Wicked Chase

❖ Chapter Nine

[dedicated to Kay, who is a lovely supporter (banner credit) ]

CHAPTER NINE

By the time Alastair had stopped driving and parked his Jeep in the parking lot of the hotel I was tired, exhaustion seeping right into my bones. It had taken quite a few hours before Alastair had decided to stop for the night and I should have been more alive and not tired but the truth was I barely got proper sleep on the journey to this hotel.

My eyes would stay shut for a while, my mind drifting off from consciousness and just when I would enter sleep, I would jolt awake, my heart hammering and a sob on the tip of my tongue would threaten to break through. It wasn't because of my nightmares. No, those left me alone for the time being. It was my mother's screams that shot through my head and caused me to wake up.

She was dead. My mother was dead. And if I had just handed over myself to them she could be alive. There wasn't any certainty in my thoughts because a part of me knew that even if I handed myself over to the very five men that followed me, attacked me and killed my mother, it wouldn't change anything. They would still kill her if they had me. And even though I frightfully knew that that part of me was right, I didn't want to believe it.

This was my mother, the woman who had nurtured and cared for me till I had left the comforts of her love and home, the woman who was constantly worried and concerned about my safety and well being, the woman who had loved me with all her heart. She was my mother. And now she was dead. It chilled me to the bone, saddened me, to know that if I handed myself over to those men there would be that five percent possibility that my mother would be alive and I would be happy because I had done something.

I could have done something. But I hadn't done anything. I had simply sat in Alastair's Jeep and listened to those men kill my mother.

I was helpless. I never liked to think so lowly of myself but right then I did. It was my mother who had taken her life to ensure mine was saved, after all.

Alastair had booked a room with two separate beds. He said he needed the money to last us till the end of the journey and if he had to book two rooms then it would definitely cost much more. I didn't mind. I knew that Alastair would never take advantage of me even when I was at a deep vulnerability point after the event with my mother. I knew that he was modest and decent enough to give me my space so when he had given me this information, running it by with me to see if I was okay with it, I nodded, because even if Alastair wanted to try something on me he couldn't.

I still remembered his words right before we left for our date at Fish Away and the park nearby when I had teased him by saying that I thought he fancied me to which he had replied, "I can't." I hadn't felt offended because I knew by the way he said it that he couldn't truly like me in the non-platonic way and I wondered just how this new life that I was supposed to adjust to ran. It certainly didn't seem like it ran with modern rules.

After booking the room, Alastair went back to his Jeep and brought out a small travelling bag and I had followed him all the way back to the parking lot because even though the reception area of the hotel radiated happiness, kindness and warmth - safety - I had the slight paranoia that someone would jump up behind me and attack me. Clearly the events that had occurred today had started to take its toll. I was never normally like this.

Once Alastair and I had entered the hotel room we both fell into a comfortable silence as we surveyed the room. It wasn't a five star hotel - Alastair's money would have run out already if so - but it wasn't all that bad either. It reminded me of my bedroom in my apartment a little bit, except the hotel room was just a little more sophisticated.