Chapter Fourteen
2019
Since she’d been old enough to even contemplate the possibility, Sienna had been torn at the prospect of having children. On the one hand, whenever they came across a family with an adorable little baby, it was like a persistent tug on her ovaries.
But everyone knew how much of an upheaval it was to have children.
Did Sienna really want to sacrifice her freedom? Her money? Her career? She’d never been able to decide.
However, sitting there with Francesca’s beady little eyes on her in the eerie quiet of the RV, Sienna was convinced that she had finally made her mind up.
It felt uncharacteristically cold. Gooseflesh broke out up and down Sienna’s arms, and so she pulled her cardigan tighter around her and drummed her fingers on the table, chewing her lip as she glanced awkwardly around at her own home.
“So… do you go on many trips with your family?” Sienna forced herself to ask. As much as it pained her, she met Francesca’s eye, which seemed to cling to her with their icy blue irises.
“Oh, we never stay in one place,” Francesca said with a smile that gave Sienna a distinctly unpleasant feeling in her chest. It unnerved her how the child had gone so quickly from having a full-blown tantrum over something as trivial as a toy to appearing so abruptly calm and collected.
Sienna swallowed. It occurred to her that if Francesca’s family moved about a lot, perhaps they were one of those traveller types. Not that Sienna had anything against them, it was just she’d heard some less than desirable things about certain gypsy families. About violence, arson, theft… Sienna cut herself off inside her head and mentally scolded herself for being such a bigot. So what if the strange girls belonged to a traveller family? Even if they were a little rough around the edges, they were hardly going to stir trouble towards the charming young couple who had saved their stranded daughters. On the contrary, perhaps the whole fiasco would turn out to be a blessing in disguise, with her new Romany contacts turning out to be extremely useful allies. No one would screw with a traveller family. At least, Sienna and Jared wouldn’t.
Out of awkwardness, Sienna stood up and began to pace, then stopped herself. She didn’t want this weird little kid to think that she was somehow intimidated by her. Her brain whirred as she struggled to think of something else to say… but her efforts were in vain as she found her mind go entirely blank at the prospect of striking up more conversation with the child.
A sudden, unpleasant noise broke into her cloud of thoughts. Her head snapped towards the door of the RV, where the outer door handle had started to rattle. Like a sharpened spike, dread punctured the bottom of her lungs, and her breath came to a stop. After just a few seconds, she realised that she was frozen rigid, and Francesca was staring at her as though she were a crazy person. Her cheeks burned red with embarrassment. What the hell was she doing?
“They’re back,” giggled Sienna nervously, rubbing the back of her neck as she walked towards the door.
“Funny that your old man doesn’t use his key, isn’t it?”
The child’s words were like tiny shocks of electricity attacking her spine. Sienna stopped and turned back to frown at her. She felt an immense irritation that bordered on hatred for the strange little bitch. Autistic or not, Sienna was losing her patience with the child. Fast.
“What?” she demanded impatiently, not bothering to hide her annoyance.
Francesca said nothing and simply shrugged.
“Maybe he left it,” reasoned Sienna, more to herself than to the girl. But still, she paused. She briefly contemplated the tools and materials around the motor home and debated what she would do in the event of a carnivorous marsh monster lunging through the doorway the moment she opened it.
Grow up; she told herself crossly before taking a breath and continuing purposefully towards the door. She placed her hand on the handle, only to find that her palm was unpleasantly clammy. Pursing her lips, the young woman pushed down with a trembling wrist and then sharply pulled the door towards her, as if ripping a plaster off of a scraped knee, half expecting to be immediately run down by a snarling, foul-breathed beast on the doorstep.
Sienna looked out into the night and froze as a blast of unbearably cold air rushed in and cascaded over her like a crashing wave of ice. She blinked, momentarily too stunned by the temperature for her eyes to properly comprehend the dark, hooded figure that stood at the foot of the steps.
“Get in,” a low, gruff voice rumbled as the mysterious man ascended the first step.
She blinked and remained still. Her lip lowered as if to speak, but no words came out.
“I said, get in!” repeated the stranger, who came forward again, this time plunging a shiny metal blade through the frosty atmosphere so that the point teased the air in front of her. Sienna scrambled backwards, her heart pounding in her eardrums like a death drum as the intruder came towards her, letting himself into the RV. Protectively, she clutched her arms over her chest, her pyjamas and bare feet making her feel naked and vulnerable. A solitary tear squeezed from the corner of her eye and trickled bitterly down her cheek.
Once inside, the hooded man shook his headgear free, revealing a rugged face and familiarly piercing blue eyes that seemed to reflect a cold, unfeeling soul. He grunted at Sienna in acknowledgement, still holding out the knife, then glanced across at Francesca.
“Flo, can you sort this out? Me and your mother can’t make head or tail of it,” he grunted, delving into one of his pockets and tossing what appeared to be one of the latest iPhones across the room. Francesca, or Flo, caught it with the ease of someone much older and much more sophisticated than the
