She kept looking over her shoulder for the black car but it didn’t reappear.
Then an imposing metal gate appeared ahead of them. Two familiar dark SUVs sat outside it like sentinels.
The gate was just starting to open. The afternoon sunshine pouring through the black metal was so white and clean it looked like the gates to heaven.
The opening didn’t seem big enough for the bike but Sylvain obviously thought differently. He headed for it.
Allie’s hands clenched against his waist; she murmured a prayer under her breath. They shot through with inches to spare, skidding sideways on the elegant, flower-lined drive. Sylvain slammed on the brakes to avoid running into the house. They stopped abruptly, and Allie jolted forward against his spine before thudding back hard on to the seat.
Sylvain turned off the engine. The sudden silence was shocking.
Swinging his legs forward, he leaped athletically from the bike and held his hand out to her. ‘The gates are still open,’ he said. ‘We’re exposed here. We have to get inside.’
She wanted to do as he said but she couldn’t seem to move. Her knees felt like rubber, her stomach churned.
Had they ever been so close to death before?
‘I’m not sure my legs will work,’ she admitted.
A pleased smile quirked up his lips and he leaned casually against a handlebar.
‘It was fast, no? I trained with a Motocross champion. My father insisted as a condition of giving me the bike.’
Allie fought an absurd desire to laugh. How could he be so relaxed when they’d just nearly died?
She swung her legs over and jumped down from the bike. They ran up the steps to the front door.
‘I’m glad he insisted,’ she said, her voice shaking just a little. ‘I like being alive.’
Three
The thing was, the day had started with such promise. It was so sunny the sky was like a sheet of blue glass. It was the day before Allie’s birthday, and she and Rachel had a busy schedule of sunbathing planned.
Rachel, of course, sunbathed with her chemistry textbook because Rachel did everything with her textbooks. She planned to go to Oxford and then to medical school, and nothing – not even an attack by Nathaniel that decimated the school and left them both injured – could stop her. They’d both been tutored long distance ever since they left Cimmeria Academy on a cold March night. Over the months, they’d become pretty adept at independent study.
As they sat by the pool that afternoon, Allie had attempted to do her history reading but found it hard to focus. It was only June but already it was summer hot and she kept finding reasons to drop the book.
After all, she thought, lying back on the sun lounger, do you have to study the day before your birthday? Isn’t that a bit like studying on Christmas Eve?
Overhead, a seabird wheeled in lazy circles, never flapping its wings, only soaring. Not a single cloud shadowed them.
Allie glanced over to where Rachel sat in the shade of a large umbrella, utterly immersed in her work. The scars Gabe had left on her body were hard to see now, and she was glad. Maybe eventually they’d disappear completely.
It had taken weeks after they left Cimmeria Academy for Rachel’s nightmares to stop. And she wasn’t the only one with bad dreams.
Allie touched the long, thin scar on her own shoulder. It felt hard beneath her fingers and still sensitive. A reminder of what she’d been through. And what she was running from.
It was only really when they came here that they’d both felt safe again.
They hadn’t even known whose house it was when they first arrived in a convoy of SUVs, after a short journey by private jet. When the heavy black gates opened, they revealed a grand villa that seemed to absorb the sun into its golden walls. Lush, magenta bougainvillea wrapped around it like a bright blanket.
It was beautiful. But it was just another mansion.
They had been standing in the heat, waiting for the driver to unload their bags, when the front door swung open and suddenly Sylvain was in the doorway, smiling at them like a piece of Cimmeria – like home.
Without even thinking about it, Allie had bounded up the steps and hurled herself into his arms.
He’d just laughed and pulled her closer, as if they hugged each other every day.
‘God,’ he’d whispered into her hair, ‘I’ve missed you.’
Later, as he showed them around, Sylvain would explain that this was his parents’ summer retreat. The grounds held several houses as well as the sprawling main villa, so there was room for guards and staff. High walls and a location at the top of a hill kept it secure.
It was the perfect place to hide and, after a week, Allie and Rachel had agreed they could pretty happily live here forever. In the constant French sunshine, it was easy to forget the chaos they’d left behind. Easy not to worry about Nathaniel and why the guards were constantly around. Why they never left the compound.
Except for today, when Sylvain had shown up by the pool with the tantalising offer of a few minutes of freedom.
‘I was thinking of going to the beach,’ he’d said. ‘Want to come?’
Allie hadn’t hesitated. ‘Are you joking?’ she’d asked. When he shook his head, grinning, she’d leapt to her feet. ‘Come on, Rach. You have to come, too.’
But Rachel had shooed them away. ‘You go, children,’ she’d said, glancing at them indulgently over the tops of her sunglasses. ‘I’ve got learning to do.’
So Allie and Sylvain had gone to the beach alone.