“I can’t. Frank took my phone. Punishment for my involvement in the show and for sneaking out to perform. I’m only allowed to talk to Alberto.”
“I’ll bring her to you,” I say before I’ve had time to think. There is no way C will be down with a plan that brings Zoe off grid while Frank’s searching for both of the girls.
“God, I would love that,” Rachel says wistfully, but then she sighs. “It’s a bad idea to bring her here though.”
The burner phone rings. I know without looking that it’s Trick. The clock’s ticking.
“It’s time to break your deal with Frank. Whatever it was, it needs to end. He doesn’t care about you. Not the way he should.”
“I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I made it to protect people. As long as I do what he wants, nothing happens to the people I love.”
“Except you. What about what happens to you?” I snap.
She shrugs. “I made the only deal I could.”
“Maybe it was the best you could do before. It’s not now.”
RACHEL
Sasha’s goneat the moment, and I’m incredibly confused. Is he on my side? Or against me? Sometimes he seems brutal and ruthless. At others, he seems concerned and almost tender toward me. I don’t know what to expect or how to feel from one moment to the next.
I do understand that he expects me to wait for him to get back, but he didn’t want to lock me in. So I can get out if there’s a fire or other emergency, he said. And I think he’s counting on the fact that I’m not planning to leave dressed only in one of his T shirts. He’s right.
Instead, I formulate a plan. I retrieve my dress and underwear. I can’t find a needle and thread, so I stab a hole in the sides of the panties and tie them together with shoestring I found in a pair of sneakers. It’s a low rent version of a string bikini bottom.
The front of the dress is torn badly, but the skirt’s only torn at the top. I puncture the skirt on either side of the rip and use a shoelace to cinch it closed. I put the dress on and use a line of duct tape to close the front. Then I put Sasha’s T shirt over it.
I don’t know where my shoes are. They’re either on the ground by the theater or in the trunk of the car Sasha used to kidnap me. Either way, I’ll be barefoot. I want to take my violin, but I worry about her if it starts to rain. She’ll be safer inside. I trust that if Sasha took the time to pick her up from the ground while abducting me, he’ll make sure I get her back at some point.
I take the key that’s tucked into the lining, but I don’t take the note. I wonder for a moment if it’s from Sasha. Awarning to leave town before he went forward with his plan? Giving me a chance to get away? It feels like something he might do because he’s full of contradictions.
It doesn’t matter now what he intended. I close the violin case and set it back on top of the fridge.
Then I leave.
Chapter
Five
RACHEL
The gravel road is hard on my feet, and the woods are eerie. I wish I had a flashlight, but I couldn’t find one.
I don’t know how long I walk. Two hours? Maybe three.
I follow the narrow private roads off the property to paved ones. Finally I end up on a highway. I flag down the first car that passes. It’s a woman driving alone. Sometimes it’s helpful to be doll-sized.
She asks a lot of questions. I tell her I got drunk and lost. I don’t think she believes me, but I just smile and tell her I’m fine. And strangely, that’s the truth, despite the ordeal.
Deep down, I’ve been fascinated by Sasha since the first time I laid eyes on him. My father brought him to my mother’s when he’d just joined the syndicate. He was onlyeighteen, but there was something to him. He kept to himself, never speaking to anyone except C for those first months. He ate alone in the kitchen, came and left like a black shadow. But gossip got back to me. C had befriended him because he’d stood up to a handful of gang members who’d tried to drag a girl into an alley.
He started out as a tall skinny kid who flung himself into fights that seemed unwinnable. By high school, his mom died and he moved in with C’s family and grew into a mountain of fearless fury.
“Harness that, and you have the weapon you need to take over a major city,” C had said to convince Frank to let him bring Sasha into the syndicate with him.
