Evade (The Ever Trilogy)

by Russo, Jessa

  Tears filled my eyes. I looked back toward the commotion in the far corner of the Hi-Lo Café. People surrounded our waitress on the floor; one man hovered over her, counting, while a woman pressed down on her chest, trying to revive her heart. Another man shouted into an old phone attached to the wall. Gracie Lynn was unresponsive, her blue-lined eyes open and gazing toward the door, unseeing. That poor woman…

  “I want you to know that I’m serious. I also want you to understand that I am no average Seeker. Consider my offer, for it is far better than any you will receive. I highly doubt my colleagues will be as generous as I am when they find you, especially with what that Soul Brand of yours means for them.”

  He disappeared, and I turned back to Toby, who at some point had moved to sit next to me. I jumped, shocked by his sudden closeness. His arms were around me—I hadn’t noticed that either.

  “Toby,” I sniveled as I pressed my face into his chest. He tightened his arms around me as I cried. That poor woman was dead, and it was my fault. “How?” I sobbed.

  Toby shook his head and shushed me. “We can’t talk about it now. Not here. We have to go, Ev. Come on.” He pulled me out of the booth slowly, guiding me toward the front door.

  I pushed him away. “I have to use the bathroom first.”

  He scanned the restaurant, his gaze drifting over the people surrounding the dead woman on the floor, then pointed to the far corner. “There,” he said. “Be quick. We really need to get out of here.”

  I nodded, then made my way to the bathroom as quickly as possible, but not so quick that it looked like I was running from anything. Once inside, I locked the main door and turned to face the two empty stalls, my back against the cold door. My hunger gone, my stomach churned with nausea and emptiness.

  What am I going to do?

  I finished splashing my face with cold water, then inhaled a deep breath as I unlatched and opened the door. Time to run again—

  “Hey,” said a guy standing just outside the door of the bathroom.

  I jumped, the sound of the boy’s voice startling me as I exited. I rounded on him, my hands defensively in front of me; though, what I would have done with them I have no idea. Really, I probably looked more foolish than threatening.

  He cemented that thought as he glanced to my hands, smirked, then brought his green gaze back to mine. “Whoa, kiddo, I’m not here to hurt you,” he said, raising his hands, palms out. “I just want to talk to you about what happened in there.” He glanced past me to the main dining room of the Hi-Lo Café.

  He took a step toward me, and I chanced taking my eyes off him to glance to the restaurant behind me, quickly searching the room for Toby—who was nowhere to be found.

  “Your boyfriend’s out back—Toby, right? I had a flat tire and he had a jack,” the stranger said, taking another step forward, hands still extended in surrender. “Follow me, and I’ll take you to him.”

  My pulse accelerated. I searched his eyes, scanned his face—young-ish guy, maybe early twenties, shaggy dark brown hair, green eyes; he wore a hoodie from a sports team I’d never heard of, and the hood was pulled up over his head. He had an earring in one ear, an amber-colored stone, or—

  “Oomph—” I tried to shout, but his hand cut off the sound. I’d been so focused on studying his appearance, that I missed his lightning fast movements. With ease, he flipped me around, one hand smothering my mouth, and the other hand around my neck, holding me against his torso. He angled his knee out, buckling my legs one at a time, while still holding onto me. I faced the restaurant now, and though my screams were too muffled for anyone to hear above the chaos of the melee surrounding our former waitress and the quickly approaching sirens outside, I prayed that just one person would look up and see me being dragged out of here.

  “Now, now, kiddo, we can do this—”

  The easy way or the hard way, I thought along with his words. How cliché could this guy be, anyway?

  “—but I’m not here to hurt you. I didn’t lie about that. How this goes is ultimately up to you; you get that, right?”

  I didn’t respond. I’d stopped trying to scream and focused only on my breathing, the air flowing in and out of my nose in fast, heavy breaths.

  “You stopped screaming, and you’re not fighting back,” he said as he dragged me through the back exit of the café. “I’m assuming this means you want to come willingly and work with me. Good girl.”

  His breathing remained even, as if I weighed no more than a feather. I hoped the cars on the street would see me and stop, or call for help, but this guy had his van parked in such a way that the entire street was blocked from my view.

  We approached the van, and I waited for the perfect moment to try to run. The sun was high in the sky, broad daylight, and though the town we were in wasn’t big, it wasn’t abandoned either. By the growing volume of the sirens, the cops were almost here. I just had to get away from this guy and make it to the front of the restaurant.

  I could do that. And I was going to at least try.

  The guy removed his arm from around my neck, holding me with only the hand pressed over my mouth, then rapped twice on the van door.

  I didn’t even think—just slammed my elbow into his gut and pulled free of his grip. I started to run in the direction of the street and the front of the restaurant, hoping I’d find Toby, when something slammed into my back, knocking me to the ground.

  I crashed into the asphalt, knocking the wind from my lungs, and gravel tearing the skin of my cheek as I slid to a stop. I cried out, but the kidnapper covered my mouth with his hand, so much so that he hindered my breathing. I stilled beneath him, beginning to panic because his hand almost covered my nostrils.

  “Come on, Ever, I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me.” His voice was gruff, the words almost a growl, and his mouth much too close to my ear. “Can we try this again?”

  I nodded, tears streaming from my eyes as my lungs burned, desperate for air. At least I’d been unconscious the last time someone kidnapped me, so I didn’t have to feel this fear racing through my body. As he stood, pulling me up with him, I realized he’d addressed me by name. He knew who I was. This wasn’t random.

  Of course it isn’t random, you idiot, my subconscious snarled. I was being kidnapped. Again. For the second time in as many weeks…which had to have been a record. My palms began sweating, and my heart thudded rapidly, the sound almost deafening in my ears. Collecting my soul was one thing—death would come easy then, I hoped. But what else could this guy do to me before he turned me in for my Soul Brand?

  The options were endless, and the thought of rape and torture caused me to whimper as fresh tears spilled from my eyes.

  The van door had been opened while I tried to escape, and two more guys stood by the door, both of them around the same age as my captor. All three were relatively normal, relatively attractive guys, dressed like college kids, and completely innocent looking—which meant absolutely nothing for me because even the nicest looking guys could be serial killers or rapists. The one closest to the door shook his head as he watched my captor drag me back to the van and then push me inside. I hit the hard metal floor with a thump, landing on my side, bruising my hip and probably my elbow as well.

  I shouted as pain shot out from the places on my body that crashed into the van’s floor. I quickly turned over, about to scream for help, but my captor and his buddy were crouched right beside me, blocking the door as it slid closed.

  “Oh, man, what’d you do to your face?” the other guy asked.

  I reached up to touch my cheek, cringing when I ran my fingertips over the road rash that stretched from my eye to my chin, covering the entire right side. I brought my hand back down, finding a layer of blood and dirt coating my fingers.

  “You should be more careful,” other guy said, his lips in a cruel smile.

  “Enough, J,” my captor said.

  “Relax, Q. She’s fine.”

  J and Q, huh? I tried to sto
re that in my memory, though I didn’t know what use the information would be. I had no last names. I hadn’t seen a license plate. I didn’t even know the make or model of the creepy kidnapper van. The driver’s side door slammed shut, bringing my attention to the black-haired kid in the front. His dark eyes met mine briefly in the rearview mirror, then his gaze returned to the road before him.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “That’s on a need-to-know basis, sugar tits.”

  “Enough,” Q—my captor—snapped.

  The other guy—J—threw his hands up, then winked at me before moving to the passenger seat up front.

  Q turned to me. “Sorry about that, Ever. J’s kind of an asshole.”

  “Why do you hang out with him?”

  He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head to the side. “I don’t hang out with him. We work together. Trust me: I wouldn’t have friends like that guy.”

  “I heard that, ass munch,” J called from the front seat. “I wouldn’t be friends with you either.”

  Q rolled his eyes, then brought his attention back to me. “Look, I’m sorry about your face. I meant what I said—I wasn’t sent here to hurt you.”

  “Just to kidnap me, though, right? Because kidnapping is okay?”

  “I’m not in the business of messing up girls’ faces, is all.”

  “How noble of you.”

  Q shrugged but didn’t say anything else, so I asked again. “Who are you guys?”

  “Well, I’m Q, you’ve met J, and that handsome guy driving is Ridley.”

  “Ridley?” I asked, a bit shocked by the more than initial I’d just been given, and on top of that, the strangeness of his name. “Is that, like, his last name or something?”

  “Yeah,” Q answered. “First. Last. Middle. You name it, cause that’s all there is.”

  I glanced back up at the rearview mirror, and those obsidian eyes met mine once more, slightly crinkled at the edges. “Ridley,” I whispered, filing the name away in my mind, then shrugged. Whatever.

  “So what’s Q stand for?”

  “Uh-uh, that’s not part of the deal. You don’t get to know anything about us. Sorry.”

  “Okay,” I said, hoping I could find out more if I kept him talking. “But you know me, obviously, right?”

  “Let’s see… I know you’re Ever Van Ruysdael—short for Eleanor”—I cringed—“and your boyfriend back there is Toby James—”

  “He’s not my—”

  Q raised his hand and shook his head. “No worries. Your relationship—or lack thereof—is not my business. Now, what else? Your best friend died a little over two years ago, in a car accident; your best girlfriend is with Gregor Hayes”—Hayes? How had I never known Greg’s last name?—“and Ariadne—”

  “Damn, I love that chick,” J said from the front seat, interrupting Q’s brief history report.

  Ridley reached across, quickly punching J in the bicep.

  “—Ariadne has brought your friend back to life, branding your pretty little soul in the process. Now, Toby is trying to get you to safety, which I’m guessing means somewhere in Seattle where this all began, though I’m not one-hundred percent sure about that part. Judging from the fact that you’re still intact, no Seekers have located you yet. How am I doing so far?”

  I didn’t respond. He obviously didn’t know about my creepy old Seeker friend, so I wasn’t about to give him any information.

  “Cat got your tongue?”

  I glared at him.

  “Well, unfortunately for Toby, he failed.”

  “You mean unfortunately for me.”

  “That just depends on how you look at it, now doesn’t it? See, what if the people who hired me are the good guys? Did you ever think of that?”

  “Good guys who kidnap girls?”

  “Details.”

  “Forgive me if I seem less than enthused,” I said, hoping I sounded less afraid than I felt. “This is, after all, the second time I’ve been taken against my will since Ariadne branded me.”

  Q’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Oh?”

  “Yeah. And supposedly, those were also the good guys, so.” I rubbed my aching elbow.

  J turned around in his seat, his hands gripping the headrest, and his light eyes locked on mine. His smile exposed slightly crooked canines. “Don’t worry, sweet tits. We’re definitely not the good guys. Q was just trying to make you feel better.”

  “J,” Q warned.

  “Shut the hell up, J,” Ridley said, speaking for the first time, his voice a cigarette-stained rasp. “Actually, both of you need to shut your traps.”

  With that, J turned around, and Q repositioned against the door of the van, making himself comfortable with his legs stretched out toward me and his arms crossed over his chest, not saying another word. Clearly, someone was running this show, and it wasn’t Q or J.

  “We’re not good or bad,” Ridley said, pulling my focus back to the front of the van, to his dark eyes in the rearview mirror. “We’re just the delivery guys. Consider us your own personal U.P.S. service.”

  I sighed, then leaned back against the wall of the van, rubbing my elbow some more, and hoping for a chance to escape at the next place we stopped.

  The longer I examined Q, his gaze locked on mine, and his posture relaxed, I realized something. Somehow, even though this group of misfit frat boys had kidnapped me, I wasn’t frightened of them. Call me crazy, but I just didn’t feel any terror deep in my gut like I probably should have. And if I played my cards right, I thought I could probably outrun them the next time we stopped.

  I hoped.

  Opportunity never knocked.

  Aside from having no idea where we were—Ridley had maneuvered the van through mountain roads with nothing to see from the back of the van but trees through the front window—by the time the van slowed to a stop, J had climbed into the back to help Q restrain me. Apparently one captor wasn’t enough to keep me from running. Which was kind of silly when I thought about it—I wasn’t very big, or very strong, but I’d gotten the slip on Q—however short lived it had been. Good for me.

  Of course, I was still kidnapped, still in the clutches of Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee, and Captain U.P.S. up there, and still on the run for my life. Or my soul. Or something. So, good for me didn’t really apply.

  “There’s nowhere to run up here, kiddo,” Q said. “So please don’t even try. Your face is pretty messed up from earlier, and I don’t want it to get worse.”

  “Thanks for caring,” I grumbled. Was this guy serious? Who else would end up with a sympathetic kidnapper? “You do know it’s your fault my face hit the pavement, right?”

  “Only because you ran. I asked you not to.”

  The back doors opened wide, revealing Ridley draped in shadow. Sun poked through the trees in little rays, but the canopy of pine and redwood was high here, blocking most of the sunlight.

  Ridley’s dark gaze was unsettling, though his forced smile was most likely an attempt not to appear creepy. His face was hard, the planes of his cheekbones and jaw well-defined. Had he not been so masculine, his full lips and labret piercing would have been a touch feminine. He was dark and brooding, and if he hadn’t been the ringleader in my most recent kidnapping, I’d go as far as to say he wasn’t nearly as terrifying as he wanted to be.

  But, he kidnapped me, so.

  Ridley stepped aside as I climbed out of the van with Q and J flanking me. They each wrapped a hand around my elbows, guiding me toward the cabin. I scanned the exterior and surrounding area for anything distinguishing. If I managed to escape, I wanted to be able to guide the cops…or Toby and Ted…anyone…back here. Unfortunately, like the less-than informative names of my kidnappers, and the unmarked black van, there was nothing that would distinguish this cabin from any others—wood siding and roof, large front steps, large wooden double doors, no address or indicators of any kind, no—

  My breath hitched as the doors swung open, the light from insi
de silhouetting a woman standing in the doorway. With one hand on her hip—

  Oh, hell no. I’d know that stance anywhere. My stomach sank as my jaw slammed tight, my teeth clenching in response to her presence.

  “Oh, look! My favorite sister is here! Well done, boys.”

  Ariadne strolled to the edge of the deck, stopping at the top step. Her Cheshire cat smile pulled her red lips wide, revealing those perfectly white teeth. Her yellow eyes sparkled with mischief. She winked, her long black lashes briefly fanning her cheek.

  I didn’t think I’d ever hate her more than I already did, but she was determined to prove me wrong.

  “You kidnapped me?” I shrieked, breaking free of my momentary stupor. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Calm down, Eleanor,” she said—calmly, as though this wasn’t a kidnapping. “It was for your own good, hon.” She began to descend the steps, and her gaze flicked over my face. “What the hell, you guys? Who did that to her face? Jayson, if this was your doing—”

  “Relax, babe,” Ridley drawled, his voice its usual hoarse calm. “It wasn’t J. The chick ran. Q stopped her.” Ridley shrugged, then stepped up to where Ariadne stood on the stairs.

  Her eyes tightened as he approached, then he leaned in and—

  “Eeew,” I whispered as their lips met. I turned away. Gross.

  “Asshole,” J whispered.

  “Shhh,” Q snapped.

  I looked first at Q, then to J, who shrugged sheepishly then lowered his gaze to the ground, kicking at the dirt with the toe of his boot.

  “Look, Ari,” Q began, “I told her I didn’t want to hurt her. She didn’t give me a—”

  “Enough,” Ariadne snapped. She left Ridley and walked to my side, then grabbed my chin between her fingers and thumb. Turning my face side to side, she clucked her tongue. “Oh, Ever, hon…your face.”

  “Like you care,” I snapped, pulling my chin out of her grasp. “And anyway, I’m fine.”

  Her yellow-green eyes glinted. “Of course you are. So brave these days, aren’t you? You’re welcome.”