Paradise Child Book 3 (Imprisoned in my Heart trilogy...Larry)

Chapter 14

Louis didn’t park the car in the driveway, because he knew that if he came waltzing in and the police found him, either they’d attempt to drag him in for questioning, believing that he was in on Harry’s mad plan, or they’d try and force him to coax Harry out from wherever he was hiding and then turn him in – neither of which Louis wanted. If they took him down to the police station, it would be wasted hours of him knowing nothing and being pointlessly interrogated, hours that he could have spent finding Harry, reassuring him that everything was alright. Hours that Harry would spend afraid, hiding away, scared that Louis had abandoned him. He could hardly bear to think about it.

He had no intention of teaming up with the police, either. He was going to do things his way; his and Harry’s way, the way they’d always had – just the two of them, and nobody else interfering. That was how things worked with Harry and him. Let a group of guys in uniform bellow at Harry, terrify him, bully him, and then lock him up again in a tiny cell afterwards? He’d die first.

Besides, he didn’t like the way the police worked. Too many accusations and not enough time spent trying to understand why. They’d jump to conclusions and scare Harry with their pointless shouting, and then where would they be? Scared Harry was not a good thinking to be dealing with. When Harry was scared, he became irrational, and when Harry became irrational, he became dangerous. Louis knew just how dangerous Harry could be, and if he had his way, the police wouldn’t find out. They’d never know how close Harry could come to losing his temper, how much damage he could inflict if he put his mind to it. They’d never have cause to lock him away and subject him to some kind of awful mental prodding by another, less caring psychiatrist who would rip his mind to shreds, pore over his secrets and then make some stupidly wrong diagnosis and declare him mentally unstable. He’d never allow anyone the opportunity to section Harry, send him off to a ward filled with people who actually had mental issues when all Harry really needed was love, stability and a good dose of attention every now and then. By no means could he protect Harry from everything, but he could keep him from that, at least.

So he parked his car a safe distance away from the house, got out, and spent a couple of seconds deliberating over where Harry might be – it wasn’t too difficult to figure it out. So maybe he had a light tread, and wouldn’t have left so much as a tiny indentation of his foot in the ground as he snuck past, but for someone who knew Harry as well as he did, he worked it out almost instantly.

The sand crunched grittily beneath his feet as he descended down the slope and began heading down towards the beach in search of Harry. He didn’t dare to call out in case anyone heard him from above; instead, he neatly picked his way down the hill, scrambled over the fence, and then he was padding across the beach, scanning the ground for any sign that anyone had passed that way. He found it in the form of several enormous footprints; scuffmarks in the sand which he was careful to smooth out with his own foot as he went, covering his own tracks even as he disguised Harry’s. Why make it easy?

Every soft swish of the ocean made his skin prickle, hairs on the back of his neck standing uneasily on end for reasons he didn’t quite understand. Patiently following Harry’s trail and glancing over his shoulder to check for pursuers every now and then, Louis couldn’t help but feel on edge, like something awful was about to happen. He didn’t like the feeling. Paranoia wasn’t something he usually suffered from, but oh, how he pitied Harry now! It felt awful to be constantly anxious that someone was sneaking up on you. Irrational as it was, he couldn’t smoothe out the lines on his forehead, couldn’t seem to reassure himself, and he wrapped his arms tightly around his torso as he walked, pretending that it was Harry holding him. Not that it helped much, but it held some of his shivers inside, anyway; there was a cool breeze rolling in from the ocean, whipping his hair around wildly and stinging his cheeks.