When my head stops spinning, I blink away the stinging ache and steady my hands on the wheel, trying to stay in control.
Your godson is in the backseat.
Your best friend is back there, too, with an unborn child in her belly.
Don’t fuck this up, Gemma, any more than you already have.
Eyes watering from the pain radiating through my rapidly swelling cheekbone, I see Ralph roll down his window and toss my phone onto the road. My gaze swivels to the rearview, just in time to see a car behind us run it over.
“Take a left, up here.” Ralph’s legs are jittering again, and every few minutes he glances in the side mirror like he thinks someone might be following us.
I turn the car down a road I don’t recognize. We’ve reached the outer fringes of the city, where the buildings are a little worse for wear and the people a little less polished. Graffiti streaks the sides of crumbling concrete overpasses, trash litters the streets, and few businesses are actually open, though it’s only late afternoon. We pass row after row of triple-decker public housing projects before entering a stretch of seemingly abandoned warehouses. Both pedestrian and car traffic grow thinner as we weave through this forgotten southeastern suburb.
The sound of a phone beeping makes my entire body tense. For a minute, I worry it’s the second cell in my purse — the new one Chase got for me, which now symbolizes my last shot at escape — but it’s Ralph’s, buzzing in his pocket.
“What is it?” he snaps into the receiver.
I hear the faint sounds of a female voice, on the other end.
“We’re almost there,” Ralph confirms. “Yes, I got her.”
He pauses, listening.
“No, not exactly.”
Another pause.
“Well, she’s not exactly alone. Her friend was with her.”
I hear a loud shriek reverberate from the other side.
“Fuck you, Vanessa!” Ralph sneers. “She’s never fucking alone — Croft trails her around like a puppy. This was the only shot I had, so I took it.”
Vanessa!
A rapid stream of words screech in response.
“Don’t call me an idiot, you bitch! You don’t know who the fuck you’re talking to.”
My eyes drift to the rearview mirror and meet Chrissy’s. Her breaths are shallow, she’s got one hand pressed to her abdomen, and she’s starting to look panicked.
I raise my eyebrows.
She holds up seven fingers and mouths something at me.
Seven minutes apart. Getting stronger.
Shit.
Chapter Thirty-One
Peachy
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Vanessa is pissed.Superpissed. Probably because, when she envisioned kidnapping me for some kind of idiotic extortion-ransom plot to strike at Chase’s weak spot, she didn’t anticipate her partner bringing along a heavily pregnant woman having regular contractions, as well as a squirming toddler.
Serves her right for teaming up with someone as idiotic as Ralph.