Chapter 40
Tessa was woken to the sound of a small engine being revved somewhere in the distance. An alien sound amongst the pre-dawn stirrings of sleepy birds and singing frogs. Was the night ever going to end? She had hardly slept and could feel herself weakening to the point where she couldn’t even find the energy to shiver. Or perhaps she hadn’t actually been sleeping at all, perhaps she’d merely been drifting in and out of consciousness. She needed food and water but couldn’t make herself keep anything down. The same questions burned constantly in her aching skull. The baby. How was he? When had she last felt him moving?
The timid glow of moonlight was still filtering through holes in the roof and the scent of rust and old wool filled the night air. She no longer felt cold and yet she could see her breath. That was probably a bad sign. At this time of year there was always frost on the ground in the mornings, and the shed was doing nothing to keep out the chill. She couldn’t feel her fingers or toes at all. Her sore back she could still feel, and her hips and knees. She wondered what time it was.
Outside, the sound of the engine drew close enough to recognise. Someone was approaching on a dirt bike, and it sounded a lot like the spunky little Honda she had inherited when Lainie left. Given how dark it still was, whoever was driving was going far too fast to be safe because they were a long way from any street lights.
Her captor woke a moment later, sprung to his feet, stumbled, and then reached for his rifle. There was barely enough light to see by so Tess tried to stay as still as possible so he wouldn’t panic. He was becoming more and more unstable.
The bike came right up to the main door of the shed before the engine cut off. How had they found her?
‘Stay where you are!’ her abductor yelled, the anxiety clear in his sleep-dry voice.
‘It’s just me. Just Lainie. I’m not armed or anything. I came like you wanted.’
The man cocked his rifle and then sidled along the corrugated iron wall to peer out one of the larger gaps. Apparently satisfied that no one else was around, he moved to the door. ‘Put your hands where I can see them and come in slowly,’ he said, making his voice deeper than it really was.
Tess looked around the old shearing shed at all the other places someone could gain access. Perhaps the bike had carried two people and someone was hiding around the back? She knew Bane wouldn’t have let Lainie come on her own.
‘Jake Evans? What the hell have you done?’
Lainie charged up the two steps to the shed door, sounding exactly like her old self. Tessa groaned, hoping that didn’t mean she was about to rush up to him and slap him on the back of his head. It might have worked in high school, but Jake had changed. He let off a warning shot to prove it, and the sheer volume of it drowned Tessa’s thoughts as she recoiled against her bonds. Lainie stood frozen while it echoed through the valley. There was a new hole at her feet, lined with splintered bits of floorboard.
Fire burned deep in Tessa’s chest. Lainie was not her charge, and yet she felt torn apart by the need to protect her. That shot had been far too close.
‘Where’s Bane?’ Jake asked as he fumbled around in his bag and pulled out the roll of duct tape. He kept the gun aimed roughly at Lainie’s head while he tried to find the end of the tape.
‘I left him sleeping. He doesn’t know I’m here.’
Sure, thought Tess. As if Bane could sleep while she had a gun pointed at her. So Lainie-the-elf-child had remembered how to lie. What was their plan? And how had she convinced Bane to let her do this?
Jake indicated for Lainie to move to the next post along from hers, but she shook her head. ‘First let Tessa go.’
His answer was to place the end of the rifle against Tessa’s temple. The scent of its recent blast burned her nostrils and she was so scared she could hardly breathe. Whoever had decided that she would make a good Guardian must be bitterly disappointed in her.
Lainie took a step closer. ‘Jake, you idiot. That’s a single-shot Ruger. It’s empty now.’
He flipped the rifle around and started to swing the butt of it toward Tessa’s head. She flinched away, shutting her eyes.
‘Okay! Just chill,’ she heard Lainie cry. ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’
When he taped her wrists together around the post, Lainie’s face took on a shocked, glazed look as if she was watching something scary on TV and was only half paying attention to what he was doing. What did she see as she read him? She didn’t try to resist him at all but caught Tessa’s eye with a desolate look as their nervous captor headed outside to check if she really had arrived alone. This would be the point where Bane came in through the back and rescued them. Tessa glanced around, trying to peer through the icy gloom. Any time now, Bane. Seriously. But there was no movement, and Lainie was chewing the bottom corner of her lip and still looking at her like she’d accidentally broken a window.
So it was not yet over. Despite the fact there was nothing left in her stomach, it still managed to roil and squirm. A second later when she realised why, her face lit up as she felt the missing piece of her heart return from across the Event Horizon. Then she literally hissed at Lainie.