Page 107 of The Chain House

He quickly typed another message: We’re tracking their destination, so I’ll let you know ASAP where they’re heading. He hit Send again and pocketed his phone.

Other than Todd, their new long-haul trucker friend who insisted on keeping his rig parked along the road leading into and out of the old LouTalia vineyard, Trevor and Lizzie were alone, hunkered atop a wooded hillside overlooking a rolling-hill valley seemingly mimicking a picturesque Italian countryside. Like something stolen from a book, stolen from Tuscany itself and plopped down in the middle of wooded nowhere. They’d traversed through woods and woods and more woods, and then this … a hidden gem of trellised gardens and rustic stone structures, rows upon rows of craggy grapevines full of robust green and purple fruit, and on the far side, as if carved into the hillside, were tiered olive groves. Center to all of it, resting in the middle of the valley like a beating heart, was a massive stone structure, Italianate in design, and sprawling, from an arial view, in the shape of an L. It was three levels tall with a steeply pitched red roof, below which rested dozens of windows spaced evenly throughout the sides of the house, on all three levels.

Dozens of rooms, thought Trevor as he and Lizzie—he with a baseball bat and she with a gun—carefully navigated the hillside that funneled majestically down toward the moonlit vineyards. He wondered if some of the Mallard Malone money had gone to create this.

This illusion.

But it was real.

And as they neared the bottom of the vineyard, where the sheer size of the house loomed even larger from below, Trevor saw that not only did each room glow with light, and some with moving shadows, but each open-air window was covered with vertical bars.

CHAPTER60

BETH TRIED NOT to look at Minks.

Instead, she focused her gaze out the window toward the clear, moonlit night, and imagined she was a bird that could soar between the vertical prison bars to her freedom.

When she glanced his way, she saw him on the folding chair he’d brought in with him, watching her, his dark eyes probing alien-like at her through the holes of the Guy Fawkes mask, the unlabeled bottle of wine open and airing out on the floor beside his big, brown right boot. That boot was flat on the floor while his left leg was stretched out, his leaned-back posture like that of a Roman Caesar.

Her back felt aflame, in excruciating pain from sitting in such weird positions on the floor for so long. The bullet wound in her calf throbbed, like every pulse from her heart pushed blood directly down toward it.

But at least the ringing in her ear from the gunshot was subsiding. She could hear Emily typing again in the neighboring room.

Minks said, “Did you have a nice reunion?”

She ignored him.

“Look at me,” he said.

She continued to stare out the window.

“This will soon be over.”

“Kill me now,” she said.

“Drink,” he said, of the glass of wine he’d placed next to her. “It’s my finest vintage.”

Without drinking, without looking at him, without acknowledging that he’d even left the wine glass for her to consume, she said, “You’ve heard of Stockholm syndrome?”

“As an avid reader, I’ve heard of most things, Dr. Hawthorne,” he said. “But that’s not what this is.”

“It’s a psychological coping mechanism,” she said. “It can develop in victims of captivity. Victims of abuse.”

“Mr. Darcy has never once abused her.”

“Causing them to identify with,” Beth said, “and in some instances … develop positive feelings toward their captors.”

“Mr. Darcy has never once harmed one hair on her head,” he said. “And she is not a captive here.”

“What would you call the chains, then?”

“For her own safety.”

Finally, she looked at him, not because he’d asked her to but after what he’d said, she couldn’t help it. “And I thought you were Mr. Darcy.”

“I am, when I’m with her.”

“And now … you’re Oliver Crown?”