Wrong Direction

Chapter 22: Chased Into A Box

The motorbike that had pulled up beside us at the red traffic lights, began flashing something into my face. I blinked a few times but just continued to stare out, I had too much on my mind to care. The air then filled with the shouting of my name over and over again, trying to get my attention, but I didn’t know where to look; the flashing lights were too bright.

“The window!” I heard Harry’s voice break through the other shouts.

His body was against mine as he leaned over to quickly shut the window. It dawned on me then that the man on the back of the motorbike was paparazzi, taking God knows how many photos of me. That pulled  me back into reality – how the hell did they find us anyway?

“What the hell were you thinking, Candice?” Harry exclaimed – he was angry, and he had every right to be. “Can you get us out of here?” He then asked the driver.

“I can try, Sir.” The car then forced me back into my seat as we sped around the corner through the red light.

Harry glanced out the back window, and by the look on his face, I could guess that it didn’t work.

“I can try to lose them, but it won’t be easy with this traffic,” the driver replied, looking a little concerned in the rear-vision mirror.

“Shit.” Harry ran a hand through his thick hair and lifted his phone to his ear. “Paul, we have a problem.”

Why couldn’t I have held it together for another ten minutes? Then we would have arrived at the hotel safe and sound. But the thought of my dad, and Lillian, and Olivia, churned my stomach so much that I felt as though I needed another breath of fresh air – but it was out of the question this time.

Harry stayed on the phone to Paul, keeping him updated on our whereabouts as we zigzagged through the city. The driver was driving radically, trying to shake off the motorbike which pursued us, but it wasn’t working. Every now and then it would speed up, racing alongside of the car – the flashes constant. They were reckless, and I knew that if they didn’t stop being dangerous that something horrible could come of it.

“Candice? You alright?”

I looked back to Harry to find him frowning at me as he inspected my face.

“You’re so pale.”

I tried to give a small smile back, but there was no covering up the fear that I felt mixed with everything else that had happened this week. Tia and Bradley, the hotel security guard, being knocked out, my uncle’s secret, the mobs of crazy fan girls, Ed Sheeran, lying to everyone about One Direction, the constant media attention, the lion, Lillian only being my half-sister, and now this – I felt like screaming.

“No, I think she’s just in shock,” Harry spoke into the phone, still looking at me with his familiar worry-filled eyes.

Harry nodded then, before giving his phone to the driver.

The driver listened as he drove. “I know it, copy that.” The driver passed the phone back. “He wants to speak with Miss Candice.”

Harry looked to me with raised eyebrows, holding out the phone. I really didn’t want to talk to my uncle, because I knew that he would ask about what went down at the house. But Harry’s eyes said it all; he wasn’t going to let me get away with not speaking with my uncle.

I unwillingly took the phone and placed it to my ear.

“Yes?” I asked uninterested in any of my uncle’s questions.

“Candice, are you alright?” He sounded concerned, more so than I’d ever heard before.

I cleared my throat. “Uh, I guess so,” I lied.