Crash Landing [✓]

14

Chapter Fourteen | WHAT IF HE WAS A SERIAL KILLER?

I laid unceremoniously on the couch, my mind numbingly annoying as it flooded with the worst possible thoughts. My chest heaved with pent up frustration and I groaned out aloud, simply wanting a hole to be opened up in the ground and then swallow me whole, so I could escape all my responsibilities.

Julian Hardy wanted Milo dead and he wanted me to bring him —to him, like a pig for slaughter. He was forcing my cooperation and I was unknowingly agreeing, or he would go after my family and hurt innocent people. Because all we really were was collateral damage. That's what he called individuals like my family and I, who were somehow wedged in between the perverted war, brewing in that nasty, criminal world of his.

My body was curled up underneath a blanket, a fairly thick fabric which still left the hair on my arms and legs standing. With Toffee perched up above my tummy and all, it wasn't that cold. Yet it seemed as though my bones were chilled, and my teeth were chattering too, out of fear no doubt.

I was afraid.

Afraid, while I awaited Julian's dreaded text, which would notify me of where to find him, of where I should approach him with Milo, like I was selling him off.

He'd given me 72 hours to hand him over. He said if I wasn't showing signs of cooperation even, over the next few hours, he would sense it and he would create chaos —although the details were vague, I knew the consequences of me not doing what he expected would be dire.

I had rushed out of the Coffee Shop once he had left that tantalising kiss on my lips, searing my mouth —and driven to the clinic, desperate to see my father. My old man was okay. Frail nonetheless and clueless of what was going on.

Well, at first.

I had walked into the elderly ward and visited my father, who lacked any sort of emotion on his face. It was like he looked straight through me, void of any love or affection.

On his dresser stood many photographs, including a wedding portrait. The bride standing tall and proud with a bouquet of newly opened roses, glowing beside a man a head taller than herself. My father and my mother.

"Dad," I'd whispered, sitting down on the edge of his unmade bed, "It's me, Adeline."

But he didn't respond, like every other visit, I was invisible to him, and if I forced a reaction he would spiral out of control, urging for the nurses to save him.

Today, he did say something however, just as I was leaving, "Don't believe him, he's not going to hurt me," He said hesitantly, looking at his shaking hands, "The boy, who came to visit me, he said I remind him of his father, the way that I look, he told me he murdered his own father and I saw the look in his eyes, it was guilt. Don't believe what he says Ada, don't betray the Agent, your friends and family, we don't put them at harms way, instead we protect them, save them, get them the help they need."