In my mind, I always had this beautiful image of what it would be like to go to London with Harry. I wanted to see Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and the crosswalk from the cover of Abbey Road, and I wanted to take really stupid pictures of me and the girls inside the red phone booths. I wanted to see where the love of my life came from.
Never did I think I would be here to collect my daughter in a ransom, but now that was the only thing on my mind at all as we drove through the city in a tinted black and unmarked SUV. Zayn met us at the airport here, and Louis picked us up to now take us back to the "headquarters" Harry was always speaking of.
We still hadn't heard from Liam, but Louis tried to assure us that he was most likely trying to figure out how to get what he wanted without committing suicide. It's not like that made us feel any better, but the fact that he wanted to live meant something. He wouldn't kill Nora if that were the case.
The further we drove from where London was thriving, the darker the already grey skies seemed to be. It started to sprinkle first, but as we drove on a two-lane country road, it began to pour down like I had never seen it before. Louis had to drive slower as a result, but he was calm and collected more than everyone else.
It took us ten hours to fly here, so even though we left at around six o'clock last night, it was already noon in London while back in LA it was four in the morning. I didn't sleep for a single second on the plane, and I haven't eaten anything since my lunch yesterday before going to the school. It was weird though, the way your body shuts down at a time like this. I didn't feel any of the things I should have.
Once Louis made a turn down a dirt road, I could see the said headquarters coming up in the distance. Harry told me it used to be a boarding school, and that's what it looked like on the outside. The property was privately owned by him so trespassers weren't allowed, but I wasn't sure anyone would be able to find the place anyway. It was practically in a forest.
"Does anyone know?" Harry asked as Louis pulled the car to a stop.
"No," he replied. "But they're gonna wonder what's going on when they see her."
I knew he was speaking about me, but I ignored them as I opened the door to get out in the pouring rain. Harry was the next to follow suit, placing his hand on my lower back to quicken my pace toward the covered front entrance, though it's not like it mattered. We were already soaked.
He punched an eight-digit code into a pin pad to open the doors, and they echoed in the large space once we pushed through the go inside. I was immediately overwhelmed by the amount of people in there, not to mention the plethora of drugs being packaged in an assembly line manner. My first hilarious thought was how illegal this was, and I would have laughed about that under different circumstances.
One by one, as everyone looked to see Harry standing there, they stopped what they were doing until the whole place fell into loud silence. All we could hear was the rain coming down hard on the roof, but all the windows had been boarded up with sheets of steel, leaving us in a deep orange glow from the overhead lights.
A few of the men took the quickest glances at me but otherwise kept their gazes trained on Harry as he held my hand. I think they were piecing together who I was, and they knew better than to give me any kind of attention if they wanted to live to see tomorrow.
Harry said nothing, but his shoes echoed on the polished concrete floor as he took the first step forward, leading me to a flight of stairs in the back corner. Once he took that step, everyone carried on as before and it had to be the most surreal thing I had ever seen. It was like they thought Harry was a king or something, and I could only imagine what that did for his ego.
