by Aly Martinez
I glanced up to find her leaning against the hood of the police car. She’d walked away from me the minute the cops had started asking me questions. They’d cornered her next, but she’d kept her distance ever since.
“They found a few things,” Drew said. “Everything’s wet and covered in soot, but I think some of it’s salvageable. You want to come take a look?”
“No,” I whispered.
He stood up and glanced around the parking lot.
The girls had trickled by all morning, fielding questions from the cops with practiced answers that didn’t include prostitution. Then they’d offered me tight smiles before trickling out. There was only one fire truck left. One cop car. Marcos’s Mercedes. Dante’s BMW.
And Penn’s truck.
I was sitting in the back of a police car, wrapped in a blanket.
Numb.
Broken.
Ruined.
And—
“Cora, come on,” Drew whispered. “I gotta get out of here before I lose my shit. I’m begging you. Take a look at your stuff and then let’s call a cab and go back to the hotel.”
He’d just lost his brother. If I’d had the ability to feel anything, I’d have felt bad for him.
I attempted to swallow, but my mouth was dry. “Yeah. Sure. Let’s go.” Robotically, I climbed out, releasing the blanket before taking his proffered hand.
He led me to a pile of random odds and ends the firemen had recovered from inside the building. The majority of it wasn’t mine. I picked up a charred photo album, flipping through two pages before dropping it back down. It was Ava’s. I’d let her know it was there.
A spark of emotion ignited behind my eyes when I saw my small fireproof safe beside the remnants of all of our lives. At least I wasn’t destitute. There should have been a couple thousand dollars in there. Enough for River and me to use on a hotel and to eat for a few weeks while I tried to get back on my feet—if that was even possible anymore.
After dropping into a squat, I twisted and turned the combination of River’s birthday and my wedding anniversary until the door popped open.
And then everything stopped.
The Earth.
My heart.
Time.
There was no money in that safe. No pictures of River when she was a baby. Nor the few I had of Nic and me. The extra keys to the building were missing. So was River’s and my birth certificates and social security cards. The safe was empty except for Penn’s truck keys and a hand-written note that read, One in. One out.
I swung my head to Drew, but his expression told me he was just as puzzled as I was.
“What the…” he breathed, reaching around me to pick the keys up.
My hands trembled as I lifted the scrap of paper in his direction. “What does this mean? Did he put this here?”
He shook his head, staring at the keys in his hand. “I have no fucking clue.” He took off, jogging to Penn’s truck, and I followed him every step of the way, blood roaring in my ears.
He snatched the driver’s door open, and I shoved around him. Fantasizing about finding Penn just casually sitting behind the wheel instead of in the body bag he’d been carried off in.
He wasn’t there and it hit me like a thousand rusty arrows falling from the sky.
The cab of his truck was clean. Just the way Penn liked it. Not so much as an empty coffee cup in the holder. Just his magical toolbox abandoned on the floorboard.
And then I saw it.
A single green glow-in-the-dark star on top.
I dove in after it, tears springing to my eyes. I couldn’t tell if it was one of Nic’s from my ceiling. There were no defining marks. But it had definitely been placed there for me. I turned it in my fingers, examining every angle, searching for a clue or a key that would make this entire nightmare stop. When I came up with nothing, I tucked it in my palm and fumbled with the latch on the toolbox, my fingers so intoxicated with hope that it took several attempts.
I finally sprang it open and everything stopped all over again.
The Earth.
My heart.
Time.
My mouth fell open as twin rivers streamed down my face.
Stars. Nic’s stars. All of them. The tiny balls of adhesive I’d rolled between my fingers still clinging to the backs.
All of my pictures and paperwork were beneath them, and as I lifted the edge to search through the contents, I discovered that Penn’s toolbox really was magical.
Stacks of cash.
My cash, complete with little pink strands of insulation still clinging to the corners.
I cupped my hands over my mouth, the tears coming harder, the source even deeper within me. “How…how did he know?” I croaked.
I think Drew answered, but I had no idea what he said because a small, white paper on top of one of my papers caught my eye. It was a white rectangle banking slip dated a week ago, the words cash withdrawal typed in black letters across the top.
The amount at the bottom was one million, one hundred thousand, six hundred, eighty-four dollars…
And ninety-nine cents.
“Oh fuck. Fucking fuck fuck fuck,” Drew muttered, drawing my attention his way.
I leaned over the front seat and followed his gaze down to two massive black duffel bags wedged into the floorboard. They’d been covered by a sleeping bag, but when he unzipped the one closest to him, it revealed a mountain of neatly packed stacks of crisp hundred-dollar bills.
But it was three quarters, two dimes, and four pennies that shredded me.
“What would it take to make you free, Cora?”
Oh God.
“So you’re telling me, if someone comes in here and offers you a life raft, you’re going to refuse it because it won’t fit thirty-plus women?”
Oh. God.
He’d done it. It had cost him his life, but he’d done it.
For me.
“What is happening right now!” I cried.
Drew lifted his hands in surrender and told me a truth. “Honest to God, I have no idea.”
Savannah
One week later…
“Girl, you have no idea how good it is to be out of there.” I fought the wind to get a light.
Kerri continued inspecting her chipping fingernails. “Your dad still a douchebag?”
“Worse.” I gave the cigarette a deep inhale. The act of my lungs expanding made the bruises on my ribs scream.
After spending a few days in the hospital recovering, I’d been home five days. Though “home” might have been a bit of a stretch. I was back where Social Services had deemed I needed to be. The very same place I’d traveled to hell to escape.
Part of me wished they’d have let me die that night. In a lot of ways, it would have been easier.
For everybody.
I couldn’t think about it.
It didn’t matter.
I blew out a cloud of smoke. “Anyway, my mom said, if I can get her two hundred bucks tonight, she can score us some H.”
Her mouth gaped as she swung bulging eyes at me. “Two hundred bucks? Where the hell are we gonna get that kinda cash?”
I leaned forward, adjusting my boobs to reveal more cleavage, and then shimmied my skirt up another inch. “You think I’m standing on this corner for my health?”
“Shit, Vannah,” she whispered, shifting her eyes up and down the street. “This place is crawling with cops.”
“Yeah, but in about fifteen minutes, all the bars are gonna be closing, sending hundreds of drunk, horny men staggering out. Ripe for the pickin’.”
“Oh hell no. I ain’t sucking no dick. I told you Ronnie and I were getting serious.”
I twisted my lips and arched an eyebrow at her. “Ronnie got two bills?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Nope. But he ain’t got no STD either.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Then go.” I made a shooing motion. “But don’t expect me to share.”
Her
eyes narrowed on me as if she were looking at a stranger. “Girl, you have lost your damn mind. You spent too long living with Mama Prostitute. She done—”
“Shut your fucking mouth!” I shoved a finger in her face. “You don’t get to say a goddamn word about her. Do you hear me? Nothing. Ever.” I couldn’t even think about Cora or River without becoming physically ill.
I’d woken up at the hospital alone and abandoned. I’d waited for her to show up. Waited for her to sneak me out of there. I didn’t even care about going back to Dante if it meant going back to her.
My parents had arrived instead.
“You know what? I don’t have to take your bullshit. I’m out.”
“See if I give a fuck,” I muttered, watching her blond hair sway as she navigated the cracked sidewalk in a pair of black stilettos. It was no skin off my back if she wanted to go home and ride Ronnie’s pencil dick all night.
Even if I was jealous that she had somewhere to go.
No sooner than she disappeared around the corner, a jet-black Audi R8 pulled up in front of me. The dark tinted window rolled down, and a deep baritone rumbled, “You working tonight?”
I leaned down, squinting to make him out in the light of the dashboard. “Depends on who’s asking.”
His hand appeared at the open window, five one-hundred-dollar bills fanned out between his fingers.
That was the right answer.
“I am now,” I chirped, dropping my cigarette, not even bothering to toe it out before taking the cash and climbing into his car. “So where you taking me tonight?” I asked seductively, tucking the cash in my bra.
“First?” he growled, locking the doors. “Rehab. Then I’m taking you back to where you belong.”
My head swung in his direction.
Furious blue eyes I’d recognize anywhere glared back at me, but just as quickly, they softened. He snaked a hand out and gave the back of my neck a squeeze as he whispered, “God, it’s good to see you breathing again.”
I gasped, tears filling my vision. “Penn?”
The story continues in
The Truth About Us
Coming September 13, 2018
Preorder here
Other Books by Aly Martinez
The Retrieval Duet
Retrieval
Transfer
Guardian Protection Agency
Singe
Thrive
The Fall Up Series
The Fall Up
The Spiral Down
The Darkest Sunrise
The Brightest Sunset
The Truth Duet
The Truth About Lies
The Truth About Us
The Wrecked and Ruined Series
Changing Course
Stolen Course
Among the Echoes
Broken Course
On the Ropes
Fighting Silence
Fighting Shadows
Fighting Solitude
Born and raised in Savannah, Georgia, Aly Martinez is a stay-at-home mom to four crazy kids under the age of five, including a set of twins. Currently living in South Carolina, she passes what little free time she has reading anything and everything she can get her hands on, preferably with a glass of wine at her side.
After some encouragement from her friends, Aly decided to add “Author” to her ever-growing list of job titles. So grab a glass of Chardonnay, or a bottle if you’re hanging out with Aly, and join her aboard the crazy train she calls life.
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