Page 22 of Catch Me
Unknown Number: It’s ok. I forgive you.
A location appeared on the screen next, and I smiled grimly. She did exactly as I knew she would. Now I just had to be as predictable as possible in our cycle until her guard was down. It was the only way. I keyed in the code to the garage and headed for the Michaels blacked out Hummer. Where I was going, I would need a little more torque than Ethan’s Audi could provide. Not to mention I was pretty sure Michael would have made sure his personal vehicle had all of his favorite bells and whistles like bulletproof glass and run flat tires. Because knowing Sybil, I was going to need them.
* * *
At about a half mile from my parents’ house, I turned the headlights off on the Hummer. In the spring and summer, the trees that lined the road leading to the barn would normally hide any approaching vehicles. But it was fall now and on a clear night like tonight. Headlights could be spotted up to a mile away. I parked the vehicle about twenty yards from the barn doors and waited in the silence. I could see the lights of my parents’ house a couple hundred feet away, but I couldn’t tell if they were home or not. I hadn’t spoken with them since I’d confronted them over Sybil. My mother’s reaction and the way they’d glossed over her treatment of me had left me angry and confused. Parents were supposed to protect their children. All mine had done was enable my abuser to continue her behavior behind a fake smile and closed doors. Whatever attempts my father had made to warn me about Sybil had come years too late and I saw now that it was guilt that drove him to even attempt to talk to me about her.
Behind the barn I could make out the neighbors’ corn fields. The rows and rows of cornstalks, almost ready for the fall harvest, had once been a childhood haven of safety for me. Sybil would never follow me into the soft soil and tilled up earth. It was where I ran when I couldn’t make it to my grandmother’s cottage. It was in those fields that I’d buried Daisy.
I exited the Hummer and approached the barn doors. It was dark and quiet. The only sounds I could hear were the crickets and the rustle of the breeze through the cornstalks. This barn was technically our neighbors, but we’d always been allowed to use it as a second storage place for our vehicles. I paused with my hand on the rough wood handle and listened, but there weren’t any sounds coming from inside. A part of me worried I hadn’t played my role well enough and that she’d spooked. But there was only one way to find out.
I entered the cool building that smelled of hay, engine oil, and dank earth. It was empty. My stomach sank. “Sybil?” I called out in the darkness, but only my voice echoed back. Fear and anxiety gnawed at me. Where was she?
A soft rustle had me shifting to the balls of my feet, ready to run or fight. All of my senses were on high alert as I waited. She had to be here. This was just another one of her tactics to throw me off my guard. Create an environment of fear and make me pliable to whatever she wanted. I reached for my back holster, where I kept my weapon tucked, fingers settling on the butt of my gun. Another rustle came from closer to me now and in the next breath, my gun was in my hand, my thumb flicking the safety off.
“Who’s there?” I called out, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. Then suddenly around a stack of hay bales two green eyes, glowing in the darkness, blinked at me and let out a curious meow.
I let out a breath of air and half a laugh. It was one of the barn cats that roamed the farm and kept the rats and mice at bay. He turned and rubbed his body against the bale of hay, tail flicking as if to tease me for fearing a cat. I leaned down to give him a scratch under the chin and was rewarded with a rumbling purr before he flicked his ears suddenly and took off into the shadows. Frowning, I stood up to see what had spooked him when suddenly the world around me exploded in pain and blinding light. Then, everything went dark.
CHAPTERTWENTY
Hannah
Pain. That was the first thing I became aware of. My head felt like someone had used it as a piñata at a six-year olds birthday party. I started to panic when I opened my eyes to complete darkness, thinking for a moment that I’d gone blind from the blow. But as my senses came back to me, I realized it was dark because a cloth bag was covering my head. The next thing I noticed was the painful bite of handcuffs on my wrists. I was on the ground, that much I knew. The muscles in my back and shoulders groaned in protest as I tried to adjust my position. And based on the hardness I felt as I shifted, I must have been handcuffed to one of the barn poles.
Distant voices reached me, and I stilled. Fighting off a wave of nausea, I tried to slouch down and appear limp once more. Whoever was speaking hadn’t realized I’d woken up yet, and I wanted to keep it that way as long as possible. At least until I could get a clearer head and not want to gag with every little movement.
A thickly accented male voice came closer. He sounded agitated and angry, but I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. A softer, more feminine voice responded. She was cold, haughty, and condescending.Sybil. Anger and fear warred within me. I’d been so stupid to think she’d fall for my trick. More than that, I’d been so stupid to not tell Simon or anyone else what my plan was. When was I going to learn? Footsteps came closer, and I braced myself for whatever was coming. Reflecting on my mistakes right now would not matter. Clearly, it was too late to help.
“You were always a terrible actor, Hannah. I can tell by the shift in your breathing and the stench of fear coming off you that you’re awake.” Sybil’s voice slapped at me and I flinched, wincing, as the bag was jerked off my head. She stood over me, blocking my view of anything else but her haughty face, but I could see there was something behind her. The barn was still fairly dark, only lit by a single oil lamp set in the middle of the earth-packed floor.
I blinked up at her, my vision still blurry from the blow to my head. “What do you want, Sybil?”
She gave me a grim smile and crossed her arms. “It’s not whatIwant, Hannah. It’s whatyouwant. You asked me for help, remember?”
I shifted and felt a drip of something wet slide down the back of my neck. Was I bleeding? “I’m not sure that my idea of helping and your idea are the same things, Sybil. I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t ask to have my brain scrambled.”
Sybil snorted and shook her head. “Oh Hannah, as much as I would havelovedto take credit for that. Ididcome here to help you.”
I blinked at her again and she must have read the confusion or the utter lack of interest in any of her mind fuck games because she rolled her eyes with an exaggerated sigh and turned to the side to reveal what was behind her.
And then I realized why I’d heard a male angry male voice earlier, because zip tied to a chair with a head that looked like mine felt, was none other than José Hildago himself. He was bloodied and bruised. The crisp white shirt and suit jacket he wore had been ripped to shreds. It looked like he’d been drug through hell and back, putting up a fight the entire way. I looked at Sybil, who was dressed as if she’d just stepped off the pages of a high society magazine. She definitely hadn’t been the one who turned José into a personal punching bag, which meant that her armed guards were here somewhere.
“Umm... thanks?” I eyed José, whose face was so swollen and bruised I wasn’t sure how he managed to see. “But if you were helping me, then how did José know I was meeting you here?”
Sybil smiled and walked back over to the man, grabbing a fist full of hair and yanking him back so hard that even I winced. Maybe she’d gotten a few licks in herself after all. “Because I told him, of course.” The man moaned, and I could see that he was slipping in and out of consciousness. The light from the oil lamp lit up Sybil’s face and a sick feeling roiled in my stomach. There was a look there that I hadn’t seen since the day she’d gifted me the bloody parts of my mutilated puppy.
“Sybil... Sissy.” I called to her softly, hesitantly. “You need to let him go.”
Sybil said nothing for a moment, just watched as blood dripped down from a cut above his eyebrow.
“Did you know our parents tried to separate us?” Her voice, when she spoke, was barely above a whisper.
Shifting against the pole, I wiggled my fingers and wrists in the cuffs, testing their tightness. “Yes. Dad told me that after you threw Daisy to the dogs that if you ever did anything like that again, they’d send you away.”
She laughed, cold, mirthless. “Is that what they told you? Of course, they did.”
The handcuffs were tight, but not so tight that I couldn’t rotate my wrist. I had to get out of them, but without the key or wire cutters, there weren’t many options, and the only one I could think of was going to hurt like a son of a bitch. “What are you talking about? If there’s a different version of the story, then let’s hear it.”
