That was Alaric. His voice—cheery just moments before—had gone cold.
There was another silence.
“I need a favor.”
Eric let out a sigh. “I got that much, mate. What I don’t understand is what you’re spending your credit on, exactly.”
There was a silence.
“Tell me it isn’t her.”
“You know it is.”
“Mate, look. You know you’ve got whatever you want coming from me... but it’s... you can take care of this kind of thing...” His voice grew lower.
They spoke some more, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I thought I heard someone mention Lucy, and my heart skipped a beat.
The scuffle of two men fighting interrupted the ever-spiraling lowering of voices. I gripped the wall, wondering what I would do if this degenerated into a full-blown fight. But it stopped as suddenly as it had started.
A long conversation I couldn’t hear ensued, so low I couldn’t discern who was talking. When I finally understood a sentence, almost five minutes later, it was a hiss, and it turned me to stone with fear.
“Get rid of her. Get rid of Lucy. Get rid ofher...at least get rid of the baby.”
The ground swirled beneath my feet.
The voices dropped off into unintelligible mumbles again, as I slumped to the floor.
I don’t know how long I was there, my hands on the stone.
I had been so wrong, all along.
A sob threatened to erupt from inside of me. I was so stupid.
And not only was I stupid, I was in danger.
I’d screwed up enough times in my life to know how this went. Even though this particular screw-up was cutting deeper than I had thought possible, I still had an instinct for survival.
Of course he was a bad man—he’d said so himself. Of course he was. He was rich, and like my friend Laura had said so many times: there’s nobody rich who ain’t stealin from somebody.
The richer men are, the meaner they are.
That’s another one that went around Kitty Bang Bang.
I was starting to think I should have listened better to those girls.
Think, I thought. My heart stopped for a moment, and for a few seconds I was sure the pain of realizing I was an idiot was going to consume me.
But I wasn’t going down like that.
All this time, even as I’d let myself slide into this life, I supposed I had never really believed in it. So I’d noticed a few things: the fishing village, off to the east of the island. Miles and miles away, but it was there.
I’d noticed that you could push a boat out of the cove while still standing in the shallow water.
I’d noticed that you could run a boat without sailing it, which is what we’d done all the way back that afternoon.
I wasn’t big on adventure, never had been.
Maybe thereissomething that kicks in when you’re pregnant, even if you’ve just been forced to consider that the man whose baby you have is going to try to kill you and you probably don’t want it anyway.
