xxv.
Therefore I Ache
$$$
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
For the first time in a long time, Blair Cameron was back to being the getaway driver.
John B proposed to drive, but he didn't insist much on it because he knew that, once the prima-donna girl put her mind up to something, there was no talking her out of it.
A mixture of her trademark impulsiveness and the undying fear to keep her sister and best friend alive with a bounty on their heads was inevitably what drove her to madness, say behind the wheel of an old truck that belonged to Terrance's crew. Speeding through the dark streets just fast enough for them not to lose a precious grain of sand in the hourglass, but slow enough not to get noticed by the authorities. The last thing they needed was to raise local eyes.
Terrance was sitting behind him, with the other man and Cleo squeezed besides him. John B, too, was sandwiched between her and Sarah, who was immobile in the passenger seat, still angry at the other two. "Home sweet home. Take us to your mansion, Miss Fancy-pants," he whistled.
Sarah rolled her eyes; Blair did, too. She looked back at them and gave them a semblance of a smirk (more a grimace than anything), then rounded the corner that pulled up to the Estate. "All right. This is it," John B said, and they lowered themselves in the trunk and pulled the tarp over their heads. He glanced at Blair and sighed.
"You lied," Sarah clenched her jaw, arms crossed in front of her chest. Her sister didn't crane her neck to meet her eyes, but Sarah addressed her anyway. "Both of you."
"We are very aware of that, and we are very sorry," John B apologized as though he owed it to her, which inevitably made Blair scoff in irritation. "And we shouldn't have gone," he added.
She scoffed again; he coughed melodramatically. "What?" Blair hissed. "I'm not going to apologize for this. Sarah, we owed John B at least that. Help him find the gold. And it wasn't like we were in danger, nobody else was there," she told her sister, eyes never wavering from the street ahead of her, hands tight around the steering wheel.
Sarah shook her head incredulously. "Is the gold even there?" she asked, annoyed.
"Uh . . . I think so," John B grimaced.
"You think so?" Sarah repeated, stunned.
Blair shushed them as they pulled up to the Estate's security guard, leaning an arm against the windowsill and smiling. She had a dirty, dark green cap over her head, a bandana around her neck, lashes that were still wet and ugly bruises on her face. Nobody would suspect her to be the same girl that use to parade around in multicolored sundresses with Dior sunglasses and a beaming smile, all teeth.
He absentmindedly greeted her, the phone pressed to his ear, talking about someone's dog or something. He caught sight of her, frowned, then pressed the phone against his chest and gave her the go to speak.
"Hey, we're actually just here to pick up some supplies. We work on the Camerons' garden," she smiled.
"We just need to pick up the leaf blower from, uh . . ." she didn't know why John B wanted to add onto her words when she was sure her statement alone would've been enough to let us in. Especially when he didn't know the place. Sarah coughed her words, and he repeated them. "Bay Line. We do a lot of work over there."
Blair smiled and elbowed his rib hard enough to make him wince, muffling it. "We would've came tomorrow, but we've got work to do early in the morning," she added, "so . . ."
"Yep, go ahead," the man nodded, giving them the green light. Blair thanked him, then drove past him.
The black picket-gates opened wide for the truck as it drove up to the main house, pulling up behind the glowing fountain. Blair immediately turned the vehicle off, shoving the keys into the back pocket of her dirtied shorts, slamming the door behind her. Her eyes met with Sarah's, but she looked away as though she had been electrocuted.
John B helped the three in the back remove the tarp from over their heads, then rounded the car to stand besides a pensive Blair, who was watching Sarah dig into the plants in front of the door, looking for the spare key.
"Gotta be pretty rich to have a waterfall in your front yard," Terrance commented with a hint of disdain.
Blair rolled her eyes. "It's a fountain," she corrected.
"You're gutsy," he smiled at her, flashing his cigarette-ash-stained teeth. He looked between her and her sister, who was shaking a fake seashell to get the key out of the crevice. "Full of surprises, ain't y'all, Rich Sisters."
"Nice nickname," Blair commented again, unable to keep in her irritation. Cleo nudged her and grinned, and she shook her head in exasperation.
Terrance looked around Blair adjusted the cap over her head, wincing as it brushed the still-healing scab on her forehead. "I absolutely love what you've done with the landscaping," the captain continued.
Sarah walked up to the front doors and shoved the key in the lock, and it creaked as she pulled the Victorian-style, white pine door open. Blair walked up to her, sighing heavily, and Sarah grabbed ahold of her hand, almost forgetting for a second all about how her sister betrayed her. Though Sarah would never admit it, she was scared; Blair knew because she was feeling the exact same fucking thing.
"Get in," Captain Terrance ushered urgently. "We don't have all night. Go."
Sarah nodded towards the inside, but Blair was the first one to make it. Overnight, it hasn't changed. She sighed and took the lead, as she always did.
They quickly made it to the living room, and Sarah crouched in front of the padlocked safe that they believed was holding the gold. A million combinations were spinning in Blair's head, and she swore she could smell the OBX laundromat's blueberry soap-gum smell in the back of her mind, running her hands over the dark surface.
Her sister sighed. "Okay, let's see here," she mused.
"Showtime, girlie," Terrance pressed. "You best remember that combo," he said, "you and your sister."
Sarah pressed on a couple buttons, humming as she did so. But when she went to pull the handle, the door jammed and the light flashed red, a telltale that she punched in the wrong numbers. Blair closed her eyes, sighing, and Sarah gasped softly in surprise.
"I knew I should've never listened to you," Terrance shook his head hopelessly, pushing himself off the way.
"Give 'em a second," Cleo defended, eyes on Blair.
She crouched besides her sister and frowned. "Usually, he uses his birthday," Sarah recalled. "Maybe I entered it wrong," she justified. But the door jammed again.
Terrance clicked his tongue. "Chop-chop, let's go."
"I'm trying," Sarah protested.
"What about Rose's?" John B proposed. Sarah was quick to press on the Gemini's date of birth, but it was, once again, utterly useless.
"Tell you what, you don't get it open, I get my 50K consolation, all right?" Terrance threatened impatiently.
Blair's eyes suddenly widened. "Our birthdays," she mumbled. Sarah exclaimed in confusion and pushed out of the way, and Blair began punching numbers with a swift hand. "I remember Dad had this one password for his old safe back home. It was our birthdays mixed together. My day, your month, our year," she told them, then wrapped her hands around the handle. Inhaling deeply, she tugged at it . . . and it unlocked.
Sarah jumped to her feet and Blair smiled widely, slowly standing up as she pulled open the door and looked up at John B. They peered inside. The gold was right there. But Terrance beat them to it. "Bingo," he grinned, "nice job, girlies. Clever girl," he told Blair. Cleo exclaimed as he held a bar in his hands and examined it, then looked up at them in tree shock. "I'll be damned," he breathed.
"I need shades!" Cleo put a hand on Blair's shoulder, and both shared a smile that was as pure as the moment, as if the reason why they needed the gold was forgotten.
"Go get the bags, Stubbs," Terrance instructed. "Go get the goddamn duffel bags!"
He stuttered, snapped back to reality, and ran towards the door as Terrance began stacking the gold in the bag he already had. John B was hypnotized by the Royal Merchant's contents. Blair grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight, and he returned the gesture right back.
Then, their moment of joy was interrupted by Stubbs calling out for them, a soft "Guys?" that made Blair frown and turn around to catch sight of the commotion. "Security's here!" he yelled.
Terrance muttered something, but it entered through one ear and came right out the other for Blair. She stepped back until her back hit the safe, then jerked forward with a gasp as Sarah tugged her towards her. John B was closing the safe door, telling them that they'll come back as he ushered them towards the screen door that had been reflecting a distant blinding lights, the police's fluorescent flashlights.
But as they went to open it, Terrance, on the other side, blocked it for them. Blair's mouth fell open in shock, and John B kept pounding on the glass. "Terrance, what are you doing?" he asked, anger rising as Sarah yelled out.
"You're the bait that's gonna slow 'em down," he told them, face as stoic as it had been since they met him. Like he didn't give a shit that he was sacrificing three teenagers to the local authorities, scum of the Earth. He locked the door, then tried the handle. "See you later."
Sarah and John B were calling for him, but Blair knew it would be as useless as staying still. So she tugged at the Routledge boy's backpack and pulled him away from the window. "They're coming!" she exclaimed, hissing. "We need to go. We need to lose them."
"No!" Sarah protested. "I won't split up," she firmly said, and John B shook his head before sliding down onto the ground, back pressed against the sofa. The girls followed, and then the police made their way into the room. "What do we do?" she whispered, but John B only shushed her with a finger over his lips. Sarah grabbed Blair's hands and shut her eyes, just as panicked as the rest of them.
But Blair seemed all too calm. So much she might as well have been sitting in a room alone with her earphones blasting Beach Fossils with nobody else in the space but her. Except she wasn't; she could hear people rummaging around, making their way up and down the stairs, talking strategy to catch the trespassers.
John B nudged her, bringing her back to reality. Then, he leaned toward her and Sarah. "Ill go upstairs and distract them," he proposed, but the tone of his voice didn't leave much space for discussion.
"No, no, you'll get caught," Sarah shook her head. "I said no splitting up."
"It's not like we have a lot of choices here," Blair sighed, pressing the palm of her hand to her forehead. She was so angry, but it wasn't the time for it. "Shit!"
"I'll be fine," John B reassured them.
Sarah sighed, trying to convince herself that he would. Her brain was in no way winning the argument against her heart's worries. But at least she tried. "Okay. If you do that, we have a boat here, in the cove behind the property."
Blair suddenly remembered the little float she used to drive when she was younger, though it really was just an orchestrated scheme by her father to make her believe that she was the one steering them. "My Druthers Too," she breathed. "Sarah and I will get the keys. Meet us there."
"As soon as you can," her sister added.
Only when nobody was around, they jerked to their feet and began running out the living room, then split in different directions. The sisters were holding onto each other's hands, and they pushed the door together only for John B's voice to make a ruckus from the staircase. The officers were taking the bait. They saw him run out the door on the third floor's balcony, and they ran down the patio, away from the lights.
Down the stairs, down again, and off the patio to climb a small patch of grass. Blair's hands came in contact with the rough bark of a crooked tree, breathing heavily as she patted its circumference before finally getting the keys just as Sarah tugged her shirt back with a gasp, calling her name.
When she pushed herself away from the tree, she spun around only to find Terrance with a goddamn gun in his hands, pointed at them. "Give me the keys," he demanded. Both sisters shook their heads. "Don't play with me, rich girl. Give me the keys!"
Blair's eyes met with Cleo, almost pleasingly. The Nassau-native looked away, jaw locked.
"You and your sister play silly games with me, baby, you get silly prizes," he mused. The gun was still pointed at them and Blair was shielding Sarah's body with hers, sweaty and heaving. "Don't try me. Give me the goddamn keys now." When she wouldn't move, he looked back at his man. "Get the keys, Stubbs."
He tore them right out of Blair's hands. Sarah protested, but it was useless. Both were scared he would shoot. He told Stubbs to go, and they were running for the hills as police sirens approached.
Cleo took a step forward, then back as though she had been pulled by an invisible hand. Her words were hesitant, rushed, but true. "I'm sorry, Pretty Girl." But Blair only shook her head and wrapped her arms around her sister tightly, just for a second so Sarah wouldn't have to watch them running for the boat they loved so much as kids, waist-deep into the heavy, bright water.
"It's okay," she heaved, pulling away. Sarah pushed the hair away from her sister's face, then glanced over her shoulder and cursed. John B. "Come on," she pressed, grabbing her hand.
They climbed up the stairs, peering between the pillars to find John B being escorted to the front by two officers, half-limp in their arms and wincing with every move. His girlfriend breathed out his name, shaking a scandalized look with her sister before they both quickened their pace.
The men tossed John B onto the grass; one of them was calling Ward Cameron. Blair pressed her body against the wall and watched in horror, Sarah right besides her. What could they go to save him? Hand over her mouth, cold, wet metal sticking to her melting flesh. She was all sweaty, her tanned skin all humid and badly lit. Sarah peered forward to hear their conversation better, but Blair didn't want to.
She lost it when she heard her father's voice. All the anger that had been building up in her intestines, lungs, hearts, veins . . . it was coming to a point where she couldn't breathe anymore. Where she felt like all her limbs, bones, we're turning to mush and she was going to be sent tumbling backwards at any given moments, knees another syllable from the mouth of her father away from buckling. But, then, she decided that she was going to do something with that anger, more productive than she had always been with it. It wasn't the time to give up, much less leave the people she cared about alone in that ugly situation they were in.
So, Blair Cameron did what she knew best. She ran to the commands on the wall and turned on the sprinklers, and then her sister shoved her in the green, cabana-like storage when she saw a policeman's light approaching their way. Inside, with their hands over their mouths, unable to tell each other a word without getting ten cops on their ass, lit by the heavy red penetrating through the many chasms, Blair felt more aware than ever. Her sister could see it in the way she impatiently rocked back and forth on her heels, crouched, ready for action.
Perhaps tripping over a can of bug spray was the greatest mistake she had made after getting on that boat with her sister and best friend. Sarah's eyes widened, and she grabbed it between her hands with a determined expression. "Just follow my lead, okay? House sitting," she told her.
A wide grin spread on Blair's face, and she was the first one out of the storage.
They made their way out, rounding the corner to get to the front yard where the policemen were still flocked around John B. The man immediately rose their gun at them, asking them who they were with a peculiar shake in his wrist.
"I'm Val," Sarah introduced, holding her hands up in surrender, the can of bug spray in one of them. "This is my sister, Laura. We're house-sitting for the Camerons."
"You live here?" the man asked, and Blair frowned, but bit her tongue back.
"No, we're house sitting," she repeated, putting her hands down. She and Sarah gradually walked closer. Her hand was on the can's handle. "We just started a week ago."
One of them men had a gun to John B's head, who was on his knees with his hands pressed to his thigh, breathing heavily. The other was still holding the gun towards them, but had loosened his grip on the trigger. "We caught this guy trying to break in," one of the men informed them.
"What?" Sarah frowned, then got closer until she could see John B's face. "Oh, I know him," she said nonchalantly. "He cleans the boats for the neighbors."
Sarah smiled. He shot her a conspicuous frown. "Which neighbors?" he pressed.
"The Stanleys. They live down the street," Blair replied with a never-wavering smile, talking a step towards John B so she'd be close enough to yank the man away once they made a run for it.
The man grimaced. "What's his name?"
Sarah looked at her boyfriend, breathing heavily, then at her sister, who nodded imperceptibly. "Vlad," she answered.
Then sprayed his face with the can's content.
John B used that opportunity to pounce at the guard that kept him immobile, grabbing his legs and shoving him onto his back as Blair punched one that was going towards her sister, groaning at the sound of her knuckles splitting open. She nearly slipped on the wet grass, only her fear and determination to get away keeping her upright.
"Sarah, Blair, come on! Go to the car," John B called, running towards the truck the snake-captain and his crew left behind, jumping over the dashboard of the cop car. Blair and Sarah followed closely, jumping into the back of the truck as they left the officers coughing violently.
Sarah kept telling him to "Go!" but couldn't find it in her to look away from the cops running towards them. Blair chimed in with a loud "Drive!", breathing heavily, propping herself up against the back of the trunk.
One of the police officers caught up to them, grabbing ahold of the vehicle and, soon enough, Sarah's foot. She kicked him in the face as Blair lunged forward and punched his cheekbone just as John B finally sped up, and her hit was strong enough to throw him off balance. The ground slid from under his feet, and he found himself face-first into the concrete in a matter of seconds.
Blair was breathing heavily when Sarah pulled her back, hands interlaced as they both laid their heads against the cold glass, messy hair windswept and damp with sweat. "Girls, you good?" John B called out for them, knuckles white from how hard his hands were wrapped around the steering wheel of the old truck.
"You could've drove faster, you know?" Blair winced. Sarah propped herself up and her sister struggled to sit upright, hands pressed against her ribs. Broken? Maybe. Most probably bruised. Every time she inhaled, a sharp pain stabbed her lungs and let her bleed out onto her lap, where her palm was pressed against the bleeding knuckles of her other hand. She really couldn't catch a break, could she?
They pulled up in front of what looked like a tropical diner, and the speed of which the car had been going ultimately rose a couple questions amongst its customers. The front door was quickly pushed open, and John B jumped out the car just as Sarah made it out of the trunk.
"Okay. I have never loved you more, Sarah Cameron," he said, then slammed the door behind him. "That was crazy! You straight up donkey-kicked that dude─"
The older Cameron sister rounded the car and pushed her boyfriend away with a clenched jaw. "You lied to me," she managed through gritted teeth. Her eyes turned to Blair, who had rolled out of the trunk and was holding onto her side with a grimace. "You, too!"
"What are you talking about?" John B defended. "We're fine."
"No, we're not fine!" Sarah pressed. Her anger wavering from her sister to the boy standing in front of her. "You two lost the only money we had! You almost got us all caught, if not shot!" she gestured, throwing her hands around. "How is that okay?"
John B stammered, holding his hands up in surrender. "I'm proactively admitting I screwed up and admitting that it was all me─" he was trying to get the heat off Blair, but her sister didn't let him finish.
"Proactively admitting doesn't do anything," Sarah shook her head, interrupting him. "I have lost my father. I have lost my brother. I have lost one of my sisters and the other almost fucking died!" Her eyes moved to Blair, who shut them tightly. Ashamed or guilty? Regretful, surely. "I can't lose you both, too."
But then the youngest out of them all scoffed bitterly, stepping towards her sister with vivid fury overtaking her plastic bones. "I've lost them all, too. I've lost my friends. The guy you love is right here, but mine thought I was dead! He's never gonna forgive me for that!" she yelled. "We did all that for the gold, Sarah, so do you really think I was just going to let our murderer of a father take it?"
She froze and sighed, then sniffled. Clearly, Sarah hadn't thought about how her sister had been affected by the recent events. All she could think about was how she had to struggle to keep her dead body afloat, how she was the oldest and failed to protect her time and time again.
Blair had been breaking right under their eyes for so long that they couldn't even see the cracks anymore. Perhaps she had gotten used to them, so much it was second nature to stick some tape over the open wounds that would never turn into scabs. She pressed her hand against her ribs and walked up to them, and they were so scared she'd fall apart right there, with nobody to hold her up. Because she had found her mattress in the Pogues, and now it felt as though she was roaming all alone. Sarah and John B had each other . . . who did she have?
"I'm sorry," Sarah sniffled.
John B sighed and swallowed harshly. "Look, it won't happen again," he promised his girlfriend. Then his eyes landed on Blair and her hopeless expression, and he knew just what he had to do. "It wasn't her fault. She tried to talk me out of it," he lied. She let him.
Sarah glanced between the pair, then spun around and walked away. "I'm─" Blair interrupted her with a cough and Sarah rephrased herself for the sake of solidarity "─we're calling the shots now. And to start, I'm driving."
Blair and John B shared a look, the girl half-amused when her sister paused in front of the driver side's door and ran her hand through her hair.
"I can't drive stick," she added, and made her way around the car.
"Of course you can't," Blair chuckled to herself, but the sharp pain than ran up her side was enough to quiet her brief bliss down. She held her hand out towards John B, and he placed the keys into them with an exasperated sigh.
Whatever was going on . . . they weren't in control anymore.
────────────────────
They came to a halt at the port. "This is arguably the worst idea we've ever had," John B commented.
"Shut up," Blair shook her head tiredly.
She knows the "You" had been itching on the tip of his tongue, for her and Sarah weren't the ones to have come up with that suicide-idea. And maybe she was slowly losing her mind from how many times she had hit her head in the past few days, or maybe even from the near-brush with death (bold of her to call it a brush) she was forced to remember every time she goddamn blinked.
That could be the reason why she decided that going back to Terrance and Cleo would be their best shot at getting the gold back. And, though she was right, they didn't really want to admit it in fear of promoting the sudden rebirth of her impulsive, careless tendencies they thought she left at home.
Truth was, after everything, she didn't even know if she had a home anymore.
Between getting shattered, killed, then brought back to life, Blair was starting to understand the importance of not taking anything for granted. Her lungs were screaming for a cigarette and her body was aching so hollowly she wondered how long she had before her knees simply gave out and tossed her like a rag doll onto the concrete. She swallowed the echoing pain and placed a foot in front of the other, hand absentmindedly pressed to her ribcage. She could barely even breathe, the poor little girl.
They followed her wordlessly into the gathering of boards on the dock until she finally caught sight of the unfortunate familiar bunch, and her face fell from the weight of all the anger she was trying to suppress.
Shamelessly, she hasn't stopped walking. The heels of her shoes echoed against the wet wood underneath, and her eyes were the first Terrance caught sight of. "Look what the cat done dragged in," he commented, eyes slightly wide at just how gutsy those goddamn American teenagers were.
Blair exchanged a brief look with Sarah, then crossed her arms across her chest. "We have a proposition," she said. There were heavy eyes fixated on her bruised face and she didn't need to glance up to know that Cleo, propped up on the roof of the boat, was looking at her.
"If it involves giving you that rock back, that nugget, forget it," Terrance quickly shut down the option. He had a glass in his hand, halfway full with whatever remained of the alcohol he flooded it with. "You're lucky I'm not on the phone with the cops right now."
"I'm not worried about that," Sarah spoke over him, tilting her head to the side, "because you saw what was in that safe, did you not?"
He raised a brow. "Yeah, I did."
"And it was exactly what we told you it was gonna be. Right?" she continued, and the balance in her world almost made her sound like her little sister.
The captain looked at the bottom of his cup and drowned down its contents defeatedly. "Yeah, well, that thing's locked down tighter than a clamshell now," Cleo spoke her mind, swinging her cell. Funnily enough, she wasn't even staring at Sarah, but the girl besides her instead.
"No shit," Sarah agreed with the obvious.
Blair took a step forward. "We know the gold isn't staying in that safe. Not in Nassau, at least," she added. "Knowing our father, he's scared for his life right now. He'll have it moved soon, he has no other choice."
"So what are you proposing, a Brink's job?" Terrance pretended that he was indifferent, but the glint of interest was crystal clear in those dark eyes of his, illuminated by the boat's yellowish light.
Sarah and Blair were splitting up the things they planned to say, and worked in synch with each other though they hadn't even addressed the elephant in the room yet. "Think about it. You have a boat that can get us away." She crossed her arms and mirrored her sister's movements. "You know people and the island, and we can find out exactly when that gold is moving."
An amused smile rose on Blair's face; she knew they had already given in to the idea. "And we'll give you two million," she ended the proposition with an offer they couldn't refuse, enjoying the sudden glow of hungry determination in their eyes.
"Let me get this straight," Terrance tutted. "We take the risk of going to jail and getting shot for a fraction of what's in that safe," he rephrased incredulously.
John B stared at the sisters urgently, but they didn't seem bothered at all. "After you abandoned us?" Sarah rose a brow, a satisfactory look on her face.
"Stole our boat?" Blair added and grimaced cynically. "Held my friend at knife-point? Do you really think we owe you anything? This is a gift we're giving you. And if I were you, I'd take it."
They were balancing on the thin line between convinced and not. "I'll give you ten," Sarah changed their offer, and it took everything for Blair not to elbow her in the gut and keep her stoic, already-victorious expression.
"Ten million apiece," Cleo requested.
Terrance grinned and and pointed at her. "I like that," he agreed. "Ten apiece."
"Apiece?" John B finally spoke up, scandalized. He scratched the back of his head and tried to get them to stop giving the gold out so carelessly. "Okay. You know what? We're getting─"
"John B," Sarah said, and he immediately shut up. She thought about it for a second, glancing at her sister for approval, and the youngest nodded imperceptibly. "Ten million apiece."
John B's eyes widened, clearly in disbelief. "Ten million dollars," he repeated. It left a bad taste on his tongue. "We're just throwing money away."
Blair took a step forward and held out her hand. "And you're giving me my boat back," she said, so firmly nobody would dare to try and protest. But why would they? They didn't even care about the damn boat.
The captain grabbed her and and shook it, and Sarah shared a victorious look with her little sister. "You have yourself a deal, sweetheart," he told them both, and maybe John B should've felt offended by the way he brushed him off. But it didn't matter, it's not as though he could've pulled off whatever they just did.
It was at that moment they understood that Blair would do whatever the hell she had to in order to get revenge on her father and go back home. No matter what she would have to lose, no matter how much she would ache.
And that all started with getting the gold. Again.