Page 78 of Wayward
“What room are you in?” Esmeralda straps a backpack on, while a driver unloads several trunks and three large suitcases.
Sam tells her while crouching, scratching Penny’s ears, and I set Pepper’s box on the other side of my feet.
“Good, I want to be in another wing. And don’t let the demon pee on the Oriental carpets.” She marches to the front door. A door I’ve yet to see open.
I grab a suitcase and Pepper and follow behind. Sam’s tugging two suitcases while the driver wrestles with the trunks behind us. Penny zooms between Sam and me.
“Put it there.” She points to the bottom of the grand staircase. “Now where is Hunky Holloway?” She wanders down the hallway to a sitting room where Holloway and Collins watch sports on a tiny television.
“This way, Penny.” Sam calls her back from following the chef. Her fluffy ears flap back and forth at us.
“She looks good. Someone has given her a haircut.” I head up the backstairs with Pepper, and Penny with her coiffed curls races in front of Sam like she knows where she’s going. Her nose is to the ground. She heads right to our room and paws at the door handle—opening it.
“What?” Haley cries. She is on the floor, rolling around with the golden-doodle by the time we get in. “Where did you . . . Is that Pepper?” She points to the crate.
“It is.” I put it down, but I don’t open it up. Esmeralda has a point. Pepper’s not a house cat. She’s a treehouse cat.
“Hey, Pepper.” Haley crawls over to her on the floor and lies down, her nose inches away from the crate.
I toss her the key from my pocket. “The house manager from Thailand brought them. Apparently, Pepper attacked the elder Zambrano.”
“Well, I knew I always liked that cat,” Easton says, coming out of the bathroom.
“Hope she clawed his eye out.” Sam’s playing with Penny.
I pull the bolt clippers out of my pants and tuck them under the bed.
“What are those?” Haley’s got a good view of it from the Oriental rug.
“It was our idea of freedom,” I say. But how can we do it now? Penny and Pepper are family too. They kept us alive as much as we kept them alive. Heck, we’d probably still be yelling down to Sam on theRock Candyif it wasn’t for Penny. Easton would be singing out of the small opening in the rock for the rest of eternity. I glance from Haley to Sam and to Easton. It’s easy to read that they’re all thinking the same thing. We can’t run away from them again.
“We’ll figure something out,” Haley says. She stands and picks up Pepper. “I’m going to take her out in the bathroom. We need to get her some supplies. Penny too.” Penny jumps up onto the bed.
“I should tell her to get down, but I can’t.” Sam sits on the side of the bed and rubs her ears.
The house library doesn’t exactly have the newest Lee Child book. But I’m working my way through a set of Agatha Christie’s leatherbound mysteries. It’s been four days since Penny and Pepper showed up with Esmeralda. The food has gotten a lot better. And Holloway is a heck of a lot scarcer. I’m not sure if he’s hiding from the chef or with her. I don’t care. It will make things a lot easier if Z doesn’t hold up his side of the bargain and let us go in three days.
Zane comes out of the shower and sits on the bed. His feet are inches away from the bolt cutters on the floor. The bolt cutters that have been driving me crazy. I glance from him back to my book.
“So, what are you doing? Reading, right? Sorry,” Zane says.
I’ve always thought of myself as the doer of the group. But we’re all doers, even Easton. And it’s interesting to see them all squirming. We need to get out of here. It’s a prison. A really nice prison, but when you’re a get-shit-done kind of person?
Zane stands and re-sits. “I’ve been thinking. What if we take them north?” There are most likely no microphones here. But we’re all in the habit of talking in code after theRosewoodand we haven’t dropped it. The “them” is Penny and Pepper. North—I’m guessing—is his mum’s flat in Birmingham.
“What do you think will happen if we’re followed?” I ask.
“Right, that’s no good. I don’t want to invite shit into their lives.”
“Nope.” I turn the page, though I haven’t read what was on the last one. I want to be left alone.
“Why did Collins put your zip tie in his pocket?” Zane cocks his head at me.
I blink. I guess using a code is out the window. “I had almost cut through it.”
“Right, that makes sense. But why didn’t Collins tell Holloway or the other twat?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know he had put it in his pocket.”
