Page 278 of Depraved Boys

Not answering my question, Cormac turned into another highway, taking the corner way too fast for me to jump out without breaking my neck. I didn’t press him to answer because it would mean having to admit what he had done to Geraldine. Right now, I needed to focus on not becoming his next victim.

The road’s incline steepened, indicating the start of the mountains. Soon, it would narrow to a single track and become too dangerous to negotiate at speed. I rubbed my throat and gulped. If I got the chance, I would have to jump.

We sped past craggy shrubs, which offered a soft landing, and thin strips of pastureland occupied by slumbering cows and sheep. At places, there was nowhere for me to jump—just a sharp drop down the mountainside and into the river. With the occasional stone walls and the bends and twists of the road, timing my escape was near impossible.

“Damn!” Cormac snarled.

“What’s wrong?”

“Is that Garraway’s jeep behind us?”

I twisted around in my seat to find the familiar vehicle, complete with an outline of Sebastian in the front seat. My heart surged with hope, but I forced my face into a neutral expression. “It looks similar.”

“Do you not know the registration number of the twat you’re screwing?”

Channeling my inner Ashley, I focussed on the least important part of the sentence. “Do you have to be so rude?”

Cormac snarled and sped down a sharp incline. My stomach lurched, and I clutched a handle on the dashboard. These old cars didn’t have airbags. If we crashed, there would be no buffer between us and a messy, painful death. He slammed on the brakes and turned around a bend in the road, making the tires screech.

My phone slid off my lap. I shot forward, grabbed the handset, and stuffed it down the bodice of my dress. Eventually, I would escape Cormac, and my recording contained all the information I needed to free Prakash.

“You don’t know what they were like before Corrine died,” he snapped. “A bunch of bastards who used to mock me for being a scholar.”

“Cormac.” I held back a sob. “Slow down.”

“So Garraway can whisk you off into the sunset and break your heart?” He laughed. It was a shrill, blood-curdling sound. “No.”

“He’s not like that. Stop the car. The boys won’t stop looking if you take me away.”

He shifted down to a lower gear as he drove the Aston Martin up the steep incline of a foothill. The engine revved, sounding like it was being pushed to its limit. I glanced into the rearview mirror to find the jeep keeping up. At the top of the hill, the road made several downward curves along the valley before it twisted out of sight. Cormac shifted back into gear and raced down the track.

Hair blew in my eyes, and my heart jumped into the back of my throat. I jerked from side to side as Cormac negotiated the road at high speed. All plans of jumping fell away, along with my hopes of getting through this car chase alive.

I squeezed my eyes shut and clung harder onto the dashboard, but it did nothing to stop the car from lurching me about with its rapid, sharp movements.

“Cormac,” I whimpered. “Are you trying to kill us?”

After several moments, he yelled, “Fuck!”

My eyes snapped open. We were driving down a long stretch of road with high mountains in the distance. Twisting toward us at an alarming speed was a red Audi TT. All the moisture left my throat. With Prakash still behind bars and awaiting his trial on Monday, this could only be Leopold. Perhaps he had demanded access to Prakash’s room to take his car key while Sebastian had raced ahead.

“Persistent fuckers, aren’t they?” Cormac growled.

“Stop the car before someone gets hurt.” I hoped that between Leopold, Sebastian, and Miss Claymore, one of them had called the police. Or better still, the mountain rescue team.

Cormac shook his head. “I miscalculated.”

“Huh?”

“I wanted to wait for Kashaayah conviction of murder before taking you, but you’d already fucked him and had started fucking the other two. They would have pigged you even worse than the knights pigged Ashley.” He shook his head.

“What?” I could only guess that he had been eavesdropping through Ashley’s bugs.

“Pregnancy,” he said. “Although I would have stepped up and taken care of you and the baby, I wanted to wait until we finished our degrees before starting a family.”

“I thought we were going to be brother and sister!”

He sped along the gentle bends of the road toward Leopold. “They’ve corrupted you. When we start our new life, you’ll learn the benefits of celibacy.”