Page 101 of Surrender
At least, I hoped he did.
Silence settled through the car. It was thick and suffocating—the kind that made your ears ring. Parker finally relaxed, as much as a man with two hostages, and kept his mouth shut, though he tapped the barrel of his gun against my seat like a warning.
Making sure I wasn’t able to get comfortable.
Or feel anything other than anxiety and dread.
“How much farther is it?” Rafe asked a few minutes later, tapping his fingers impatiently on the wheel. “You said upstate, not fucking Canada.”
I wasn’t sure how long we’d been driving, given I was knocked out for part of it, but since I’d been awake, the landscape around us had changed dramatically. The open fields and farmland that seemed to stretch on forever on each side of the interstate had morphed into thick forests of trees. The long straight stretches of highway began to curve and twist, doing nothing to help the constant churning in my stomach, though I could tell Rafe was fighting to keep the ride as smooth as he could.
“Take exit 189,” Parker said.
No explanation.
No snide remark.
If the way he’d been ranting during this drive was any indication of where his mind was at, his thoughts were spiraling downward. Each decision he made now wouldn’t be little. They couldn’t be when considering taking another person’s life, and there was no way that wasn’t the plan.
There was no way we were driving deeper and deeper into thewoods, just for us all to have a deep and meaningful talk about our feelings.
No.
Someone was going to get hurt.
One of us.
All of us.
I wasn’t sure.
But we were getting closer and closer to a point of no return, and as Rafe finally pulled off at the exit Parker had mentioned, it was time for us to try and take back some power.
Or possibly die trying.
Chapter Thirty-Six
DARCY
Rafe took the off-ramp, cruising up to an intersection.
“Right,” Parker ordered, and we pulled out onto a much quieter road.
It was narrow, with one skinny lane in each direction. The trees on either side were so big they seemed to loom over us, blocking out some of the sun, almost like they were reaching across for each other.
“It’s about ten miles up here, then there’s a private roadway for another mile,” he continued to explain, his voice lacking the dramatics that it had before. “The gate should be open.”
There were no cars passing by us.
No mailboxes or driveways.
No people.
Just trees and shadows.
And my ex-boyfriend with a gun.
I glanced over at Rafe, and he dropped one hand to his seat belt, gripping it and tugging. It locked him into place. I moved slowly, doing the same. Making sure it was tight and secure.
