of the playground and lawn can be seen from the parking lot. I immediately know something is wrong and dread pools in my veins, the relaxing and joyful drive ruined in an instant.
His car isn’t here.
I immediately hit the locks on my car doors, even as I put the car in park and let it idle. I’ve never, ever come to meet Atticus and beat him to the location. He isn’t just on time to meetings, he’s chronically early to the point that I always assume he arrives a full hour before and just… enjoys the quiet. A commodity that as the Crow, he doesn’t get much of.
He should be here.
Jesus H. Christ, what if someone has kidnapped him? Panic starts up in my gut. I reach for my phone right as a shadow comes over my side window. They move too fast for me to look over, thank God, because suddenly the glass is blown out and raining down on me.
A squeal rips out of my throat and I reach for my purse, but they’ve caught me unaware and completely unprepared, a stinking rag pressed over my mouth and nose before my brain has even registered what the hell is going on right now.
I’m being fucking kidnapped.
And then I’m out.
I come to in the trunk of a car, trussed up like a freaking Christmas turkey, and my stomach is roiling with the aftereffects of whatever the fuck they knocked me out with.
Who the hell chloroforms people these days?
I thought that was just an old relic of bad thriller movies, not a real way of freaking kidnapping someone. I had no idea that the fumes would make me feel so sick, and the motion of the car only makes things ten times worse.
The gag in my mouth isn’t the worst thing, though I don’t want to think about Atticus right now and if he’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere because nothing else can explain why he didn’t meet me. The worst thing is the bag over my head.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months working on the trauma of what the Jackal forced me to do and exactly zero time working through what it felt like to be kidnapped by Diarmuid. He’d arrived at my bedroom door back in senior year with a flirty smirk and a bag tucked in his back pocket. We had no freaking clue that he’d bargained with the Jackal to hand me over, that he had betrayed us all, so I’d just opened the door to him and listened to the lies he’d drawled out.
The moment I turned my back the bag was over my head and my wrists and ankle were cable tied.
I screamed out but he was much bigger than me and just slapped a hand over my mouth, pressing the filthy fabric into my mouth until I was too busy trying not to vomit to scream.
The car trip was a nightmare.
He’d spent the whole time trying to convince me that this was all my own fault. That Harley was an O’Cronin and I’d softened him. He might not have been complicit in the abuse that happened in the compound but he definitely agreed with half of their crackpot fucking sexist views.
Harley couldn’t possibly be a real man if he valued women.
He couldn’t be strong and capable if he went along with plans that Lips and I had made, because women don’t belong in conflicts. He had talked about Lips like she was a parlor trick, like she was nothing more than a talented magician who didn’t really hold any power.
I still hate thinking about him.
The differences in my kidnapping this time are that only my hands have been tied and I’ve been placed in the trunk of the car. I part my legs a little and tense them when the car takes corners so I don’t roll around too much. I can hold the position forever if I need to, my legs are the strongest part of my body, and that helps a little with the panic clawing up my throat.
I do a lot of deep breathing and planning.
This has to be either Amanda Donnelley or one of the members of the Twelve—the Viper or maybe the Ox. It could possibly be one of the Crawfords, pissed at Atticus and retaliating by taking me.
Then the car comes to a complete stop and I snap my legs back together.
I’m so goddamn pissed at myself for wearing a skirt.