Page 81 of The Trap by Catherine
“The Q&A portion of the evening is over, Lucy. Just get in. This is how it has to be.”
“Was this how it was for her?”
“This is different,” he said. “You’re coming willingly.”
She saw a flash of Nicki then, screaming and struggling, eyes wide with terror—
Lucy started to cry.
She got into the back seat and lay on her side, as instructed. The voice in her head was screaming,Are you actually doing this? Is this really happening? Have you seriously put yourself in this position? Wake up! Look around! You aren’t just being taken; you’re giving yourself away. This man could be lying. And don’t you realize it’s worse if he’snot?
But there was a comfort in having made this decision, in relinquishing all control, in knowing that she was being taken to Nicki instead of having to search the whole world for her. She let him tie her ankles together with a seatbelt, and then do the same with her wrists. The bindings were tight, already uncomfortable, the material cutting into her flesh.
He tugged on them to make sure she was secure, slammed the door closed, and got behind the wheel himself.
The engine revved to life.
There were several jerking movements as he got himself out of the cafe’s little car park, and then a swerve as he turned out on to the road.
“So,” he said then. “Where did it all start? That’s always what people want to know, isn’t it? Where it began. I have to say, I never really understood this obsession with the beginning until I inadvertently developed it myself, watching true-crime documentaries. Surreptitiously watching them, mind you. I never do it openly. Not because it would, you know, arouse suspicion or anything.Please. I just don’t want to be known as someone who does that. Because let’s be clear...”
The keys were still in her pocket. He hadn’t noticed them. Lucy couldn’t reach them now, of course, but whatever was going to happen was going to happen when they stopped.
When they got to the Pink House. When he released her.
When she was reunited with Nicki.
As soon as she was, she was going to find a way to use them.
She was going to save them both.
SAFE AND WELL
The address the local boys had given Denise was actually for the station in Bandon, because, they warned her, the only way to find this place was to meet them there and follow them to it.
Now that they were here, Angela could see why.
There was no sign, no letterbox, no gates or fencing. There was nothing at all visible from the road. There wasn’t even aroadreally, just a gap in the treeline through which, if you knew what you were looking for, you might spot two parallel tracks in the dirt leading you into the forest.
“How is anyone supposed to find this place?” she asked.
Beside her, in the driver’s seat, Denise shrugged. “I think that’s the point, isn’t it?”
A pale arm in a short blue sleeve shot out of the driver’s window of the marked car in front of them, waving to get their attention and then pointing down at the ground.
Stop here.
All three vehicles took this literally, stopping where they were, lined up one behind the other in the dead center of the track.
Everyone got out, wiping glistening foreheads and gulping back warmed bottled water, revealing dark patches under their arms.A couple of them untucked their polo shirts from the back of their waistbands and flapped them a little, presumably trying to get some air to—if they were anything like Angela—the pools of sweat in the small of their backs. The Irish weather could always be relied upon to improve in the first week in September just as all the schools went back, but this year it had excelled itself, following an official late-summer heatwave with another week of above-average temperatures. In a country famous for rain and pale skin, where homes were built to hold the heat and air conditioning was only something you worried about when you were booking a summer trip to Spain, it only took a few degrees to get everyone melting.
They gathered in a group on one side of the track, drawn to the one whose trees offered some shade. There were nine of them in total: Angela, Denise, and seven uniforms.
Everyone listened intently as the man who’d introduced himself to them as a sergeant told them what to expect when they reached the property. He described the layout—there was a lake, he said, gardens, and at least seven small buildings dotted throughout—and warned that its owner was unlikely to welcome them.
No one except Denise was armed, and that was only because, as a detective, she always was; there was zero expectation that anyone on the property would have any weapons, least of all firearms.
Everyone assembled was wearing their stab vest anyway, because they had to.
