“No, it wasn’t.”
He punches the wall right next to my head, and I hear pieces of it crumble to the floor.
“You want to fuck me over after all we’ve been through and take her with you?” he yells in my face. “Not without my other forty grand.”
I wrap my hand around the blade of my knife and he sneers at me, then shoves my wrist against the wall. He presses his arm with no hand against my chest to keep me in place.
“I know you,” he says in a low, ominous tone. “I taught you to use this blade, remember?”
“I remember you saying you’d take care of Bethy, too, and look at this place. Where’s the money really going, Bean?”
His expression darkens. “None of your fuckin’ business.”
“My sister was nothing more than a meal ticket to you. You’re a disgusting pig.”
He knees me in the stomach then, and I double over in pain.
“She’s safe, isn’t she?” He bends down to yell in my face. “Huh?”
I look up just in time to see Bethy raise something in the air and bring it down on his head with all her strength. He stumbles and falls to the floor but stays conscious. I climb on top of his back to restrain him.
“Ties,” I say frantically. “We need something to tie him with.”
“You bitch,” Bean mutters. “I’m gonna knock your ass out.”
Bethy races into her bedroom, and I twist Bean’s arms around his back until he howls.
“Move and I’ll break one,” I say in a steady tone. “Seriously, do it. I want to break one of your arms so bad right now.”
He twitches, and I twist a little harder. He groans through gritted teeth. Sweat drips from his brow to the stained tile floor.
Bethy returns with the clothesline.
“Perfect,” I say.
I hold Bean in place, and she wraps the cord around his torso and arms. After it’s wrapped around him several times, I pull it tight, making him wince. We tear several T-shirts into strips, and I use them to tie the cords at his back around a leg of the kitchen table. I wrap a few around his mouth as a gag so he can’t scream as soon as we walk out and attract help from neighbors.
There’s a murderous gleam in Bean’s eyes as he watches me. I’m so angry about what he did that I’d like to stab him and let him bleed out right here, alone. But I can’t forget the good he did for us in New York.
Bethy gathers the gifts under the makeshift Christmas tree and waits wide-eyed by the door.
I bend down and look into Bean’s eyes. “You’ll never see us again. And if you try, I’ll kill you.”
He chuckles through the gag. I draw my knife and rest the tip of the silver blade against his throat. He goes still.
“You come close to my sister ever again, and I will kill you, Bean.”
His silence is all the acknowledgment I’ll get.
“Got my keys?” I ask Bethy.
“Yes. And your purse.”
I walk backward to the door, my knife still drawn.
“Have a nice life, Bean,” I say as I close the door.
I hear him struggling to break free as Bethy and I bolt for the car. I start it and drive away, leaving a cloud of dust behind us.
“Oh my God,” Bethy says. “I can’t believe that just happened.”
I take a deep breath. “I know.”
“I’m scared, Quinn. He has connections down here to a lot of bad people. I think it’s a cartel.”
“What the hell?” I turn to her. “Why were you keeping this from me? Do you know what might have happened to you?”
“I was trying to be strong,” she says defensively. “I knew you could get through it, so I told myself I could, too.”
I take a few more breaths. “Okay. Okay, so let’s think. He’ll be able to get untied, and then what? Will he know which way we went?”
“I don’t know. How could he?”
“Fuck.” I slam my hand against the steering wheel. “The car has Pennsylvania plates. We’re like sitting ducks in this thing if he has connections. We have to get rid of it.”
I try to scan the scenery around us, but it’s too dark to see much. We’re on a dirt road, and there’s a small café nearby.
This isn’t like New York, where there are so many people we can easily hide in plain sight. And if Bean finds us, I have no doubt he’ll hurt me. The rage in his eyes was unmistakable.
I park at the café, and we get out of the car. My hands are shaking as I take my purse and small travel bag from the car and dig through them in search of my phone.
It’s buried at the bottom of my purse, still powered off. I clutch it in my hand and look up and down the road for approaching traffic. There are no cars in sight.
“Let’s go behind the building,” I say to Bethy. Her eyes are wide with fright, but she jogs around to the back of the building and tries to look unafraid.
Leaning my back against the wall, I turn the phone on and dial Andrew. He picks up on the second ring.
“Quinn? Everything okay?”
“No.” My voice is choked. “I’m in trouble. I need you.”
“Where are you?”
I swallow hard. This is harder than I thought it would be. I trusted Bean with Bethy, and that was a mistake. But besides Bethy, Andrew is all I have now, and I know in my heart he’ll do everything in his power to help us.
“I’m . . . I don’t know for sure. It’s called Barra de Potosi. I’m not far from Ixtapa. And things went bad with Bean. I think he’ll be coming after us, and Bethy says he has connections to a cartel down here.”
Andrew exhales deeply into the phone. “Okay. Are you on the road?”
“I’m in a car with Pennsylvania plates. I’m worried about being easy to find in it.”
“Yeah, leave the car.”
“We’re in a pretty rural place. And we don’t blend in. I don’t know what to do.”
“You need to lay low. And don’t turn your phone off because I’m going to use it to pinpoint your location. Try to move and stay as hidden as possible on foot, okay? I’ll get someone to you as quickly as possible, and I’m on my way too.”
“Andrew?”
“Yeah?”
“If anything happens to me, promise you’ll find Bethy and help her.”
“Don’t even say that. Nothing’s going to happen to you, Quinn.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and fight back tears. “Just promise me. Please.”
After a pause, he says, “I promise.”
I breathe easier. “Okay.”
“Just stay hidden and don’t respond to anyone who doesn’t contact you through this phone, okay?”
“Okay.”
I hang up, put the phone back in my purse, and sling my bags over my shoulder.
“We need to walk,” I say.
As we move away from the café, the darkness makes it impossible to see more than a couple feet in front of us.
“This is good, right?” Bethy whispers. “It’ll be harder for anyone to find us in the dark.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “It’s good.”
We move farther away from the road into rocky terrain. Bethy’s thin flip-flops hardly protect her feet, so it’s slow going.
I don’t want to get my phone out and risk the light being seen, so we just walk in silence for around an hour. My heart is still racing as I replay what went down with Bean. I feel a deep sense of betrayal I can’t even process right now.
I feel a squish beneath my shoe and I stop walking, getting a bad feeling when I hear a hissing sound.
“What the fuck is that?” I whisper, bending down.
It’s a lizard—and not a small one. The hissing and flailing make me wonder if I should let it out from under my shoe. Just as I draw my knife, it manages to wiggle free on its own and it crawls off into the darkness.
If I were alone, I’d sit down and cry for a few minutes. But I have to stay strong for Bethy. We walk aimlessly, and I try not to think about the fact that we have no wat
er and could be walking away from civilization. If Andrew doesn’t find us before sunrise, we’ll be in a bad spot.
For now, all I can do is put one foot in front of the other. We find smoother ground and my heart rate finally settles. I know we’ve been walking for at least a few hours when the sound of my phone beeping with a new text makes Bethy jump into the air with alarm.
“It’s just my phone, crazypants,” I say, scrambling to get it out.
There’s a message from an unknown number.
Andrew sent me to help. I’m less than a mile away. Look for the lights and head toward us when you see them.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Andrew sent help,” I say softly. “Someone’s really close. We’re supposed to look for their lights.”
We stop and look in every direction.
“There,” Bethy says, pointing.
There’s a tiny speck of light in the distance, and we both walk toward it. Within five minutes, we come across a group of two men and one woman, all dressed in camo and outfitted with bulletproof vests and guns.
“Quinn?” the woman says to me, shining a small flashlight in my direction.
“Yes.”
“I’m Vanessa Giano, a friend of Andrew’s. We’re here to extract you.”
“I couldn’t be happier to see you,” I say with a weak smile.
One of the men gets out a radio and speaks into it. Within a couple minutes, I hear a helicopter approaching. It lands, and we all get on it.
I’m terrified of flying, but I don’t feel anything but relief as we’re flown away. I wish this was the end of the nightmare, but I know it’s not. As much as I want to get Bethy out of here right now, I’m also afraid to return to the States with her.
Andrew
I feel like a caged animal in this plane. We’ve been in the air for hours, and I can’t take sitting still for much longer. Vanessa’s text an hour ago that she had Quinn and Bethy and was en route to El Paso helped a little, but I need to see Quinn with my own eyes before I’ll be able to relax fully.
It’s been hell not knowing if she was safe, and getting that frantic phone call from her made the bottom fall out of my world.
“Beginning our descent now, Mr. Wentworth,” the pilot says over the private plane’s intercom. “Seat belt fastened, please.”
“About fucking time,” I mutter, sliding the seat belt closed.
It takes forever to land. I’m close to using the seat next to me as a punching bag when finally, we come to a stop.
Quinn texted me that they’re in the airport lobby, and I scan faces rapidly as I walk through. Then I see her walking toward me. We break into a run at the same time and meet up in a fierce hug. I lift her feet from the ground and feel her warm breath on my neck.
“You’re here,” she says, sounding on the verge of tears.
“I’m here. Good luck leaving the country without me ever again.”
She laughs softly. When I set her feet back on the ground, she looks over at a wispy brunette girl.
“Bethy, this is Andrew. Andrew, my little sister, Bethy.”
She’s a pretty, younger version of Quinn with brown hair.
“Hi Bethy,” I say, reaching out to shake her hand.
She smiles and shakes my hand back. I realize I should have hugged her. Next time.
“Ladies, we’re getting right back on that plane and flying to New York,” I say. “They’re refueling it now.”
“I can’t wait to get home,” Quinn says.
I love the sound of that. My home is her home now. Our home. And it’s Bethy’s too.
Vanessa is standing to the side, and when I meet her eyes, she walks over to us.
“Everything good now?” she asks.
I reach out and hug her. “I owe you big. Thank you for this.”
She laughs and cups my cheek in her palm. “I’m pretty sure I’m still the one who owes you.”
I can’t tell Quinn because I’ve sworn to keep the identities of my partners a secret, but Vanessa is one of the five people in the Circle of Six with me. That’s the name of the group that funds the second-floor operations at the warehouse.
“See you later, Andrew,” Vanessa says.
As soon as she steps back, I sweep Quinn back into my arms and kiss her on the mouth, pouring all the worry and uncertainty of the past few hours into it.
We’re both breathless when she breaks the kiss.
“I love you, Quinn,” I murmur against her lips.
“I love you, too.”
We board the plane then, and Bethy immediately goes to sleep in one of the reclining seats. I cover her with a blanket and sit down next to Quinn. She snuggles against my side and is asleep within a couple minutes.
A few hours later, I’m carrying Quinn down the hall to our bedroom. Despite sleeping a couple hours on the plane, she’s exhausted. I am, too. I put Turner in charge of getting Bethy fed and settled into her room and canceled my day at the office. I’m planning to sleep away the morning with Quinn.
I get her out of her clothes and into one of my T-shirts and lay her on the bed while I strip down to my boxer briefs. When I climb in next to her and pull the covers over us, she opens her eyes and looks at me in the dim light of the room.
“He’s my stepfather,” she says softly.
“Who is?”
“That’s who we’re running from. We’re from Colorado. My name is Quinn Bradley.”
I smile and wrap my palm around her hip. “Your last name’s not really Jones?”
She smiles back. “No.”
“Why did you leave? What did he do?”
With a soft sigh, she tucks her hair behind her ear. “My mom married him a couple years after my dad died. She’d run through a lot of money, and Paul, my stepdad, is wealthy. I never liked him. I’d just turned sixteen, and we were in the kitchen one day and . . .” She pauses for a couple seconds. “He rubbed his erection against my ass when I was reaching into a kitchen cabinet. Scared the absolute shit out of me. He grabbed me and said I needed to stop shaking my ass in front of him and it was time to do something about it.”
A knot of anger forms in my chest. “I’m sorry, Quinn. Did he . . . ?”
“I grabbed a pan from the stove and hit him over the head with it, and I ran out of the room. He made this crazy roaring sound. I’ll never forget it. And then he said, ‘You’ll pay for that, you little bitch. Run all you want. There’s no escaping me.’”
“Jesus, what a prick.”
“He is. I found out a few days later what the price was when I caught him in Bethy’s room while she was asleep. He’d pulled her covers down, and . . . he was jerking off next to her bed.”
“Holy shit.”
“I told my mother, and she was so angry at me. She said I was lying and was just mad about her getting remarried. I didn’t feel like I had any options. My dad asked me before he died to take care of Bethy always. I couldn’t let Paul . . . I felt like we had to run.”
“Yeah, I can see why.”
Her eyes are drifting closed. “I just wanted you to know. No more secrets.”
“No more secrets,” I say, kissing her forehead. “Never again.”
“There’s one more thing I need to tell you,” she says softly.
“What is it?”
“My stepfather . . . he’s Paul Shriver.”
I just look at her for a couple seconds as disbelief sets in. “Paul Shriver? The senator?”
“Yes.”
Fuck. This complicates things. I don’t want her to know I’m rattled by it, so I kiss her forehead again.
“Just sleep, baby. We’re leaving for Europe tomorrow. The three of us. It’s over.”
Quinn
I stuff the last of my toiletries into my suitcase and zip it. It’s really happening. I don’t have to choose between Andrew and Bethy—now I can have them both.
Dawson took Bethy shopping for clothes and other Paris essentials, so I can pack my things and
Andrew’s and we can fly out this evening.
I’ll miss the warehouse, the shelter, Turner, and Anna. A big part of me will miss this city because, even with its rough edges, it kept Bethy and me together and safe for more than four years.
We weren’t safe from hunger, cold, or sickness. We weren’t even safe from threats of violence. But those things were better than what Paul had in mind. I think my father would be proud that his sixteen-year-old daughter managed to outsmart a US senator with nothing but brains and $180 of babysitting money in her pocket.
Our stuff is packed, and all I need to do now is pack Midas’s few things. We’re taking him with us, of course, and I want him to have his bed and favorite blanket.
“Midas, where are you?” I call as I walk into the living room.
I see him curled up on the couch asleep, and I walk up to pet him. Before I reach him, a hand wraps around my waist.
“Hello, Quinn.”
It can’t be. It can’t possibly be. Not here, in my safe place. My home.
I turn and meet the dark, calculating gaze of my stepfather. He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolds it, grinning. It’s a printout of a photo from an online magazine. Andrew is kissing me on the forehead. I’m wearing the cream gown in the photo, so it has to be from the fundraiser we went to. Steve apparently didn’t buy all the photos.
I’m not a sixteen-year-old girl anymore. I’ll keep my chin high, and I won’t let him see me cry.
“Your stalking game is strong,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “What else do you want me to say?”
“I have to say I’m surprised at you, Quinn. You must have something hot between your thighs to pull Andrew Wentworth.”
“Fuck you.”
The paper falls from his hand and sails to the ground as he advances toward me, his face twisted into a mask of rage.
“You thought you could outsmart me, you little bitch, but you didn’t. I found you. No more running, Quinn.”
His hands are outstretched, and I know he’s going to choke me. I look around frantically. There’s no pan in reach this time. It’s just him and me.
I suck in a breath of air and crouch down to lower my center of gravity. He’s just a few feet from me when I say the only words that can save me now.
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