Page 5 of Sparrow

“She had to be left behind,” Hawke snaps. “It doesn’t matter. Two will do. Keep to the plan. I’ll see you in three days.”

This is evidently enough of an answer for the other guy because he nods sharply and then turns, towing Stella with him. I watch her face go from confused to furious, and then see her decide to fight back, and by the time Hawke whirls me in the other direction, picks me up, and throws me over his shoulder, she’s screaming in defiance.

The scream goes quiet a moment later, though, and when I manage to look up, I see that they’ve knocked her out and are now carrying her down the alley in the opposite direction.

While the man I thought was an economics expert sprints away from the men and my best friend with me thrown over his shoulder like a sack of fucking potatoes.

My heart has remembered how to beat now, and it’s pounding out a frantic tattoo, terrified, but my brain has shut off completely. No more panic. No more ideas.

Just the cold, hard realization that Stella and I have just been kidnapped.

And though Stella’s family might pay whatever ransom they ask for her, I don’t think my father will give two shits about losing me.

He never has.

Arden

I’m asleep until the car stops, but that’s nothing new.

At this point, I’ve been moved more times than I can count, and it’s always the same: I’m woken in the middle of the night and told roughly to put on shoes and get ready for a trip. I stumble through the darkness of yet another faceless room with only a bed and a dresser, finding the few things I’ve been allowed to keep, and then I’m rushed into a car by a man I don’t recognize and taken to another house–another building–where I find another room exactly the same as the one I was in before.

Presumably a different city, but otherwise exactly the same.

I’ve lost track of how long it’s been going on. Weeks? Months? I can’t remember the last time I truly saw the outdoors–the cars are usually in parking garages–but I know it’s been some time since that night in the cafe, when Professor Hawke hauled me and Stella out into the alleyway and then shoved Stella at a different group of men.

The image of her being carried away, her head lolling in helpless repose as the men hoist her up, flashes sharply across my brain, and I gasp, then realize the car has stopped and sit up.

“Where are we?” I ask immediately, the familiar terror rushing through me. Yes, I’ve been through this multiple times–too many times to count–but familiarity hasn’t bred comfort.

Not even close.

The men who have me have never touched me or even threatened me, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. Every time they move me, I fear the next location. Fear what I might find there.

“None of your fucking business,” the man behind the wheel snaps.

I shut my mouth at that, afraid to ask any more. Afraid that this might be the time when one of them actually reaches back and hits me for asking too many questions.

Punishes me for speaking when I’m not supposed to speak.

He gets out of the car and moves quickly around to my side, then yanks the door open and reaches for me. I pull back, terrified of being touched again, but of course it does no good. It never does any good.

I can try to run as much as I want.

I don’t have anywhere to go.

He pulls me roughly from the car and I somehow manage to get my feet under me before I hit the ground... and then realize that my feet aren’t on pavement. This isn’t the cold, hard press of concrete under my feet. And there’s not echoing presence of a roof over my head. No dull roar of a city around us. No sirens, no engines, no shouts.

Just pure, blissful silence.

Grass under my feet.

The smell of pine trees, sharp and pungent and glorious, in my nose.

Christ on a bicycle, I’m outside.

The thought brings a rush of joy so pure it almost drives me to my knees, and I look up and around quickly, trying to figure out where I am and how I got here. It’s pitch dark, though, and I can barely see anything. The outline of a forest around us and the lights of a building in the distance, penned in by the darkness of trees and the deeper black of the sky overhead. I turn my face up to the sky and take in the vast array of stars over me, the air bright and chilly and free as it brushes across my skin.

Fucking hell, I’ve never been happier to feel fresh air, and it’s such a silly thing that I feel laughter bubbling up my throat at the thought. I let one huffed laugh out, incapable of keeping it, in, and the man jerks me to the side, growling a threat about me getting too comfortable.