THE DAMN PINGING of my iPad brought me back to reality. I ran my hand through my hair as I tried to make sense of the sound. It was dark, the middle of the night, yet the sound wouldn’t stop.

Ping.

Ping.

I’d finally fallen asleep after a few too many fingers of whiskey. It didn’t seem to matter how much alcohol I consumed—it wasn’t enough to wash away my guilt at not being able to help Charli. I should be with her. She should be with me.

Her crumpled letter, the one that both Deloris and I knew wasn’t from her, lay on the bedside stand beside my bed. Though she hadn’t been the one to write it, its presence gave me a sense of connection. Next to the letter was my phone. I’d sent her multiple text messages and even left a couple of voicemails. My mind told me it was useless, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

I continued to reason that when she finally turned on her phone, she’d see that I’d tried, that despite the roadblocks, I’d done my best to reach her and wouldn’t stop.

Pulling myself from my stupor, I opened my tablet. My personal messages were multiplying by the second. Each one was from Deloris.

What the hell?

Was she sleeping on a button?

I opened the first, second, and then the third. They were all the same.

“ALEX IS ON THE PHONE. COME TO MY ROOM.”

The sheets around my legs were suddenly restraints hindering my movement. Kicking them away, wearing only gym shorts and a t-shirt, I rushed from the lonely bedroom and through the front room of my suite. Without stopping for shoes, I grabbed the room key and hurried out into the hallway. A few doors down, I came to Deloris’s room. I would have known the number, but with the door slightly ajar I could hear Deloris’s voice.

The next voice I heard momentarily stopped me in my tracks. I would have recognized it anywhere. Taking a breath, I barreled inside. The door bounced against the inside wall.

“What—?”

Quickly, Deloris turned my direction, pursed her lips and put her finger to her mouth.

“Of course…” she said. I couldn’t remember what Charli had asked; I’d been too astonished to hear her voice.

“I want to speak to her,” I whispered.

Deloris shook her head as she asked, “Alex, can you repeat that? I think we have a bad connection.”

Charli’s voice filled Deloris’s room. “Can you hear me now?”

“Yes, can you tell me again what you said? Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. I wanted you to know.”

“Ch—”

This time it was Deloris’s hand that stopped me as she thrust a note my direction.

 

 

Don’t talk. She’s on speaker and she’s not alone.

 

 

Who the fuck is with her? Is it her stepfather? Who and why? It’s two-fucking-thirty in the morning. Why isn’t she alone?

Those were my unspoken questions as I pressed my lips together and listened.

“How’s your mother?”

I marveled at the calm in Deloris’s voice. It wasn’t mirrored by her body language. Standing in a robe, she was uncharacteristically rigid.

“I-I don’t know yet,” Charli answered. “I want to go see her, but I need your help.”

“My help? Of course. What do you want me to do?”

“Go back to New York.”

Fuck that!

I spun like a caged lion as I silently pleaded to Deloris, hoping that telepathically she’d hear my rebuttal.

“Alex, how will that help?”

“Alt—my family—is concerned that if I leave the manor something could happen to me.”

“You know that we’d never allow anything to happen.”

“That’s the thing,” Charli said, “they’re afraid you’ll be the cause. I can’t see my mother until they’re assured that I won’t be taken, by you or Lennox.”

Lennox. She did it again. Could the letter have been from her? Was this her way of letting us know that she was speaking under duress? The letter may not have been her, but the person on the phone definitely was. I didn’t only know her voice, but her sounds, moans, and pleas.

I shook my head—so much for telepathic—as Deloris’s eyes widened, looking my direction.

“Is my word enough that we’ve left or do they need more?” Deloris asked.

“Um, I trust your word, but…” She paused. “…they would like proof. A flight manifest showing that you, Lennox, and Clayton have left Savannah.”

“Fuck,” I mumbled under my breath as I turned away.

“How can I reach you?”

“You can’t.”

“Excuse me?” Deloris asked.

“I can’t use my phone right now, and I don’t have access to my email. You can send the flight manifest to altonfitzgerald at montaguecorp dot com.”

“What about this number? Can I call you back on this number?”

“No, this is my stepfather’s home office. He wouldn’t be pleased.”

“I don’t fucking care…”

“Deloris,” Charli said, “please tell me you’re alone or I’ll need to hang up.”

“It’s the TV, Alex. I thought I’d muted it.” Deloris’s glare stopped anything else from escaping my lips.

“Do you still want Lennox to follow your instructions in the letter you left for him at the gate?”

“Letter?” She paused again. “Oh, yes. Please.”

“All of your clothes or only the summer ones?”

What? The letter had said only supplies for class.

“Um,” she answered, “all, I suppose.”

“Alex, you know all you have to do is—”

“Deloris,” she interrupted. “I need to go, but first, I wanted to say thank you, to you and everyone. Please do as I ask. I need to see my mother and until you’re gone, I can’t. And tell…” Her voice bubbled with emotion, tearing at my heart. “…him that I’m sorry. This is the way it was always supposed to be, what I was supposed to do. I just didn’t know it. I didn’t understand. Now I do. We were never supposed to happen.”

It took every ounce of my strength to stay quiet. I wanted to scream at the phone, at Charli, at whoever the fuck was with her. She wasn’t telling the truth. I knew more than her voice, moans, and pleas. I knew her heart. We were supposed to happen.

Why the hell would I end up in Del Mar? Why the hell would I go to the large pool? It was fate and whatever shit she was being fed couldn’t stop that. It wouldn’t stop us.

“Alex—” Deloris began.

“Goodbye.”

The hotel room filled with silence as we both stared at Deloris’s phone. The call was done.

“What the fuck?” I asked.

“She was obviously being coached. I just don’t know who was with her.”

“Why did she call you?”

“She didn’t say,” Deloris answered. “But at the least we confirmed that she didn’t write the letter.”

“We never thought she did. What I want to know is how did the person who wrote it know about rules?”

Deloris shrugged. “Would Alex have told someone?”

I ran my hand through my hair, still moving, spinning in place. “I don’t know. She hasn’t had much contact with anyone but her mother and a woman named Jane.”

“What about Chelsea?”

“What about her?”

“Would she know that? She was with Alex in Del Mar.”

I couldn’t think or reason. “Maybe. What did she say before I got here?”

“Not much. She said that she arrived to the manor safely, and that she’d dropped her phone. It wasn’t working right now.”

“That’s fucking bullshit. She didn’t drop it. I mean it’s not on, but I don’t believe she dropped it.”

Deloris shrugged. “Lennox, she obviously sounded… coerced.”

“No shit. She also referred to me as Lennox in that conversation,” I said. “I think that means something.”

“It’s your name.”

“It’s not what she calls me. She’s giving us clues, clues that whoever is with her wouldn’t understand.” My chest tightened as I pulled at my own hair. The pain in my scalp was to help me think. “Fuck, Deloris, they’re making her say things she doesn’t want to say.”

Deloris stood, meeting me head-on. “She called. I’d venture to guess it took some work on her part to do that. I’d also guess that there was more in that conversation than either of us heard. I recorded it. I’ll go back over it, a million times if I have to. I won’t stop until I’ve deciphered every one of her meanings.”

“I’m not leaving Savannah without her.”

“Just because we leave doesn’t mean we have to stay gone.”

My eyes closed as I sank down onto the sofa. “If we don’t leave, they won’t let her see her mother.”

“Wait…” Deloris said as she pushed buttons on her phone. The recording of the call began to replay in snippets:

“My help… by you or Lennox… they’d like proof. A flight manifest showing that you, Lennox, and Clayton have left Savannah.” Deloris hit rewind and replayed the last sentence. “A flight manifest showing that you, Lennox, and Clayton have left Savannah.”

Deloris’s eyes widened. “Did you hear that?”

“Yes,” I said dejectedly, “twice, or I guess, three times.”

“No. Think about what she said. Who needs to leave?”

“All of us.”

“Lennox, that wasn’t what she said. She named me, you, and Clayton.”

The puzzle Deloris was showing me began to make sense in my tired, heart-wrenched mind. “She didn’t say Isaac. Maybe she doesn’t know he’s here.”

“Or maybe she knows, but no one else does. After all, Clayton and I were seen at Magnolia Woods. You were seen at the gate.”

“Isaac was with me.”

“He was a driver, behind a window. He could have been from a rented service.”

“Isaac can stay while we leave?”

Deloris nodded.

 

 

MY BACK TENSED as Clayton drove Deloris and me through the gate into the private airport.

“This pisses me off,” I said for the hundredth time.

“You’ve mentioned.”

I turned toward the window, seeing the Georgia red clay as the sun made its way above the horizon. “We’re giving in to him. I fucking hate it.”

“We aren’t. We’re helping Alex by doing as she asked.”

“She didn’t mean it. I know she didn’t.”

“Give me time, Lennox. Give her time. There’s a game going on here and we unfortunately aren’t familiar with the rules. The thing I keep reminding myself is that she is.”

“Rules?” I repeated. “When was the last time you spoke to Chelsea?”

“It’s been over a week.”

I turned toward her. “If she wrote the note, maybe she was giving us a clue too? Maybe she is familiar enough with the Montagues that she knows the rules, enough that could help?”

“I’ll keep trying. I haven’t been able to reach her since Alex… since yesterday. One thing’s for sure: Alex is familiar with the rules and with Mr. Fitzgerald,” Deloris confirmed. “I’m sure she told you in confidence, but the more I know about her childhood, the mansion, about everything Montague, the more I can help her.”

I recalled Charli’s honesty, how she’d said she wanted to tell me about her shadows. She said her honesty wasn’t so I could right the wrongs done to her, but so that she could show me she trusted me with things she’d hidden from others.

“I don’t know what will help you.”

The car stopped on the tarmac, near the Demetri Enterprises plane. As Clayton opened the rear door, Deloris said, “I’ll go get the manifest from the airport and have them send it to Mr. Fitzgerald. I’ll meet you on the plane.”

Each step toward the stairs was harder than the last. Each step up seemed like quicksand, its muck sucking me back to the Georgia clay. I stopped halfway up the stairs and looked out at the landscape. Beyond the airport the land was flat, the expanse mostly filled with the lightening sky.

What was Charli doing? What was she enduring?

I recalled the night in our apartment when she first shared.

 

“Did he abuse you?” I asked.

She didn’t hesitate with her answer: “Psychologically. Verbally. I was never good enough at anything. Always an embarrassment. Never the Montague I should be.”

Fuck!

 

That was what she was saying on the phone. This was what she was supposed to do and be. I didn’t know what that meant, but that was it. I knew it—in my heart, in my soul—and it frightened me, not for me, but for her. Whatever was happening wasn’t what she wanted, but what she was supposed to do.

If only I’d pushed more.

But I hadn’t, and now I was at a loss.

As I gazed out the window looking for Deloris, it hit me. She was wrong. I wasn’t the one who could answer her questions, but there was someone who could.

Pulling out my phone, I searched my contacts. The name had to be there. I’d called him at least once before. My watch read 7:26. Maybe if I hurried, I could catch Patrick before he left for work.