Say the Word(136)

I paused to fish my phone from the clutch, its insistent vibrations signaling an incoming call from an unknown number. Glancing away from the screen, I looked up to tell Fae and Simon to wait for me, but they’d already disappeared into the vast swarm of people in the atrium. I assured myself I’d find them in a minute, maneuvering my body toward the edge of the crowd where it was quieter and hitting a button on my screen to accept the incoming call.

“Hello?”

“Lux!” The voice was well known to me — young, feminine, filled with fear.

“Miri?” I asked, feeling my stomach flip. My eyes scanned the crowd, looking for Bash and my friends, but I spotted no familiar faces. “Is that you?”

“Please, Lux. You have to come.” Her voice was hushed and trembling with terror. “I have to tell you something.”

“Don’t worry, Miri, it’s going to be okay,” I told her, trying to conceal the tremors in my own voice. “Tell me where you are, I’ll send someone to pick you up.”

“No!” Her voice was shrill with panic. “It has to be you! You’re the only one I trust!”

I felt my heart turn over as I heard the fright in her voice. “Calm down, Miri. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I know where they’re keeping Vera,” she whispered.

The breath halted in my lungs.

“They saw me. I think they’re after me.” Her breaths were ragged. “Please, come. I need you to come. Right now.”

“Miri, I’ll bring help. It’ll be okay. Just tell me where you are.”

“Please,” she pleaded. “Come alone. I need your help. I’m at the coffee shop — you know the one, in the Village where we met before.”

“Why do I have to come alone?”

“I don’t trust anyone else,” Miri whispered into the phone. “If you don’t come alone, I’ll run. Please, Lux. I don’t want to disappear like Vera.”

The line went dead.





***


I didn’t think.

I should’ve considered all my options. I should’ve been logical. Should’ve planned better, thought harder.

But I didn’t.

I don’t really have any excuse, other than the fact that, as adrenaline and fear pulse through your veins and your heart races at twice its normal speed, rational thought becomes difficult. I heard the fear in Miri’s voice and something inside me snapped, like a twig placed under so much pressure it finally cracks in two. Phone clutched in one hand, the skirt of my dress held aloft in the other, I rushed for the exits.

I didn’t think about going to Bash or my friends. I didn’t even consider the FBI agent milling about the room with me somewhere. Instead, I moved on instinct, my thoughts consumed by the image of a young girl I had an obligation to protect. Stupidly, I thought I might just slip out for a moment to see her — my absence so brief my friends wouldn’t even notice I was missing. I thought I might call Conor on my way, and have him arrange some kind of safe location for Miri to go until this was all over. I thought there’d be more time to plan, to phone for help if I needed it.

I was wrong.

There’s a moment in every horror movie when the young, nubile heroine hears a scary noise from the dark, dank basement and decides to go down alone to check it out. And you, watching at home, are screaming at your television as she descends the creaking stairs, straight into the arms of a waiting serial killer.

Go back, you idiot! you yell, shaking a frustrated fist at the screen as the heroine meets her predictable, gruesome end. I’d been that person, rolling my eyes at the girl in the movie and fully convinced I’d never be so foolish. Which made it all the more ironic that, when that moment came along in my own life, I failed to recognize it.

Running for the front doors, I skirted around several arriving guests and held one hand up to shield my eyes from the mob of cameramen eager to snap my picture a second time. I could only imagine tomorrow’s headlines:





SEBASTIAN COVINGTON’S DATE FLEES GALA


But, in my mind, that was better than the alternative:





YOUNG IMMIGRANT GIRL FOUND DEAD IN CENTRAL PARK


I wasn’t a total idiot, nor did I have a death wish. I simply knew that, with each passing minute, the likelihood something might happen to Miri increased tenfold. As I hailed a taxi, I scrolled through my contacts until I found Conor’s name. The yellow cab slowed to a stop before me just as the phone began to ring in my ear.

“Gallagher,” he clipped, as I pulled open the door and slid into the backseat.

I opened my mouth to speak but the taxi lurched forward, peeling away from the curb so fast my phone slipped from my hand and landed on the cushion next to me. My eyes flew to the driver’s seat, growing wide when I saw who was sitting there.

I’d been neatly trapped — sprinted straight into my enemies’ snare. There would be no call for back up made during this ride. No warnings or words of goodbye.

“Hands in the air, whore,” Smash-Nose sneered at me from the front passenger seat, one bandaged hand holding a gun against the thin plastic partition between our seats. The Neanderthal grunted as he sped down W 57th past the park, the steering wheel clutched tightly in his fists.