“What about my laptop. I won’t go without it. It has all my work on it.”
Veronica eyed her in surprise. “You leave it lying around?”
“It’s hidden away. The one on the desk hasn’t much on it.”
“Okay, take it.” She looked around the room. “Right, let’s go. We’ll gag those two before we go. When I’m half out of the city, I’ll text the cops to pick them up and chuck the phone away.”
Kathleen looked at her incredulously. “How many damn phones have you?”
Veronica chuckled. “I always have a supply. Tools of the trade.”
The drive took two hours, most of it in silence. Neon and traffic lights increasingly were replaced by dark trees and empty road.
Every so often, Kathleen caught Veronica glancing in the rear-view mirror for headlights, but there were none. Kathleen leaned her head against the window as the darkness slipped past. She should have been terrified. Or furious. Or at the very least, wary. But instead, what she felt was… a strange thrill, sharp and humming low in her chest.
She had packed a bag in five minutes flat, left her apartment with a woman who had lied to her, who had fought like a SAS soldier and was driving with her into the middle of nowhere, in the dead of night. It should have been the makings of a panic attack.
Strangely, her heart wasn’t racing with fear—it was skipping like something in her had broken loose.
The old Kathleen—cautious, anxious, quietly bristling at social dinners—would never have done this. That woman wouldhave shut the door and called the police and sat trembling on the couch until help came. But she wasn’t that person anymore, hadn’t been since Veronica stepped into her life. It still stung, the deceit. That all the nights they'd spent talking, the gentle touches were part of a contract to learn her secrets.
Intellectually, it was all clear, but emotionally?
She couldn’t summon the hate. Even now, seated beside her in silence, Veronica’s profile lit by the instrument panel, there was something steady about her presence—something Kathleen had already let herself lean into. And that, more than anything, was what made this so exhilarating.
She should be unravelling instead of sitting calmly beside her, thinking how lovely she looked in the glow of the lights.
After they left Manhattan, Veronica pulled a phone out of her pocket and texted the police. Then she threw it into a ditch and kept driving. An hour later, Kathleen pointed to the turn off the main highway. They drove through a narrow, winding strip of gravel, relieved no cars followed them in. As they drove further, the trees thickened, the oaks and pines swallowing the night sky, and their headlights lit up the underbrush in flickers. There were no sounds except for the purr of the car engine and the rumble of the tyres over the dirt road.
Kathleen straightened in her seat as the car crawled up the final hill. She recognised the place in fragments: the moss-draped boulder beside the track, the old iron fence slumped to one side, and finally, the dark silhouette of the cabin nestled in the clearing. It was exactly as she remembered—modest, weathered, half-forgotten. A perfect hideout.
Veronica parked close to the door and cut the engine. The silence returned like a blanket dropped over them both. “You sure no one else knows about this?” she asked.
“Positive.”
They stepped out into the cold. Kathleen flicked on the torch, fumbled with the key until it fitted in the lock, and pushed the door open. A puff of dust greeted them. The air smelled of cedar and ash and old woodsmoke. She hit the light switch and the room lit up.
The cabin was bare bones but clean: one main room with a stone hearth, a two-seater couch with faded fabric, a small table tucked under the window, and a kitchenette barely big enough to swing a kettle. To the side was a door to the single bedroom and the washroom. On the shelves were old mugs, a few well-thumbed books on native flora, and a box of candles and matches.
Veronica set their bags down. “Nice. Remote and quiet. You were right.”
“I told you. There’s a gas cylinder that runs the little stove.” Kathleen offered a smile, then crossed to the fireplace. She put some paper on the stone floor then stacked kindling from the box to the side on to it, struck a match and coaxed a flame. The fire caught slowly, but once it did, the room began to warm with the soft glow of orange light.
They moved in companionable silence. Veronica checked the water tank while Kathleen unpacked their food. There was no fridge, so they left the perishables in the cooler.
When the fire was going strong and the kettle had boiled, Kathleen poured two mugs of tea and sat cross-legged on the couch. Veronica took hers without a word and settled across from her.
For a long moment, they simply sat there, steam rising between them, silence folding gently over the cabin like snowfall.
Then Kathleen exhaled. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
Veronica looked at her. “I should have left but I couldn’t.”
“You stayed,” Kathleen said softly. “That’s all that matters.”
The fire crackled.
Outside, the trees whispered against one another, and in the distance came the hoot of an owl.
