The Chateau (Chateau 1)

“Pick up the next shipment.” Bethany walked beside me, Cindy on her other side.

“Of coke?” I noticed the group was made up of women who were young and strong, mostly those who were on the line in the clearing, picking up heavy forty-pound boxes over and over.

“Yeah.”

“That means we’re meeting a crew out here?”

“No.”

“Then where are the drugs coming from?” What was I missing?

Just then, the sound of a plane was audible, approaching us somewhere through the clouds. It couldn’t be seen in the storm because a flake of snow would land in your eye if you looked up too long, but the powerful engines were unmistakable.

Three hundred yards ahead of us, crates fell from the sky and crashed into the mounds of powered snow that had built up over the night. The farther out we went, the deeper into snow our legs sank, making it harder to move forward, making us sweat despite the frigid temperatures.

These guys truly operated in complete stealth…so no one was coming to rescue us.

No one knew about this place.

No one.

It was so disheartening, I nearly collapsed in the snow and gave up.

And I might have given up—if I didn’t have someone to protect.

If I gave up, Melanie would never be free.

So, I kept going.

It took a long time to cross the distance, to get the horses to pull the wagons over the snowy terrain, to fight against the wind. The more into the open we trudged, the more vulnerable we became to the wind that slapped across our faces and burned our skin. My lips were so dry they started to crack in real time. My eyes watered from the sting of the wind, only to dry up a second later. The cycle repeated over and over, getting more and more difficult the closer we came to our destination.

Then we finally stopped.

“Get to it.” One of the guards barked at us to grab everything in the snow and place it on the wagons.

“Just watch me,” Bethany said.

We moved into the snow and scavenged for the coke.

Most of the girls moved to lift the heavy crate from the ground, to pick it up and carry it to the wagon.

But one of the crates broke open, and the plastic bags wrapped in padding scattered everywhere, making holes in the blanket of snow. That was what Bethany went for, so I did the same. I was knee-deep in snow, picking up the bags as I went, holding them against my chest as I followed the bags like breadcrumbs farther out in the snow.

And then I heard it.

The sound of a bell.

I stilled at the sound, my ears numb from the cold.

Then I heard it again.

“Oh my god…”

Bethany moved to a bag nearby. “Keep moving. They’ll hit you if you’re still too long—”

“Did you hear that?”

She stilled. “Hear what?”

“The bell. I heard a fucking bell…like a church bell.” I dropped all the bags into the snow and looked into the distant tree line, the tall pines that stood miles away at the start of a forest. My heart was beating so hard, the adrenaline was rushing, hope fluttered in my heart…replacing the emptiness I’d experienced just a moment ago.

I knew I fucking heard it.

It was faint.

Quiet.

Like it was really, really far away.

But it was there…a fucking lifeline.

“Beth, did you hear it—”

“Move.” She glanced over her shoulder and kept working.

I quickly grabbed the bags and went back to work, knowing they were watching me, and I did my best to act like nothing had happened. I picked up the bags and held them against my chest as I approached the nearest wagon, feeling all of them stare at me. I added them to the cart then turned around to grab something else.

But I tripped in the snow, falling face first.

One of the guys on the horse laughed. “You can tell she’s new.”

My hands pushed through the snow to find the ground to lift myself back up, but I found an object against my hand, a piece of the crate that had come apart and fallen into the snow. I didn’t pause to look at it and discreetly slipped it into my pocket as I got to my feet.

Maybe it was something useful.

But I didn’t even care that much, because that bell continued to ring in my mind, a distant echo. It started to build louder and louder, ringing in my mind like a bell from a church in Paris, right in front of me, making me feel like I was far away from here.

7

The Count of Monte Cristo

When I woke up the next morning, it was a clear day once again.

The storm had passed, the cabins didn’t rattle, and it wasn’t nearly as icy—but cold all the same.

My guard woke me up like clockwork.

My boots were tightened, my jacket was zipped up, and then I stepped out onto the porch.