Chapter 33
Long shadows crept through the kitchen window and across the faded carpet, and Tessa could no longer hear the kids playing outside. Perhaps they’d gone in to have dinner. She hadn’t noticed them leave because her whole world was now centred around feeling for those brief, feather-light nudges. Each one was a precious gift, a reassurance that he was still hers. Still hers to protect. How had she ever thought the baby’s hiccups were annoying? Now they felt like pulse readings on a hospital monitor. Smile at one. Wait for the next. Try to ignore the interruptions.
The man ran his fingers through his spikey hair and paced around the small shabby room again. Between the kitchen bench, small dining table and TV, there was barely room for him to squeeze past the chair she was taped to. He kept doing it anyway.
‘All this stress can’t be good for the baby,’ he said, gesturing toward the rifle leaning against the TV. ‘Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll let you go.’
She tried to tune him out. It was better than giving in to her fear again. Fear made her want to cry, and crying made it impossible to breathe properly. So instead she worked at convincing herself that he was being boring. After all, he was using the same tactic Alex Beckinsale had tried three years ago. Couldn’t these bastards ever think of any other way to get information? And with her mouth covered with duct tape, how was she supposed to answer him anyway?
She wondered how long he would risk keeping the tape on for this time. It had not gone well for either of them the day before when the nausea had set in. She had very nearly suffocated until he’d noticed her turning blue and pulled the car over in a spray of gravel to tear her mouth free. The car would certainly never be the same again, that was for sure—although he’d just laughed and said it was hardly the first time it had happened. Later, when the sickness eased, she’d felt a surge of triumph, thinking that it meant that Noah had somehow found her. Then she’d realised it had cut off way too suddenly. In fact, she’d felt like someone had thrown a bucket of iced water over her. She couldn’t feel him anymore. Anywhere. She’d screamed then, as blind panic overwhelmed her. She couldn’t ever remember feeling so alone. Her abductor hadn’t known what to make of it. Perhaps he’d thought she was going into labour because he stopped the car again and made her drink some water, as if that would have helped with labour pains. At least he had un-taped her hands long enough for her to clean up a bit. She still stank. She hated him for that.
The man circled back toward her again. ‘You know it’s pointless waiting for them to save you. Do you even realise how close they came to us this morning before they ran away? Why didn’t Bane come and get me? And where is Noah? Why didn’t he answer his phone? Rule one when someone you love gets abducted: answer the bloody phone!’
God bless Bane. Now that she’d been given a chance to think things through, Tess realised that he must have sent Noah to Eden. Hopefully he’d had enough sense to send Lainie away too, although she knew how painful that would be for him. Those two had been through enough already. The venom in her stare caught her captor’s attention.
‘I know Noah has the magic,’ he said. ‘Or have I had it all wrong? Is it really just Lainie who gets to be healed?’
As he leant over her chair, his familiar face came far too close to hers, and something behind his eyes reached inside her skull, searching … for what? Tessa’s fear clicked off like a switch had been flipped. Cold anger replaced it. She looked away, lifting her chin.
‘There is one test we haven’t tried yet,’ the man said, his voice strangely flat. ‘Up until now, I had no real intention of hurting you, but maybe that’s what’s been missing. Genuine intention.’
Light from the back window reflected from the large kitchen knife he picked up from the bench.
‘Maybe Noah or Bane will miraculously arrive, just in time to save you,’ he said, pushing her sleeve up past her elbow.
She strained against her bonds, rattling the chair and getting nowhere. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. The trauma from when Alex Beckinsale had threatened her with his knife still had her waking in a sweat far too often. How many times in the deep night had Noah assured her that he would never let anything like that happen again? And yet Noah was not a Guardian.
Pain seared through her forearm as the tip of the knife pushed through her skin, and her reflexes refused to accept that she was tied too tightly to jerk away. She tried to cry out but the tape muffled her voice as she screamed his name, begging for him to stop. He didn’t. Blood welled as he drew the blade down along the muscle belly. The same place Bane had his scar. Guardian blood spilled in futile defence. Bane’s blood had not saved Lainie, and hers was doing nothing for Noah. But Noah wasn’t her only charge.
Red drops slid along her skin and fell down the side of the chair. Blood that was shared with her unborn Cherub son. If only she could borrow his God-given authority the same way he was borrowing her physical resources.
She stopped squirming, and watched the madman’s eyes and thought about everything she would do to him if only she had access to that power. Her sudden stillness caught his gaze, and he paused, blood dripping down the handle of the knife.
I will fight you, break you, cut you, destroy you. Her eyes conveyed all her righteous anger at the threat to her son. I will drown you.
The man flinched, and then laughed, stepping back and putting the knife back on the bench. He went to the front window and peeked out through the closed curtain, as if he really expected to see Noah striding up to the front door.
After a few moments he grunted. ‘I don’t know anymore. I just have this … I have this feeling … part of me is convinced that Noah’s involved, but then where is he? This wasn’t supposed to take so long. And I never expected him to call it in, I was sure Bane would stop him from involving the police. If he hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have had to take you all the way to Melbourne to keep ahead of them. Noah messed up. This is his fault.’
No power for her to use, and it was obvious why. She only wanted it so she could kill him. Probably not the holiest of motives, really. She closed her eyes and tried to force herself to relax, for the baby’s sake. All she wanted was to feel him move again.
‘Still not willing to talk then, Tess? Even now? Perhaps you really don’t know anything after all. Imagine having a husband who keeps such glorious secrets from you? Never mind, I’ll find out from Lainie instead.’