Chapter 36

THIRTY-SIX

XERO

We’re nowhere close to reaching Ravencliff Island, and the loss of contact with Tyler is unsettling. I drum my fingers on the catamaran’s helm station, my gaze flicking between my navigation app and the vessel’s display. Each second drags, the engine’s roar doing nothing to quiet my thoughts—Amethyst is out there, and time is slipping away.

Operatives move around the helm, focused—some trying to reconnect with Tyler, others studying maps, a few scanning the horizon. Jynxson is talking to Camila, who’s keeping watch over Reverend Thomas. We’re set to storm the asylum on motorcycles to rescue Amethyst, but we need to locate her first. Everything depends on it.

According to Dolly and her companions, Amethyst could be anywhere on the grounds or within the asylum. It’s not much to go on, but it’s all we have. My gut tightens with the possibility that Amethyst, my little ghost, could slip away before we find her. I can’t let that happen.

I’d dispatch drones, but they won’t be useful until we’re six miles offshore. That’s another twenty minutes of waiting, while Amethyst is out there alone, injured, traumatized, and hunted.

If Father catches up with her, the punishment for daring to escape will be deadly. He might just decide to end her immediately and use the more compliant Dolly for tomorrow’s shoot. A shudder runs down my spine as I force myself not to contemplate the horrors he’d inflict on a woman identical to the one he subjected to years of degradation and near death.

“Anyone there?” A voice crackles over the speaker, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“Tyler?” I ask.

“I’m back,” he replies, the relief in his voice palpable. “And I might have spotted her.” Tyler launches into an explanation of how he hacked into the maritime surveillance satellite system and located a bus moving at high speed along the coastline.

“How do you know it’s her?” I ask.

“The system only captures still images at five-minute intervals,” he says. “I tracked the bus’s route back to the asylum, where someone was firing shots at its rear end.”

My heart picks up speed. “Where is it now?”

Tyler rattles off coordinates, and the helmswoman punches them into the navigation system. The vessel adjusts course, and I glare out into the endless expanse of sea.

“We’re heading to intercept,” I say.

“Are you sure?” Jynxson asks. “Amethyst might still be in the asylum.”

I shake my head. He didn’t see her kill an attacker and hide his corpse, all while thinking she was hallucinating the man she murdered. Amethyst is resourceful.

“The moment we’re in range, I want you to send out drones in both directions. If she isn’t on that bus, I want a team storming the asylum and shooting everyone in sight.”

The next several minutes are tense as Tyler helps us intercept the vehicle. I’m holding on to the chance that Amethyst’s encounter with Dolly and Father has unlocked her survival instincts, and she’s escaped alone. Alternatively, she might have left the asylum with another captive. Anything is possible, but my gut tells me she’s on that bus.

I turn to Jynxson. “What’s the update from the penthouse?”

He shakes his head. “Just Dolly talking about coming out of retirement to star in one last movie. The investors are lapping it up, not knowing she’s set up her twin to die.”

“We’re seven miles away,” says the helmswoman. “Drones are ready to deploy.”

My breath hitches. “Launch them.”

Moments later, the drones take off into the sky, spreading out in a fan formation, racing toward both the asylum and the bus.

“Call me when you get a visual.” I rise off my seat and walk out onto the open deck. Wind assaults my senses, and I squint against the glare of the sun and the relentless spray of the sea.

I grip the railing, watching the drones disappear into the horizon. They’re military grade with gun capabilities, but will take at least seven minutes to reach their targets. Seven minutes of waiting before all hell breaks loose.

My heart pounds a staccato beat, drowning out the roar of the sea. This is the closest I’ve gotten to Father in at least five years, yet all I can think of is Amethyst. What will I find when I reach my little ghost? Have they shattered her already fragile mind?

They were working on her long before my execution, with constant death threats disguised as online trolling. I don’t know if that first man she killed that night was sent to capture her or to test her skills, but they never stopped trying to torment her.

When they couldn’t get to her through the pictures and poison pen letters, they remade the graveyard scene and sent it to Melonie Crowley.

Her mother would have watched the entire thing, thinking Amethyst had branched into violent porn. After all these years, Melonie probably assumed Dolly was long dead. It was unfortunate that Melonie didn’t tell Amethyst she’d been gang-raped while unconscious. We would have watched through the footage and pieced together the truth.

When they couldn’t use Melonie to tear us apart, they sent a link to the video, making Amethyst think she was the victim, and I was a predatory ringmaster. That everything that happened between us was part of some kind of revenge against her for trying to make money from her relationship with me. If I hadn’t completely forgiven her for that yet, I have now.

“Xero,” someone says from behind. “Over here.”

I hurry back to the bridge, where Jynxson and a few others are gathered around a quartet of laptops displaying the drones’ feeds.

On one screen, officers stand beside a police patrol car parked at the asylum’s entrance, exchanging tense words with a pair of young men. I turn my attention to another screen, where a yellow school bus races down a lonely stretch of road.

The drone slows to peer through its windows, and I hold my breath to find a small figure crouched between the seats. She’s instantly recognizable from the blond curls on one side of her hair.

My heart lurches. It’s Amethyst.

She’s wearing a straitjacket with bandages covering her legs. Her head turns, looking like she’s in conversation with someone beneath the seat.

“Zoom in on that image,” I say.

The feed sharpens, bringing into focus the bus’s interior. Amethyst’s face is swollen and encrusted with a mix of blood and dirt. What the hell did they do to her?

“She’s hurt,” Jynxson says.

Rage sears through my chest, burning the back of my throat. “Who’s taken her?”

A second drone flies over the bus, capturing the driver’s face. He’s a large, dark-haired man, dressed in white. With half his face obscured by a white mask, it’s difficult to tell if that’s Father or one of his lackeys.

“She’s on the move,” Jynxson says.

I switch back to the first drone, where Amethyst crawls between the seats toward the driver. My brow furrows as she occasionally glances to the empty space at her side. Is she seeing things or communicating with another captive?

“Did she stow away?” Jynxson asks. “Looks like she’s trying to sneak up on the driver.”

I grunt. “That, or he told her to keep low so as not to get shot. How many minutes until we intercept the bus?”

“Five, sir,” replies the helmswoman.

Shit.

On-screen, Amethyst continues moving toward the man until she pauses on top of his jacket. As she exchanges words with the driver, she moves the garment behind her back.

My jaw clenches. She must see him as a threat.

I watch helplessly as she clutches the jacket, dragging it to the center of the bus. Dread settles in my gut as she slips it on and fastens the zip, all the while glancing at an invisible spot to the side. What the hell is she planning?

As if in answer to my question, she reaches for the red exit handle.

Someone mentions that another car has left the asylum’s back gate, but I’m too engrossed in what’s happening with Amethyst for the words to fully register.

“Is she going to pull the emergency stop?” Jynxson asks.

She yanks the lever, and the bus’s side door swings open. The vehicle lurches to a stop, jolting Amethyst backward in her seat.

My gaze switches to the second screen, where the driver jumps out from behind the wheel and races down the aisle. Alarm hits me in the gut. I should be there, snapping that bastard’s neck.

“Damn,” Jynxson says, his eyes fixed on the images.

Amethyst tries the lever again, opens the door, and leaps off the bus just as the driver lunges to grab her shoulder. She hits the ground rolling before finding her feet and sprinting across the road into the trees.

My heart pounds as the driver charges after her, his large strides swallowing the distance between them with sickening speed.

“Close in on them, now!” I snarl.

The drone tracks their movements. It’s impossible to shoot the driver without risking Amethyst’s safety. She’s barely ahead of the driver, darting from side to side to evade his grasp.

She weaves in and out of the trees, using the evasive movements we practiced, but the man is determined to get her back on that bus.

“Three minutes, sir,” the helmswoman says.

Every second with Amethyst in the line of fire is excruciating. We can’t get a lock on the persistent bastard. Rounding a tree, she pauses to reach into her pocket. When she extracts a gun, my heart roars with triumph. I grit my teeth, waiting for her to fill him with bullets.

But nothing happens.

She glances at the gun, her eyes widening with panic. It’s either out of ammunition or jammed.

“Two minutes,” says the helmswoman.

I rise off my seat.

“Try again,” I snarl at the screen.

She charges at the driver.

“What are you doing?” I yell.

The man spreads out his arms in anticipation of her attack. I hold my breath, wondering if there’s a method to this madness. At the last minute, she ducks low and veers off toward the bus.

“She’s trying to steal it now?” I ask.

“Looks like it,” Jynxson mutters.

The driver jogs after her, seeming pleased with this change of events. Perhaps he thinks he intimidated her back into compliance.

“As soon as she’s out of range, take the shot,” I snarl.

“Sixty seconds, sir,” says the helmswoman.

I clench my teeth, wanting to stay long enough to watch the drone shoot him down in a rain of gunfire. We’re about to arrive a hundred feet from where the bus has stopped. I have mere seconds to intercept Amethyst before she drives away.

Just as I race across the deck, the air fills with the roar of a helicopter. I glance up at the sky, wondering why the hell Camila didn’t inform us that Dolly had left the penthouse. Alarm punches through my chest. In my haste to chase after Amethyst, I left my sister alone, without backup, in a hotel filled with predators.