He dropped to his knees beside me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I don’t care, Shiloh. You belong in Chicago, not here. You belong with me.”
I shook my head, so sure he was wrong, and met his gaze. “You’re so fucking selfish. Just like everyone says. You don’t own the entire world, and you don’t own me.”
Everyone always listened to the Grandmaster. Did what he said without argument. I’d been the same way, but I never would again.
He squeezed my shoulders hard, only inches from my angry tears. “You sound like a child.”
My tears didn’t stop coming, but somewhere I found my voice again. Frankie had been mine if only for a few days, and the Grandmaster stole him right from my fingertips. He ruined my future.
“I chose him,” I said with a firm voice and pounded my fist against my chest.
He hauled me up to my feet, forcing me to stand. His hands were rough and unforgiving, and then a laugh broke free from his lips. “He’s not a Pokémon, Shiloh. Jason, help Shiloh upstairs.”
I walked past the bodyguard, refusing to be like another possession of the Grandmaster. He couldn’t treat me like a possession. Jason followed so close behind me he stepped on my heels. When we reached the top of the stairs he propped open a bedroom door and pointed.
“Your humble abode,” he said.
The king-sized bed in the middle of the mostly empty room didn’t offer any respite. “Screw you,” I sneered at him.
“Get some rest, Shiloh. We leave early for Portland. All of us need to get away from this redneck stench.”
I imagined slapping him across the face and leaving red angry finger welts in my wake. Then he’d feel bad. “I hate you all.”
I kicked at his legs, and he took a step back, shaking his head, sure that I was having a womanly tantrum.
“You’ll thank me later,” the Grandmaster’s voice traveled up the stairwell. I glanced around for something to throw at him but came back empty.
Jason took hold of the doorway, forcing me to step into the bedroom, and gave me one sad pleading look before saying, “Get a few hours of sleep. I’ll be right outside the doors, so don’t try anything stupid.”
“Asshole!” I yelled at the closing door.
It took less than five minutes to come up with a new plan, something really stupid and just what I needed—an escape.
The night air blew in through the open bedroom window. I slid it open, barely making a peep. The new plastic designs were soundless with their superior construction. They were so much better than the cheap wood, mostly painted shut windows we had in my childhood. They’d made sneaking out a bitch. Rich people had the best of everything.
The next step in my hazardous plan was popping out the screen and making my escape. I faltered, not because I was unsure of my steps, but because I wasn’t positive of how quietly it might pop out.
I surveyed the roof close to the screen to make sure if I successfully removed it, I could find my way to the ground. Fall was in the air, the leaves changing with each second like Frankie talked about. I sucked in a deep breath, letting the sounds of crinkling leaves fill my senses. We didn’t have smells like this in Chicago.
My hope was if I slid out the window and shimmied along the roof, I’d find a pipe or other way to slip my way down to the ground. The porch overhang wasn’t too high off the ground but enough I worried about the risk of jumping once I made it outside. I needed to run away before anyone discovered me missing, not roll around with a broken ankle.
The true glory of my plan was that once they discovered me missing, they’d have no one to blame except the Grandmaster himself. He’d taught me how to sneak out of our windows as teenagers. He’d been the one to show me how to use a knife to cut through the layers of paint and slog the window free. It took me a week of work, but he rewarded me with ice cream after my first successful escape.
He deserved to have the skill used against him. The student just turned against the teacher.
I had no idea where I’d be going, or how I’d escape. Only one thing was a guarantee. I wasn’t staying there. Not that perfect log cabin home filled with the Grandmaster and his men. I belonged in a mansion on the coast of Pelican Bay.
I’d never look at the Grandmaster’s face again without cursing him for taking Frankie from me. It was an unforgivable sin.
A scratch came from outside as if a small woodland creature ran across the roof, but only if it was one hundred pounds heavier than it should be and moving at a snail’s pace rather than the speed of a squirrel. I tensed at the screen, my eyes searching where the noise came from, discerning whether I needed to change my plan of attack.
Frankie warned me in a joking matter about the bears out in the woods and his teddy bear picnics, but could bears climb? Were they fond of porches in Maine?
I held my breath, so I didn’t as much breathe out through the window screen as I continued my perusal of the roof. The noise came from my left, so I stared in that direction silently praying it was an obese squirrel and not a bear or one of the Grandmaster’s men.
A head popped into view. “Shit,” I whispered, more to myself than anyone else. The lack of light outside on the roof obscured their features, making the interloper appear faceless.
The figure moved closer, and I covered my mouth to silence a scream just in case one broke free as the man’s face came into view.
