Page 90 of What We May Be

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Heavy.

Everything was so heavy. Her limbs, her eyelids, the ache in her head, the knot in her stomach.

Charlie peeked open an eye and swiftly slammed it shut against the blinding sun. Groaning, she tried to move her arms from where they were bent uncomfortably behind her, rope binding her wrists, but then a searing pain shot through her right one, clearing the remaining brain fog. Recent events came crashing back.

Wallace Sylvan was their killer, and he’d attacked her and Annie.

Annie.

She croaked out her sister’s name, her voice like sandpaper over her dry throat and cracked lips, a side effect of the Diprivan.

“She’s fine,” Wallace’s too-calm voice said from behind her. “Just taking a nap.”

Charlie slowly blinked open her eyes, letting them adjust to the bright sunlight. She was lying on her side, facing the bow of the family boat, the tall reeds of the Intracoastal Waterway passing on either side of the prow. Angling her head, she looked past her bound feet to where Annie lay prone against one side of the deck. Her wrists were bound in front of her, and blood dripped from a wound on the side of her head. Wallace must have cold-cocked her with the gun, knocking her out, but judging from the steady rise and fall of her chest, she was breathing normally. But she needed to get that head wound seen too ASAP, which meant Charlie had to get them out of this situation ASAP.

She curled upright, and pain throbbed in her head and arm. She leaned against the steering column, taking deep breaths and trying to focus despite the nausea. After Wallace had incapacitated her, the world had gone mostly black, only bits and pieces cutting through the fog. Annie crying, begging Wallace to let them go, even as he forced her to tie Charlie’s hands and feet. Annie mentioning a baby. Wallace carrying Charlie across the rocking marina docks to the boat. Then nothing until the rhythmic bump and swish of the boat and the vibrating phone in her pocket had pulled her toward wakefulness.

It couldn’t have been long between the house and now. A quick survey of their surroundings confirmed Wallace had navigated out of the marina, into the sound, then up the waterway. He slowed the boat’s speed and steered into one of the many inland streams that fed the marshy waterway between the mainland and coast.

Five minutes later, the dilapidated bridge where her mother had died appeared before them. Charlie’s fear skyrocketed. What sort of vengeance was Wallace planning? Why did Annie need to be there? How did Wallace even know the truth about Alice’s death?

Her phone vibrated again, silencing the spiral and focusing her. She counted back the calls since she’d begun to wake. That was the fourth one. Sean would know by now that something was wrong, and the boat had GPS. Trevor would know that. So would Abel. She just needed to buy more time for Sean and HPD to reach them.

The boat rammed ashore near one of the crumbling bridge foundations, sending Charlie skidding across the deck toward Annie. Charlie scooted in front of her, hands fumbling behind her back for Annie’s wrists to check her pulse. Strong, delicate fingers curled around her own. With Wallace bearing down on them, a gun in one hand, a Bowie knife in the other, Charlie didn’t dare look back and give away that Annie was awake. Instead, she squeezed her fingers and whispered “Stay down” under her breath.

“Get up,” Wallace said.

“You don’t want to do this, Wally,” she tried coaxing.

His face contorted in anger. “Don’t call me that.” He leaned forward, brandishing the knife. “Only Annie gets to call me that.”

Charlie shifted and swept out her legs, bound as they were, toward Wallace’s shins. He stumbled, and for a second, Charlie thought she might get the upper hand, but Wallace regained his balance and brought his gun down in a pistol-whip to her broken arm. Charlie cried out and lost her balance, falling to her other side, away from Annie.

By the time the blinding pain and blackness receded and Charlie managed to right herself again, Wallace was standing over Annie’s prone body with a gun. She hadn’t heard a gunshot and saw no more blood than was previously on Annie’s head. She was still pretending to be passed out, thankfully not inserting herself into the scuffle.

“Please don’t hurt her.” Charlie would have pled with her hands up if her right arm wasn’t broken and tied to the other behind her back.

“I don’t want to hurt Annie,” Wallace said. “I’m doing this for Annie. But if you don’t cooperate, I’ll have to.”

“Okay, I’ll go with you, but let me say goodbye first. Please.”

He hesitated but then retreated a few steps, keeping the gun trained on them. “No funny business. I’m a trained officer too. I can hit either of you from here.”

Inching over to her sister, Charlie bent forward and kissed her forehead. “Please stay here,” she whispered. “By now, HPD is tracking the boat. They’ll be here soon. Whatever happens, I love you, Annie, and I’m so sorry for any pain I ever caused you. I never meant to. You are the best sister I could have ever had. I’m the lucky one. Take care of Abel, and Trevor, and Sean.”

A single tear escaped the corner of Annie’s eye, and Charlie wiped it away with her cheek, hiding it with a kiss. Turning, she discreetly pulled the phone out of her back pocket and dropped it next to Annie’s hip before Wallace cut the bindings on Charlie’s feet and hauled her up and over the side of the boat.

On the sandy shore, he yanked her up by her injured arm and pushed her toward the incline, gun at her back.

“Wally—”

“I told you not to call me that. Now go.”

Charlie dragged her feet as they climbed the embankment, stumbling a few times as waves of pain crashed through her. “Why are you doing this?” she asked between pants, in agony and out of breath once they crested the ridge.

“Because you’re guilty.”

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