The Society Karen Guyler (best books to read .TXT) 📖

Just in sight from the plane, it was what she’d thought she’d seen. The upturned sole of a shoe, in which was a foot belonging to a leg, belonging to an unconscious Luke.

33

“Luke? Can you hear me?”

It was an automatic response to get to her knees to help him, even though Eva’s body protested. More soreness from last night, this morning. She put her fingertips on his neck, his pulse beat against her touch.

“What happened?” Stupid question while he couldn’t answer her.

No obvious signs of injury, no blood pool spreading out beneath him, no sweat on his face, no clamminess on his palms.

“Hello?” Eva walked around the stationary plane in the hangar, “anyone here?” Her voice reverberated in the immense space as she scanned the walls looking for a phone. The pilot, of course, he could radio the tower to get help. “Luke, I’ll be right back. I’m just getting you help.”

Out of the hangar, the space she walked through was unexpected. Where—What? Eva bolted three steps, five, until that becoming all too familiar star bursting of pain through her leg warned her to slow down. But not now. Even running flat out, there was no way she would catch Addison’s plane pulling away from her, taxiing towards the end of the private area.

She pushed herself after it. She couldn’t see if Lily’s or Charles’ faces were pressed against the windows, hands hammering at her to save them.

Faster.

She gritted her teeth against visions of a car mounting the pavement, against an unknown deadly something lying in wait to blow up their house. The Society winning, after all. Eva stared so hard at the plane as she limped after it, willing it to stay in one piece, to not turn into a fireball, that her eyes ran.

Lily, no.

No, no, no, you can’t take her.

Eva pushed herself harder, harder. Her mind screamed Lily’s name. A siren from somewhere behind her; someone had seen her running onto the airfield like a terrorist. Good, they’d have to ground the plane. Eva turned to hurry them up, but it wasn’t airport police, a fire engine, anything that might help, anything that made sense.

A silver van shot past her. Eva stumbled, pain flared, her knee only being held together by the support Charles had bought her. The runway was so far. But even as the plane rolled forwards for its take-off slot, she ran. Past the van as its doors opened and two men got out.

“Stop the plane,” the words fell out of her, a tangled mass of not enough air, too much emotion. “Stop it, Lily!”

She limped on but something snaked around her, foreign hands that gripped and pulled.

“Eva, stop.”

“Let me go. I have to stop them.”

The man held her hard, barrelling her towards the van. Making herself limp against him, rigid, trying to jump away, push herself off him. But he’d been trained for better efforts than hers.

She was in the van. The side door slammed to the roar of the jet thundering past them, lifting skywards, wrenching Lily away from her.

34

Eva lay where she’d landed in a rolling darkness. A light turned on above her, yellow holding back black. They’d carpeted the interior, the sides and roof too. Just her in the large space.

The leaning of high-speed corners and the forces of hard braking and quick acceleration eased. Out of the airport, she guessed, into regular traffic, but it was only a guess, no visual, no auditory clues. Who soundproofed their van? Eva shivered. Who were these people?

Stay aware, Evie.

Daddy, I’m trying.

What can you do?

She couldn’t change what the plane was doing, where it was going. She pushed hard at the tsunami of panic that threatened to overwhelm her. Not now.

Lily. I’ll find you, sweetheart. But first she had to get free. Think.

Stay aware, Evie, the most important thing. It had saved her father once when he’d been thrown into the back of a van on assignment, seized as currency. When there seems no way out, he used to tell her, you searched for the unexpected, always the best weapon.

His bedtime stories to her then had been a game. Pop quiz, Evie, what do you do if? But she’d never been terrified for her daughter in those games, her baby girl, an innocent. Eleven years old, heading into the abyss of words Eva couldn’t think about. Breathe in, out, count it. The numbers, just think of the numbers. Banish the known truth, skipping at the edges of her reason, that some men paid fortunes for pre-pubescent children. Charles was with Lily, he would protect her.

The van stopped. Eva crab-crawled to the side door. No lock for her to undo on the inside. She hit the sides but the sound barely reached her ears, deadened to a flatness that no one would hear on the outside of the panels. So organised and thorough, they must do this a lot. She swallowed.

The brake lights. By sabotaging her knee support, she could use one of its hinges as a screwdriver. She ran her hands over the panels as the van drove off again. But her arm buckled, and she face-planted the rough carpet. A wide curve, a big roundabout?

Her captors had thought ahead of her; both brake lights screwed behind a wire cage she couldn’t get her fingertips into, and the screws, too flush to reach, needed an allen key.

Eva sat back against the corner that gave her the best leverage behind the driver.

What now, Daddy?

His child had never been in danger, he’d only had to think about himself when he was. The van lurched forwards, braked quickly. The distance between her and Lily was the furthest it had ever been since Eva had first felt her kick inside her, the fluttering butterfly kisses of Lily’s ‘hey, Mum, I’m here’, since Eva held her tiny form, overwhelmed that this life was in her hands, since Eva had promised she’d be all the parents Lily would ever need. Always there