“Not again. Calm down,” he told me in his bossy britches tone.
But I didn’t care. I was going to have a panic attack.
No, scratch that, it was going to be a straight-up shit attack.
I gagged.
He cursed. “Stop.”
Was this what a panic attack felt like? An imaginary elephant sitting on your chest? “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” I was human. I should be proud of myself for keeping it together in the first place. Shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t I?
“You’re so dramatic,” he had the nerve to say becausehislife wasn’t over. Everything he had tried to keep a secret for, oh, his entire life, hadn’t just gone into the shitter.
Mine had.
Literally every precaution I’d ever taken, every sacrifice my grandparents had ever made, had gotten blown up with C4 and then lit on fire all over again.
It was all for nothing now.
I didn’t have the money, resources, and sure as fuck didn’t have thepowerto protect myself.
My whole body started shaking.
The man cursed again, dropping an f-bomb, then another, and a third, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw he dropped to a squat beside me and sighed just as he moved his head to meet my eyes. “Calm down,” he ordered in what was definitely his superhero voice.
I didn’t give a fuck. I shook my head. “No!”
He groaned. “Please.”
That got me to peek at him.
“You haven’t been thinking things through, but I have.”
He had?
“Take a damn breath and listen.” He almost sounded patient.
But my body shook again anyway.
“Gracie,” he enunciated my name in a way I’d never heard before.
I tried, opening my other eye to look at him. His face was smooth, and considering how the day had gone, he didn’t look tired. He still looked pretty damn good despite the clay-like mud all over him.
But his features were serious, not grouchy, not irritated, just absolutely solemn.
He looked like he was about to give me bad news, and I braced myself.
“My people… we take life debts seriously.” He didn’t exactly sound happy about that. “That’s what I owe you. My life. Time and time again.”
I sniffled, wanting to tell him that he didn’t, that that wasn’t true, but….
“Your life is over—stop it andlisten.You might be the most hardheaded person I’ve ever met,” he grumbled, peering at me with those purple eyes. “The life you knewisover. Any alias you’ve lived under or were planning on living in the future, isn’t an option anymore. They went through your whole house. They opened and looked at everything. You’re good at erasing your browser history and keeping your tracks covered, but they took your laptop. You have to expect them to find something. They are going to go to the ends of the earth to find you.”
I started panting again, ignoring my back and rib pain. “If you’re trying to help, you’re doing a really shitty job at it.”
That got me a glare. “I’m not done talking,” he went on. “You need to understand what’s going to happen. They are going to look for you. Even if their operation were to shut down tomorrow, it wouldn’t matter because someone else will come looking for you and the money, and you’ll never be safe.”
I choked.
