I pick it up, pressing the phone to my ear. “Sheila?”
“Mia?” Her voice trembles, and the sound of it makes my stomach knot. “Jason just confronted me in the hospital parking lot. He demanded to know where you are. ”
“Oh my God, Shiela, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, I’m fine. Where are you? Are you okay? Are your daughters fine?”
My hand grips the counter, knuckles white. Damon leans forward slightly, his eyes locked on me. “Emma and Ella are fine. Sheila, listen to me. It’s better if you don’t know where I am.”
“But—”
“No,” I cut her off gently, even though my heart aches to hear the panic in her voice. “Look, I’ve got people helping me. But maybe you should take a vacation. Get out of town for a while. Just until this settles.”
There’s a shaky inhale on the other end. “If I could just talk to you, maybe?—”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, forcing my voice to stay steady. “I have to protect the girls. You understand, don’t you?”
“I... I do,” she says after a pause. “You’re right. I’ll go visit?—”
“Shh. Don’t tell me where you’re going. Just go. I’ll make this up to you someday, Sheila. I promise.”
The call ends, but the tension in the room doesn’t lift. My heart is racing. What if Jason comes back for her? What if she gets into trouble because of me? He would go to any extent to get to me.
“Give me your phone,” Damon says suddenly, his voice quiet but commanding.
I glance at him, confused. “What? Why?”
“Just do it, Mia.” He holds out his hand, and there’s something in his expression that makes me comply, though my chest tightens as I pass him my phone.
He turns it over in his hands, pulling out the SIM card with the precision of someone who’s done this before. Then, with no warning, he drops it to the floor and crushes it under his boot.
“You could have warned me,” I snap, the ache in my chest spreading. “That phone had pictures, contacts, memories.”
“And a direct line to you,” he says. “Jason’s not playing games anymore, Mia. If he’s scaring Sheila, he’s close. And if he got close enough to take a picture of the girls sleeping, he could have easily bugged your phone. We need to stay ahead.”
My heart pounds as reality sinks in. Sheila’s trembling voice echoes in my mind, and guilt claws at me. Sheila was always the one I leaned on, and now I’m left to face Jason’s wrath alone.
“Sheila’s all I’ve got outside of you guys,” I say, my voice breaking. “I can’t just cut her off.”
“You’re not cutting her off,” Damon says, his tone softening. “You’re protecting her. That’s what this is about—keeping the people you care about safe.”
I shake my head, wrapping my arms around myself. “This doesn’t feel like protecting. It feels like abandoning everyone.”
Damon steps closer, his hand brushing my elbow in a fleeting touch meant to steady me. “I get it,” he says. “You’re used to holding everything together on your own. But right now, you don’t have to. Let us do this, Mia. Let me do this. I’ll get you a burner phone tomorrow, one you can use to communicate with us. But no one else.”
I think about Sheila’s frightened voice, about Jason cornering her in the dark. Suddenly, losing my phone doesn’t seem so bad.
“Fine,” I say. “But you’d better have one hell of a plan, Damon.”
CHAPTER 11
ZANE
The early morningchill bites at my skin as I finish the perimeter check. The quiet neighborhood is slowly waking, but I’m hyper aware of every creak, every stray sound. My body moves on autopilot, the routine ingrained after years of service.
Movement in the backyard draws my attention, and I stop short. Asher’s out there, running some kind of “super secret agent workout” with the twins.
“Somersault, Agent Emma!” Asher calls. Ella tries, landing more on her side than her feet, but her giggles echo through the yard. Emma, meanwhile, counts Asher’s push-ups with her usual intensity, a little furrow on her brow like this is the most serious mission of her life.
