Page 32 of Evil Villain (The Royal Court)

At one point, Kyle got off the highway, and the turns got more erratic and uncertain. A few times, Kyle put on a blinker to turn, before turning it off and continuing straight. “What’s going on?” Avery asked.

Finally, Kyle’s car pulled over and stopped. We could see him looking over the backseat, talking to Brayden. About five minutes passed, and I was just about to climb out and walk over to the truck, when Kyle climbed out and walked back to Avery’s car.

Avery rolled down her window and Kyle leaned in. “Hey.”

“Is he panicking again?” I asked. “We can stop.”

“No, he’s fine. He’s going great, but we think he may have screwed up on the exit, he said he felt like it might have been too soon. I asked if he wanted to start over, but he said he thinks if we go back to the Posings Proper exit and get back on the highway, that he can get it right the second time. I’m gonna take Millworth back to the Postings Proper exit, and then get back on the highway and try again,” Kyle explained.

“Okay,” Avery said. “We’re behind you.”

“Cool.” He tapped the side of Avery’s car and then pulled back from the window and walked back to his truck.

“Hopefully, the third time’s the charm,” Avery said.

“Hopefully,” I agreed.

Exactly as Kyle had said, he took Millworth, a street that ran all the way from South Postings, through Postings Proper, and into North Postings, back to the highway exit we’d started on. He hesitated for a moment, likely allowing Brayden to reset and focus, and then eventually he got back on the highway. We drove down the highway following Kyle, but that second run, he got in the left lane. We passed the exit we got off on, along with a couple more, and we were fast approaching the final exit for North Postings—a left exit—but then Kyle got off.

We followed and the car slowed significantly, and then it started to turn left and right at certain intervals and then finally, Kyle’s car pulled over and stopped. Avery and I watched as Kyle got out of the front seat of the truck and opened Brayden’s door.

“They’re getting out,” Avery said.

I opened my door to get out and Avery followed suit, just as Kyle was pulling Brayden out.

“We would walk straight for a while,” Brayden said. “And we’d cross the street. I know because sometimes we’d stop at the light, then we’d immediately turn right.”

“Okay. Let’s go,” Kyle said. He looked over his shoulder at Avery and I, and we both nodded and followed behind him.

We moved exactly as Brayden had expressed, and he was more confident, likely because he was on foot as opposed to in the car. We crossed the street and then turned right, and Brayden stopped. “Is there a door near here that is glass with a metal frame?”

Kyle, Avery and I looked around, and two doors up in a row of buildings from where we were, was a door matching what Brayden described. “Yeah,” Kyle said.

“Don’t tell me where. I’m gonna walk straight and then stop, and you tell me if I’m in front of it.” Without confirmation, Brayden walked forward and then came to a stop directly in front of the glass door we’d seen. He turned to his left so he was facing it and said, “Is this it?”

“Yeah, Brayden,” Kyle said with a smile. “Is this the place.”

“This is definitely one of the entrances I took,” Brayden said. Avery and I walked up and looked at the building, but the door was grated shut, and the building itself had boarded windows and seemed totally abandoned. Kyle took the initiative and took the blindfold and wrist tie off of Brayden, and when he saw the door locked up, he deflated. “Shit.”

“How did you know about the glass door with a metal frame without seeing it?” Avery asked.

“The sound,” Brayden said. “It’s that very distinct sound of the door jam chain rattling against it. That kind you hear when you walk into any of those high end stores in South Postings.”

“Being rich strikes again,” Kyle said.

“Well, I think we found where they’d bring you, but it doesn’t seem like Connor’s here anymore,” I said.

“But maybe there are clues if we can get in,” Avery said.

“We can’t break in,” Kyle said.

“No, but there’s another option,” Brayden said. “This is where they brought me in, but it’s not where they brought me out. I have a feeling that when I was dragged out and dumped after Connor kept me, that they brought me out the back way, so maybe there’s more hope that way of getting in. The only thing is, I was totally out of it when Nikita and Jaxon found me. That’s going to be harder.”

“So, we’ll just take it one step at a time,” I said. “The next step is to bring Nikita and Jaxon here and see if they can help us work backwards to somewhere that could still be connected to this building. It’s like Nikita said, if we work together, we’ll be able to find our way forward.”

“Sorry,” Brayden said.

I looked at him and then turned him to face me. “What are you sorry for? Look at what you did? I don’t think I’d be able to do this.” I pulled him into a hug. “We’re one step closer to Connor because of you. Brayden…” I pulled back. “Thank you.”

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