Bree’s face blanches, her eyebrows dipping in confusion. “Why?”
“There’s someone outside your house. Watching.”
She scrambles for her phone, fingers trembling as she dials. Chloe’s frozen in the hallway, caught between her friend and me.
Trapped between safety and danger. Between her old life and whatever the hell this is becoming.
I hold out my hand.
Both an invitation and a demand.
Chloe hesitates, watching as her friend babbles to the 911 operator about the men outside the house. Then she looks back at where I stand, waiting, with my hand extended.
The struggle wars in her eyes.
Chloe can stay here. The police will come, and she’ll be safe. Well, as safe as anyone can be with killers on their trail.
Or she can leave and face the unknown with a man who’s brought nothing but chaos and violence into her life.
Her cool fingers curl against mine, her grip firm.
Certain.
Bree presses the phone to her shoulder to muffle her voice. “What are you doing, Chloe?”
“I’m going so those men outside won’t have a reason to hang around you.” Chloe tightens her grip. Then, quietly, “Please don’t mention Kolya. He warned me about coming here, about bringing my trouble to your door, and I didn’t listen. This is my fault.”
She’s protecting me again. Even now, knowing the danger, she’s choosing to shield me.
The way family does.
We hurry out the back door, into the comfortable darkness.
But for the first time in my life, I’m not running alone.
Chapter 18
Chloe
“Wait here.”
Kolya slips into the twilight.
I shove myself against the side of Bree’s house, the vinyl siding cool against my back. He circles to the front, staying low behind Mrs. Peterson’s hydrangeas.
The blackness closes in around me, pressing against my skin, pervading my lungs.
I try to swallow the panic rising up my throat. Fear squeezes my chest, filling my stomach with stones.
I can’t believe I left Bree’s house, the only safe haven I’ve found since those crazy shooters chased us out of my home.
I shake my head and shift my bare feet, my toes sinking into dirt as I try not to squish the flowers.
Kolya prowls with terrible purpose, and I squint through the darkness, trying to track his shadow as it blends with others. He halts at the edge of a driveway two houses down from Bree’s. A pristine white Lexus gleams under the moonlight like a fat pearl. Kolya bends down, reaches into a garden bed, and straightens with a rock clutched in his hand.
My stomach twists as understanding dawns.
He wouldn’t. He can’t.
