Gil cleared his throat, doing his best to find strength I feared he no longer had. His eyes drank in his daughter as if he was drowning. “You okay? God, I’ve missed you so much.”
Olive cried quietly. “You don’t look so good. Are you okay?”
“I am now that I’m with you.” Gil strangled a laugh. “Missing you is hard work.” He forced a wink, his face twisting with relief and terror. “I haven’t had anyone to help me cook spinach lately.” He added wobbly humour into his tone. “Know anywhere I can get some out here? Could do with a shot of strength right about now.”
Olive kicked her dirty sneaker into the earth, no longer willing to talk. “Are you not strong like Popeye anymore?”
Gil flinched. “I am now you’re here.”
Olive sniffed. “Daddy, I want to go home.”
The love in her voice. The yearning and need. She adored Gil. Totally in love with her father just like he was in love with her.
I wanted to hate her.
I wanted something to direct my rage at Gil’s molestation. Jane Tallup deserved to be publicly shamed and then shot...but her daughter? The little girl who stood in the darkness wasn’t her awful mother.
She was afraid and small and trapped.
And she needed her father.
Desperately.
Another wash of tiredness tried to suck me under.
Something hurt me deep, deep inside.
My heart cried for this small family who’d been ripped apart by greed. My head pounded for freedom for all of us.
Gil’s entire fight vanished; he left me lying on the bracken, raking both hands through his hair as he stood upright on exhausted legs. “I want that too. And we’re going home. Tonight we’re going—”
“Ah, ah, ah, making promises you can’t keep again, Gilbert?”
Whatever drugs Gil had fed me fractured at the man’s tone.
Him.
The black van.
The asshole who beat up Gil all because I’d used the word us.
Gil stiffened; his face turned black. “I’m done playing this pathetic game, Jeffery.” His voice dripped with menace. No more distress, only danger. “I’ve given you everything I have. I have nothing left. You hear me? Nothing. You’ve made damn sure of that. Just let me take my daughter and—”
“Not so fast.”
The little girl shot forward, spying an opportunity to run. “Daddy!” She bowled toward Gil, her arms outstretched, her face afraid. “Please—”
She didn’t get very far.
Jeffrey swiped at her, catching the hood of the lemon jacket she wore. Wrenching her back, he tutted under his breath. “That’s rude, sweetheart.” Ducking to his haunches, he yanked the girl into the cage made by his legs. “Living with me hasn’t been so bad, has it? You’ve enjoyed the toys I gave you. You said you did.” He shook her. “Be a grateful little girl, sweetheart. Go on.”
Olive sniffed back tears, nodding bravely. “Yes, Uncle Jeffrey. Thank you for the toys.”
“And?”
“And for taking care of me when Daddy couldn’t.”
Gil roared with fury. “Leave her the hell alone.”
“There’s a good girl.” Jeffrey spoke to Olive before rising to his feet. “I see you brought me a gift, Gilbert.” He acted as if he hadn’t heard Gil bellow at him. He behaved as if this meeting in the woods was perfectly rational behaviour.
“Name your price,” Gil snarled. “Any figure. I’ll give it to you. A million? Ten? I’ll do whatever it takes to pay you. Just let it be about the money and forget about O and Olive.”
He bartered for my life.
He begged for Olive’s.
My brain short-circuited, unable to accept such wrongness.
The drugs snatched me back.
My world went dark and silent.
I slipped.
Slipped from chilly forest to soft clouds.
Blackness.
Blankness.
A void.
* * * * *
I came to, being collected gently from the forest floor, only to be placed at the feet of the man who’d destroyed Gil’s life.
I was cold.
The ground was prickly and painful on my bare, painted skin.
Gil’s face hovered above mine as my eyes shot wide.
I was coherent and blazingly aware, if only for a moment.
His eyes held lines only old men who’d buried loved ones and survived holocausts should carry. His lips were bitten and cheeks sunken. He barely looked alive, sucked dry by the devil keeping his daughter as collateral.
“It’s always been you, O. Always.” He kissed me softly; his voice sullied with despair. “But...I never had a choice.” His lips skated over mine again, shivering with apologetic misery.
“D-Don’t...” I blinked madly, fighting the binds of tiredness, wishing my tongue worked as well as my vision.
But it was too late.
Gil placed me tenderly at the feet of a murderer.
“Now, get back.” Jeffrey pointed a finger at Gil as if he was an unruly wolf. “You know what we agreed.”
What did they agree?
What did I miss while I’d been sucked back into sleep?
Gil tripped backward. “Please.”
I struggled to sit up, to dig my palms into the dirt and stop this madness. My mind might be awake, but my body definitely wasn’t. It was loose and languid, powerless and prone.
It took every bit of energy I had to twist my head to keep Gil insight.
He looked as if he wanted to rip Jeffery into pieces all while he slowly fell to his knees and prepared to beg. He might have resorted to pleading, but there was nothing pathetic about him. Nothing useless or inadequate about a man willing to lower himself to dirt for those he loved.
He was regal, a legend, a father who knew where his loyalties lay and what love demanded.
He was the reason I was here.
His paint on my skin, and my death on his hands.
He didn’t deserve my forgiveness, but he did have my understanding.
I had no choice but to understand the depths of his pain and desperation whenever he looked at his daughter. It blazed all over him like a physical entity. A power he couldn’t deny.
His hands banded together in prayer as his gaze flickered from me to Olive. His throat worked as he swallowed hard, his voice strangled and dying. “Name it, Jeffrey. What do I have to do—”
“Keep delivering what we agreed.”
“I have. Thousands of times over.”
“Yes, but retirement is expensive.”
“I’ll pay your every bill and whim until the day you die, just let me take them home.”
Jeffrey chuckled coldly, wrapping his fist in Olive’s hair.
She cried out, flinching as he pulled her cruelly into his side. “You think I’d trust you to pay without incentive?”
“I give you my word.” Gil swallowed again, his face white and strained. “You’ll always be rich. I’ll give everything I have—”
“Enough,” Jeffrey shouted. “Get out of my sight before you humiliate yourself further.”
“You can’t take her again.” Gil scrambled to his feet, his fists curled and shaking by his sides. “Keep your side of the bargain.” He winced, looking at me bound and drugged on a bed of twigs and leaves. “Olin for Olive. I’ve paid your price.” His hand came up, waiting for a smaller one to fit into his. “Give me my daughter.”