The Girl with the Gift

Chapter 15

"Luke, calm down." Alex rushed over and put his hands on his brother's shoulders.

Macey's head started swimming. "What's your fault, what are you talking about?"

"They took her and they're going to kill her." Luke wheezed and lowered himself to breath.

Macey wasn't sure that she heard anything after that, she backed away from him.

"Luke, where is she? Where did they take Cas?"

"Back Bay."

Macey's heartbeat raced and she could feel her hands getting sweaty. Within seconds she ran out the door. An uber was sitting idly in the circular entrance to the venue.

"Macey, stop, it's freezing! Wait!"

She didn't hear Alex or think about the cold. She quickly gave the driver the address. He skidded around the driveway and out into the street. Please be okay, please be okay. Macey tried to calm her mind enough to think. Where would "they" have taken Cas? She knew that the largest construction site was across the street from her and Cas's apartment. She had to look there first.

"Did you forget your coat, Ma'am?" The driver asked curiously. Macey noticed for the first time that she had goosebumps all over her body. It was not even 40 degrees outside. Shit.

"If you're walking somewhere, please let me give you my coat."

She was shocked at his offering. "Thank you." She pulled out all the cash she had, even at his strong resistance. As he pulled up outside her apartment he stepped out of the vehicle and handed her his puffer jacket. Macey accepted gratefully and gave him the cash regardless of his constant efforts to refuse.

After he left she ran across the dark street. Was Cas dead already? Where was she being held in this cold? Tears flooded to Macey's eyes as she frantically circled the site and ignored the signs warning pedestrians to keep out. The site was dark except for some tall pop-up lamps on the corners. A full moon helped illuminate the mounds of debris that were left-over from the buildings that once stood there. There was no dead body out in the open—where the previous bodies were found. Macey walked across the center of the large lot.

"Cas, was where are you?" She sniffed and began to shiver, more from shock than the cold in her mind. Her breathing came out in large clouds.

Darkness to the left and right. Garbage containers, broken concrete, split wood, frozen earth.

Her eyes finally rested on a few pieces of paper that were placed under a rock to keep the wind from blowing them away. She ignored the fact she could barely feel her fingers as she leaned over and picked it up. She turned her phone light and examined it closely. Rough architectural sketches scattered across and she searched it desperately for anything that could help her. There was a long rectangle on the far side of the lot. When she looked around herself it appeared to represent a shipping container. On the drawing there was a circle in the middle. It's the only sturdy thing out here. If there was anywhere they could be hiding her, it's there. Macey marched across and placed her hands on the cold steel door. 

Rust and metal grinded together, making such a loud noise that everyone in Back Bay could have heard it. But it only opened so far before halting. With the flashlight on her phone, she saw there were sturdy chains and a lock holding it together. No. The cold was making her hands, her body, her mind numb. With her senses barely together she couldn't pry it open. 

For the first time since birth her strength was failing her when she needed it most.

The opening was wide enough so that she could quickly look inside. There were chairs and a makeshift table on the opposite side, probably a place people had lunch when they weren't working on the construction. She looked at the map she was still holding again, then to the floor. The circle in the middle of the rectangular shipping container must have represented an old sewage tunnel. There was a City of Boston logo around the rusted lid to the underground. Ew. Macey wrinkled her nose. But... why was the shipping container directly over it? No one would sit in here for a work break if they smelled this the entire time.