Evolution (16 page)

The accident I’d had the other day finally made sense. I realised why I had lost control and plummeted into the light pole. It was because I had a vision—my first vision ever—which I had somehow forgotten when I woke up in the ambulance that day.

“Does this man look like the man you saw?”

I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing would come out. I felt like my throat was closing up on me. All I could do was sit there, staring at the man on the computer screen.

Fritzie misread my blank expression. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep working on it ’til we get it right.”

“I know this is really hard for you. And yeah, holy shit. But you just need to answer her question, and we can get out of here,”
Aiden said.

Tears started to well in my eyes as I nodded, confirming that the image matched the man that I had supposedly seen following Chelsea and myself around the last few days before she disappeared.

My tears overflowed and were streaming down my face. How could that man be that cruel? How could he kidnap Chelsea? He was not a man; he was an animal.

I stood up, pushing my chair back. I had to get out of there. I needed fresh air.

“Make sure she comes back to sign off on this before you leave tonight,” Fritzie called out to Aiden, who followed me through her office door as I ran outside.

I pushed open the police station’s doors, gasping for air. The cool night air filling my lungs did nothing to calm me down. I was consumed by mixed emotions. That man I just described was the same man that I had seen in a vision. Only I couldn’t remember the damn thing because I had crashed my friggin’ car.

“Hey, hey… calm down,” Aiden said, pulling me into his arms.

“I should’ve known… I should’ve stopped it,” I wailed, burying my face into his chest. Images of my vision flooded my mind. Chelsea was strapped to a chair, her arms were restrained behind her back, and her mouth was taped shut. Her hair was a mess, and her face was smeared with blood.

Standing in front of her was the man—no, the animal—whose face had been added to the police file. The look in his eyes was that of a monster. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Suddenly I could understand him—he was calling my name.

Just as quickly as the visions appeared in my mind, they stopped.

“What just happened?” I asked, pulling my head back so I could see Aiden’s face. I expected him to have a guilty look on his face, but he seemed just as confused as I was.

“There you are,” Anna said, coming out of nowhere. “You did really good in there. You should be proud of yourself.” She walked over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“I know you don’t have long,” she continued, not giving me a chance to figure out what had just happened and what it all meant. “I just wanted to pop by to see if you two needed anything before we head back home.” By home, I knew she meant England.

“Nah, we’ll be all right,” Aiden said.

“Okay, well if you need me for anything…” Anna said, putting her hand on my shoulder.

“We’ll call, don’t worry,” Aiden finished the sentence for her.

She smiled. “Okay. Well, you two have a good night. And you especially,” she said, looking at me. “Try to get some sleep.”

Anna started to walk away when I remembered about Chrissy. “Oh, what happened with Chrissy?”

Anna stopped. Taking a second too long to respond, she said, “Oh, you know Chrissy. She’ll do anything for attention. And you know what? I think that girl has told so many lies that she is actually believing them herself these days.”

A few days ago I would have believed her, but my instincts were telling me that she was hiding something from me. Before I pressed her about it, what she had just said began to make sense to me. Chrissy probably had told one too many lies. Maybe the vision I had of her seeing Chelsea was no more than one of her lies, and her mind could no longer tell the difference between truth and fiction. Something still didn’t sit quite right, though.

“You’d better go back inside. They’re probably getting ready to send out a search party for you,” Anna said with a laugh.

I turned my head towards the door to the station, half-expecting an officer to walk out and prove her right. But there was no one there.

When I turned back to Anna, she was gone. Aiden, who had stayed silent, finally spoke. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.” He ushered me back towards the station.

I followed without saying anything more about what had just happened—or not happened—with Anna. I knew there was something wrong, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out. My mind felt like it was covered in a blanket of thick fog whenever I tried thinking about it.

We walked back into the station and into Fritzie’s office. She was eating a packet of chips and sipping on a Red Bull energy drink.

Fritzie motioned for us both to sit down in the chairs we had vacated no more than five minutes ago, and she took a sip of her drink. We sat down while she rummaged around her desk. She found the pen she was looking for and placed it in front of me, along with the papers.

“You will need to sign these to confirm this is the man you saw following you and Chelsea around.” She pointed at the signature line on the page in front of me.

I picked up the pen and signed the paper.

Fritzie turned to the next page. It was the picture of the psycho. “Just sign down the bottom, and then we’re all done.”

The sight of him sent chills down my spine. I quickly signed the paper and handed it back to Fritzie. I did not want to look at the picture of him any longer than was necessary.

“Thanks for doing this for us,” Fritzie said, picking up the papers. “Hopefully, he’s already in our system so we can nail this prick.”

I gave her a weak smile before walking out of her office.

“Thanks,” Aiden said to Fritzie. He followed me out of the room, for what I hoped would be the last time.

We walked back out the doors and into the night. It felt like we must have been in the police station for hours. I looked at my watch—it was eight twenty.

I sighed. “I just want this all to be over with.”

Aiden opened the passenger side door and waited for me to take my seat before closing the door behind me.
“It will be over soon.”
He walked around the car and got into the driver’s seat.

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

Aiden started the car. “They were stoked with how detailed your face description was. And even though the licence plate was covered in dirt, you were still able to get a couple of letters, which will help narrow down their search. Now we just gotta hope the car wasn’t stolen.”

He pulled out of the car park and onto the road. “When you left Detective O’Neil, he rushed over to some other officers to give them the details of the suspect and his car.”

“Yeah, a car that looks exactly like the thousands of other delivery vehicles driving around the streets of the Gold Coast every day.”

He placed his hand on my leg and smiled. “This was really the break they were looking for. And who knows, maybe the licence plate details you gave them might narrow down the search from a thousand cars to twenty. Twenty is something they can work with. Before they spoke with you, they were completely clueless. It could have been any one of the hundreds of thousands of people who live on the coast.”

I sat there silently, staring out at the passing houses and wishing that I had as much hope as Aiden did that the police would find Chelsea. Unfortunately, I didn’t. Somehow, I knew it was up to me to find her, yet I hadn’t a clue how I was going to do it.

Before I knew it, Aiden was pulling into his garage. The lights inside flicked on automatically when the garage door opened.

We got out of the car and walked up the stairs into his house, which was lit up by amazing new wall lights that looked like a work of art.

“I’m just going to get myself a drink before I come upstairs. Want one?” Aiden asked.

I headed up the stairs to his room. “No, thanks.” Even though my throat felt a little dry from all the talking I had done in the last few hours, I just wanted to get into bed and fall asleep.

I changed into one of Aiden’s T-shirts before I climbed into bed, and pushed his quilt on to the floor with my feet. It was way too hot for anything more than a sheet, even with the constant air conditioning in his place.

I lay there, trying to fall asleep, but the day’s events kept playing and replaying in my head.

Aiden walked into his room. “Can’t sleep, hey?”

I flipped myself around to face the door and saw that he was holding a glass of water, which he offered to me.

I pulled myself to a sitting position and took the glass from him.

“I can’t stop thinking about today.”

Aiden took off his T-shirt and climbed into bed. I put the glass on the bedside table.

He lifted his arm so I could snuggle into him.

We lay in bed and talked about the day’s events, trying to think of how we could find Chelsea. Who was the guy that I had described? And what I might have missed in one of my visions?

I replayed them in my mind, trying to come up with anything that could help us, until eventually I passed out from sheer exhaustion.

Chapter 16

I woke up shivering, reaching for blankets that were not there. I opened my eyes, trying to work out why Aiden’s bed felt rock hard and cold. I quickly realised that I was no longer in his bed. I was lying on my stomach on a cold, hard cement floor. There was wire fencing not more than a foot in front of my face, and there was a stench I couldn’t quite place.

I lifted my head, trying to figure out where I was. “What the…” I pulled myself onto my knees. The last thing I remembered was falling asleep in Aiden’s arms, but I was inside a cage of some sort, like the ones in dog kennels.

Turning around, I realised I had woken up in my worst nightmare. Bile started rising in my throat as I took in the scene before me. There was a girl strapped to a chair against the back wall of the cage. Her matted, blood-stained blonde hair fell over her face. Her head hung forward lifelessly. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew it was Chelsea.

It was the strangest sensation to have my feelings divided over what I was seeing. In one way, seeing her there made me sick to my stomach. It made me want to scream, cry, and puke all at the same time. Yet another part of me was hoping that what I was seeing was another vision. Yeah, it was probably the worst vision that I could have hoped for, seeing her dead and all, but if it was a vision, then I could use it to try to figure out something that might help us find her. Then the vision might not come true.

There was only one way to find out. I had to try to touch her. If my hand passed through her like some apparition, then I was definitely having another vision. But if my hand made contact with her skin, then… Well, I didn’t want to think about what that would mean.

I crawled on all fours over to her, hoping to God that I was having some sort of vision, and there was still time to save her. I reached out slowly… and made contact.

My hands trembled uncontrollably. I couldn’t save her. I quickly turned away, unable to look at her for another second. This was all my fault. I was supposed to save her, but she was dead because of me. Because I couldn’t work out what was already inside my mind. It had been there all the time, but I failed her.

I knew I was going to puke, yet I tried my hardest to fight it, causing my body to go into convulsions while I tried desperately to keep it down.

Then the inevitable happened—I spewed my guts up. Once it started, I couldn’t seem to stop.

“Jade?” a raspy voice whispered behind me.

It took me a minute, even with my supposedly superior brain, to work out what was happening. And it took me another minute for my dry heaving to stop.

Once I had finally gotten control over my body, I turned around, hoping that I had heard correctly.

Sitting in the chair was Chelsea, with her head up. She was alive.

Without thinking, I lurched toward her, wrapping my arms around her. I couldn’t believe that I found her. I actually found her. And most importantly, she was still alive.

“Jade,” she whispered.

I pulled back so I could look at her. “Yeah?” I couldn’t believe I was actually holding her in my arms. The slice across her throat, which I had seen in my vision, was right there on her neck, but it didn’t look half as bad as it did in my vision. Looking down at her blood-stained clothing made me think that she had lost a fair amount of blood.

“I’m glad to see you and all.” She gulped hard, leading me to think she must be in desperate need of some water. “But you kinda stink.”

I looked down at myself. Vomit smeared my clothing, as well as Chelsea’s. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I said, pulling away from her.

“Don’t worry about it.” She laughed. “We’ll be able to change into something else soon.”

I laughed too. I couldn’t believe that she still had her humour about her. If I had been abducted and held captive for three days, I was sure I would be a friggin’ mess. I sure as hell wouldn’t be joking around.