When I woke up, it took me a second to realize what had pulled me out of my slumber.
Mona was still lying next to me, sleeping deep, her back turned in my direction. I touched her bare shoulder, and tried to figure out if it had been her—but she was in such a deep sleep that she couldn’t have made a sound.
I pulled myself upright, my heart pounding hard in my chest. Something was wrong.
Calm down. I tried to reassure myself. This was just a hangover from everything that had gone down over the last few months, my brain’s way of attempting to keep the lot of us safe now that the danger was done with. Ian was locked up; no one was posing a threat to us anymore, and I needed to remember that.
And that’s when I heard it—the sound of a footstep in the kitchen downstairs.
I sprang from the bed, hard enough that I woke Mona up. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, but any vestiges of sleep vanished at once when she saw the look on my face.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded, and reached for her clothes. I was already dressed and on my way out the door.
“There was a noise downstairs,” I said, heading out the door. “Can you check on Ella?”
Mona hurried out of the room and towards Ella’s bedroom as I sprinted towards the kitchen. We’d probably laugh about this later, about my paranoia, about how I heard noises in the middle of the night and they turned out to be nothing at all.
I had never felt the kind of fear I had when I reached the bottom of the stairs and looked over at the kitchen. A cold wash of it, enough that it made me sway on the spot, as I tried to keep myself upright by gripping the banister.
A pool of smashed glass was lying on the floor, glinting in the light of moon outside; it had come from the window above the counter, the one that Mona had seen Ella fleeing out of the first time she’d come around here. Is this what had woken me up? I scanned the place to see if anyone was hiding in the shadows, but I couldn’t make out any figures in the dark. My heart was pounding so hard against my ribs, I was certain it would burst out at any moment, and I called up to Mona cautiously. I knew what the answer to the question was going to be, but I had to hear it out of her mouth before I could believe it fully.
“Mona, is Ella there?”
There was a long, long pause, the silence hanging in the air between us in agonizing tension as I waited for her to respond.
“No.”
I lunged for the door, throwing it open and peering out onto the street—it was still and silent out there, except for the sound of a car tearing down the road. It was right opposite the house, and I gave chase as best I could. It took a second to get up to full speed, and in that time, I caught up enough to see who was in the backseat.
“Ella!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, loud enough that it must have woken all the neighbors. But I couldn’t have cared less—as soon as I laid eyes on my daughter, sleepy and uncomprehending but still as scared as I’d ever seen her, I couldn’t hold it back. I sprinted after the car, reaching out as though I could pull it to a stop right there in the street in front of me, but it was gone before I had a chance.
I stood there in the street for a second, right in the middle of the road, staring at the space where the car had been. It felt as though my feet were rooted to the spot, as though I might never take another step again. Then I heard the door to the house bang open behind me, and Mona strode towards me. Her face was etched with panic and fear.
“What happened?” she demanded, wrapping her arms around herself protectively. I stared at her for a moment; only a few hours ago, everything had been perfect, and now, it had all gone to shit. I thought the worst was over, but it turned out that the worst was only just beginning.
“They took her.” I waved my hand after the car blankly.
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. None of this made any sense. Ian was locked up—who else did he have on his side who could have done this? Who would have dared? How could we have been stupid enough to think that this was all over when we were clearly in so much danger?
“What the fuck are we going to do?”
I was still just standing there, not sure what I was meant to do next. My brain was blank, etched with the image of Ella being driven away from me. Why hadn’t she screamed, or cried out, or let us know some stranger was in the house and taking her away? How hadn’t I heard the window smashing, or the person coming up the stairs? How could I have let this happen? My brain spun with recriminations, and I suddenly wanted to smash my hands against the tarmac below me, something, anything, to wake myself up. My brain was on autopilot, with just enough juice left to keep me standing upright and breathing.
“Jazz!” Mona yelled, grabbing me by the shoulders; I suddenly realized that my legs had crumpled out below me. She did her best to keep me standing, but the feeling of her hands on me was enough to drag me out of my reverie and snap me into action.
“We need to call the police,” I began, gripping her as I pulled myself upright. “I’m going to chase them. See if I can catch up with them.”
“Did you see what direction they went?”
“Mostly.” I made for the garage where we’d parked up the night before. Mona hurried back into the house and I tapped in the code to open to the door to the garage. I didn’t care about getting my helmet or my leathers or any of that shit—I just wanted to get on my bike and go after my daughter. I had tunnel vision, only able to see her face, praying that wherever she was she was still alive and that I still had a chance to get her back.
I switched on the light and strode over to my bike—but as soon as I got there, I realized something was wrong. I took me a second to figure it out, but when I did—
“Motherfucker,” I snarled. The tires had been slashed. Whoever had done this had planned it out well. They must have known that I would try and make chase. I checked Mona’s car, and found that the same had been done to her tires, too. I pressed my head into my hands and let out a yell, a cry of despair and fear and anger that I couldn’t do anything about what had just happened. I wanted to rewind time, to sit up all night next to the door and put a bullet in the head of anyone who tried to hurt Ella.
I made my way back inside the house slowly, the horror of being in there without my daughter hanging heavy over my head. I was so used to her company, to hearing her and having her and being near her. But now…I had to walk back in there and know that I hadn’t done enough to keep her safe.
Mona was just hanging up the phone when I arrived. She turned and raised her eyebrows when she laid eyes on me. “What’s wrong?”
“They slashed the tires to my bike,” I explained, defeated. “And your car too.”
“What?”
“They must have planned this out for a long time.” I ran my hand over my face, trying to pull myself back to reality. Surely, this had to be a nightmare—there was no way this could have happened. A fever dream, a leftover from everything that had already happened. Because this was absurdly horrible. Impossibly so.
“I called the cops, and they’re on their way to take a statement,” she murmured. Her voice was soft, and I could tell that she was having as much trouble with getting her head around this as I was. I just… I knew this wasn’t how it worked, but everything had been so perfect so recently. It didn’t feel right that everything should be snatched away so quickly. It didn’t feel possible.
I sat down on the edge of the couch, where we’d fucked only a few hours earlier, and stared out of the window blankly. Waiting for the cops to arrive, I found myself willing Ella to walk through the door and put an end to this nightmare. But I knew that getting her back wouldn’t be as easy as that.