They look like people waiting for an Uber that will only come if you’ve been very bad first.
My phone buzzes silently against my sternum.
Jack: 10 mins. Don’t engage if you can help it.
