Page 68 of Web of Lies
She still doesn't respond. I get down on my knees and lean into the crate to touch her arm. I don't need her to fight me when I pull her out. She's so cold. Her skin is like ice.
“Larken, honey, we have to hurry. We've got to get you out of here.”
She turns to look at me and I have to fight to get a handle on my reaction. Half of her face is a mottled, blue ruin. One eye is nearly swollen shut. Moving further into the crate, I wrap my arms around her and haul her out. We don't have time for it, but I pull her into my lap when I fall back into a sitting position.
“Oh baby, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry.”
I'm going to kill him. I'm going to take her someplace safe and then I'm going to come back here and kill him. Then I'm going to resuscitate him and kill him again. Then I'm going to find her fucking husband and peel his skin off, one limb at a time while he watches. Then I'm going to feed it to him. And then I'm going to kill him, too.
But I have to get her out of here first.
My hands are shaking with the wrath I have to keep in check, but I get us up and out of the shed. She's stumbling along beside me, barefoot and wet in the cold dark of night, blindly letting me lead her away. I'll be carrying her soon. She still hasn't made a sound. Not one. It could be shock. It could be unseen damage. It could also be the result of a complete and total nervous, and probable mental breakdown. Every silent minute that ticks by makes my anger burn even hotter. I might end up having an aneurysm before I can get us back to the car.
I parked the car in the backyard of the empty house with the greenhouse. Probably not my best idea, but it was the best available option. It's out of sight unless you come into the backyard. Hopefully, anyone who might have been paying attention thinks I'm doing maintenance on the house. Either way, no one came by to assuage their curiosity, so it doesn't matter.
What matters is getting her to the car and us out of the area before Tabor decides it's time to check on her again. She's starting to stumble more often. I'm almost dragging her at this point, so I stop long enough to scoop her up and keep going. It's not that much further and she weighs next to nothing anyway. Carrying her will take less time than trying to keep her on her feet.
When we get to the car, I put her in the front and fasten the seat belt for her. She seems borderline catatonic. This is so much worse than her quiet cooperation when Shaun and I first took her. If I can't pull her out of this … No. Unacceptable. I will drag her out of it, one way or another.
I get in without trying to coax any further communication from her. It can wait until we get to the motel. I thought about taking her back to Conner's place. Shaun's there, her friend is there; but those are the exact two reasons why I can't take her. The risk is too great, and Larken would never forgive me, or herself, if something happened to her friend because I took her there.
I pull out of the driveway and start putting distance between us and Tabor. Once the vehicle has had time to warm up a little, I reach down to turn on the heat. I am a chronically over-prepared person, but I don't have a single blanket in this car. I have a bag of extra clothes in the trunk, though, so hopefully I can get her thawed out enough with just the car heater by the time I have to get her back out. We're heading to one of three motels that aren’t near enough to Conner's place to be a danger, but they're close enough if I need to get her there quickly. They are all also far enough away from her husband’s house that she shouldn't get nervous about her him finding her.
I glance at her from time to time as I drive. She has remained silently slumped in the seat with her head resting against the window since we got in the car. She isn't shivering as much anymore. It's a relief, even if violent shudders take her every now and then. I should pull over to get her into some warm clothes. I really should. But the sooner I can get her cleaned up, warm, fed, and resting, the better she'll be. She's going to be fine. She has to be.
“Want to listen to some music?” I ask and hit the power button for the radio. A classic rock song starts blaring and I scramble to turn the volume down. “Sorry,” I tell her, but she doesn't respond, not to me or the explosion of sound. I press the gas pedal down a little more. I need to get her to the motel right now. She needs a warm shower, a bed, something to eat.
I should take her to the hospital. It's the rational thing to do. The hospital would call the police. But the police would call her husband, and they would send her home with him. Especially if she's unable or unwilling to tell them that her husband orchestrated all of the terrible things that have happened to her. I don't care how rational a hospital would be, I'm not taking her somewhere where she could potentially be put in danger. Conner will have to help her if I can't. I've seen him work miracles before, he'll just have to work another one if I need him to.
The rest of the ride to the motel is filled with my babbling small talk and silence. There are a few other vehicles in the lot when I pull in, most of them with out of state plates. When I concocted this plan, she was wearing the last outfit I saw her in; it didn't include standing in the lobby with an obviously traumatized woman wearing nothing but a tee shirt and panties. I can't take her inside to get the room, not like this.
“Okay. I'm going to go inside and pay for a room. You stay right here. I'll be back in just a few minutes.”
That gets a reaction. Her hand snaps out to grab my sleeve in a white-knuckled grip and she gives me such a wide-eyed look of stark terror that it physically hurts to see it.
“It'll be alright, Larken. I can't take you in there like this. The front desk staff will call the police and I'm afraid that the police might call your husband. I will only be inside for a few minutes.”
She pulls on my arm, shaking her head.
“It has to be this way, honey. I know you're afraid, you have every reason to be, but I have to do this. You'll be alright. I promise.”
She reluctantly lets go of my sleeve and turns back to lean against the window again with her eyes closed. Guilt pulls at me, but I realistically can't take her inside looking the way she looks. I need to take her directly from the car to the room and lock the door behind us.
“Stay exactly the way you are, Larken. I'll be just inside, and only for a few minutes. I'll be right out and then we can get you into a room. It's going to be okay.”
She doesn't say anything or nod, but I know she heard me. I'll go in, book the room, and get out before she has time to worry too much. We weren't followed, not once. I just need to get her into a room.
The front desk clerk is in just as much of a hurry to get me checked in and on my way as I am to get it over with. This isn't a dump, but it is the kind of place that will still accept cash and a copy of an ID instead of requiring four credit cards and your first born child before they'll give you a room. It is very much a no questions, no comments place, and that's exactly what we need. He doesn't give the bogus ID I present him with a second thought. He just took it and the cash and gave me a key before disappearing into the back office again.
Larken hasn't moved when I get back into the car.
“Our room is around the backside of the building,” I tell her as I start the car and put it into gear. “Just a few more minutes and we can get you nice and warm.”
Our room is on the second floor. We will have to walk up a set of outdoor stairs to get to the door. I'm not thrilled about it, but I didn't want to do anything memorable like ask for a specific room. Hopefully the clerk has already forgotten what I look like and I'm not trying to do anything memorable.
I park the car and go around to open Larken's door. “Come on,” I hold out my hand to help her get out. “Almost there.” She puts her hand in mine and allows me to help her, but she's still so quiet and still that I'm becoming more concerned with every passing minute.
My increasing concern gets burned to a charred crisp by the anger that slams through me when she physically can't make it up the stairs. Her legs crumble underneath her about halfway up, and I keep my belligerent curses to myself when I pick her up and carry her to the door. She's too light. She was already alarmingly thin when we took her from her house, but she was getting stronger with just a few days of a decent diet. Now she's almost worse than she was when we first picked her up, and it does nothing to calm my temper. It's nothing to keep her in my arms while I unlock the door and get us inside the room, but once inside she struggles against me.
