3
" According to my instructions, I’m supposed to laugh at you now.”
“Go ahead?”
The voice managed a kind of embarrassed chuckle.
More soft tapping sounds, but the voice spoke again before they finished.
“I won’t give you my identity. It’s not important. Know that I am an interested party, and I want you to begin booking your travel back home. You have no particular skills. You know this. You’re a fairly standard teenage boy. You have no use but to be used.”
“I know it’s fun to be cryptic, but that last thing made zero sense.” I wanted the voice to keep talking, because as I wiggled my hands, I realized the zip tie wasn’t as tight as it needed to be.
“Think of yourself as a package. It’s Christmas, so picture a nicely wrapped present. Charlotte carries it around. It’s heavy in her arms, but it’s pleasing to look at it. Maybe the package talks. It’s witty. It’s flattering. It makes her feel special, and she likes that feeling. And one day Charlotte leaves it somewhere in public, and poof, it is taken from her. Charlotte is sad. Then furious. Charlotte will do anything to get her present back. Horrible things. Things that will end in her death, or imprisonment. We don’t want Charlotte to do these things.”
“So in this weird children’s story you’re telling me, I’m a talking package.” I’d put my wrists between my knees, and slowly, slowly, I worked one curled hand out of its binding. “That’s a pretty stupid extended metaphor. Did you fail English class? You were more of a math person, weren’t you? "
― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)
19
" Jamie Watson," he said. "Do you know, you look just like your father when I met him. Which is making all of this quite a bit stranger for me, so could you please get out of the bed you're sharing with my niece?"
I scrambled to my feet. "We're not - I'm not - it's very nice to meet you." Behind me, Holmes was snickering, and I rounded on her. "Come on, really? Some backup would be nice."
"So you want me to give him the details, then?"
"Do you want me to give you a shovel so you can keep on digging me this hole?"
"Please," she shot back. "I'd rather watch. You're doing such a nice job of it, after all. "
― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)