It’s the best water I’ve ever tasted in my life, and before I know it, I’m gulping down the entire glass like I’ve been wandering a desert for forty days.
“Slowly, Mira.”
But then I’m choking instead, and he’s there, whacking my back with the flat of his hand, and I’m coughing and sputtering and wishing the earth would swallow me whole.
“I told you to slow down—”
“It wasn’t that,” I protest, still coughing. “H-how did you know my name?”
He straightens. “Your files.”
He pulls a chair to my bedside and sits, and even that simple movement is precise, economical. No wasted motion.
“My colleague and his team were first to learn of the auction. His informant tipped him off. You and the other girls were all handpicked.”
“The other girls...” My mind flashes to the girl in the back seat, her mascara-streaked face, her torn dress. “Is she—”
“Safe. All of them are. New identities are being arranged as we speak.”
Relief floods through me, so strong it makes my eyes sting.
“I don’t understand,” I manage. “Is this like...like a Zodiac Killer situation? We just had the misfortune of—”
“Your cousin sold you out.”
The words land like a slap.
I want to deny it. Want to say that’s impossible, that my cousin would never, that there must be some mistake—
But my mouth won’t cooperate.
Because deep down, in the part of me that still remembers her boyfriend’s hands on my shoulders, pushing me against a wall, and the look on her face when I tried to tell her what happened—
Deep down, I’m not surprised at all.
“It was too risky for us to prevent ten separate abductions,” my rescuer continues. “We had to wait for all of you to be in one place before making our move.”
I know I should care about the logistics. Should be asking questions, gathering information, being smart.
But I’m still stuck on the part where my cousin sold me out.
My only cousin.
The only family I had left.
“You don’t look too surprised,” he observes.
“We had a falling out,” I say jerkily, “when her boyfriend...he thought I was into him.”
“Were you?”
The mere thought of it nearly makes me shudder. “No.Never.” He was Trina’s boyfriend! And even if he weren’t...there’s always been something about Braxton that made my skin crawl, no matter how hard I tried to like him for my cousin’s sake. “I never led him on either. But he...he tried to...”
His lips tighten, and I’m relieved I don’t have to say it out loud.
“He didn’t succeed, but he had his revenge when he told Trina I tried to seduce him, and she...believed him.”
My rescuer looks at me in a way that makes me want to squirm. “You don’t strike me as the type—”
