There was a knock on her bedroom door and she hurried over to open it.
“Hey,” Grayson said, gazing down at her, his eyes widening slightly as he took her in.
“Is this too much?” she asked right away. “I wasn’t really sure what to wear.”
“It’s perfect,” he told her, his deep voice sending a funny little shiver down her back. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she managed, tearing her eyes from his cerulean gaze.
“Leo should be up from his nap soon,” he told her. “Then we can head out.”
“Okay,” she told him. “And don’t worry, I’ll take care of Leo tonight so that you can catch up with your friends.”
She expected him to smile and thank her. Instead, his face went completely blank.
“You should take advantage of the opportunity to meet new people,” he said tightly after a moment. “We can take turns with the baby.”
He turned and pulled her door closed behind him before she could even try to piece together what his tone and expression might mean.
She paced a little in the room, her fingers toying with the new phone in her pocket.
It wasn’t the kind of phone where you could check your email or anything, it was just a simple flip phone for calls and texts. But she could use it right now to call Rory or Rooster or maybe even someone else from their group of friends to check on her brother.
The trouble was that she wasn’t sure what was going on with Rory, or whether a little phone like this might be trackable by the people he didn’t want knowing where she was.
She also felt a little weird about using a phone Grayson had bought for her to do anything that wasn’t work related. Especially when what she wanted to do was communicate with someone who might be in jail, or in trouble with a local gang.
She had already emailed Rooster when she was at the library, but she wasn’t sure he checked his email very often, or even still used the address she remembered.
Thankfully, Mrs. Anderson had replied to her email right away to say that she was sorry to hear Evangeline had a family emergency and not to worry about the short notice she had given.
But she had no idea how long it would be before she heard anything about Rory.
Her stomach twisted at the thought that her selfless, heroic brother might be the kind of person other people feared or looked down on. A man like Rory should be held up as an example of what loyalty and family meant.
Sinking to the bed, she let herself feel awful for a moment.
It wasn’t hard to do. It was hard enough to think that Rory was suffering right now. But it was even worse that she didn’t even really know what was happening to him. And here she was in the lap of luxury, with her own beautiful bedroom suite to enjoy, a wholewardrobe of new clothing, and a good-hearted boss with a sweet baby to care for.
She wanted to do something, anything to help her brother. But all Rory had asked of her was that she run. If she wanted to honor that, the only thing she could do was wait.
But the idea of waiting gnawed at her belly, and she was up again a moment later, pacing, until an idea came to her.
She pulled the phone out of her pocket and frowned before clicking on the text feature and entering Rory’s number.
Sending him anything at all was a risk, but hopefully her plan was only a minimal risk.
She typed out the message and read it over a few times.
Final notice: Your car’s extended warranty is about to expire. Failure to renew will result in a lapse of coverage. Click here to renew now with Henhouse:
She typed in something that looked like one of those weird scam message links, and crossed her fingers that if Rory had his phone he would get past the beginning of the message to see that it was from her.
Taking a deep breath, she hit send and waited.
But her screen stayed blank. Either he didn’t have his phone, or he had just ignored the message as junk, and maybe even blocked the number she’d called from.
After a long time staring at the blank screen, she gave up and shoved the phone back in her pocket.
