He sighed with exhaustion, muttering something under his breath.
Jae scoffed in disbelief, eyes wide as his gaze bounced between the both of us. “This is actually fucking insane. Why the hell would she do that? She…Why would she leave those voicemails? Why didn’t she just tell us she was going into Witness Protection?”
Deputy Shaw gave Jae an exasperated look. “You think she’d have been allowed to tell you if she was joining Witness Protection?” He let that question hang in the air for a moment before flicking his gaze back to me. “Now, are you both going to keep your mouths shut or are we going to have a problem here?”
Jae’s hand tightened around the bat, eyes flaring with raw anger.
“Yes,” I nodded. “I swear, we won’t tell anyone.”
Deputy Shaw narrowed his eyes, studying Jae for a moment. I swallowed nervously.
“If you tell anyone about who she really is, you’d be putting yourselves in danger too. Understand?”
Jae finally relented with a head nod. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Good,” Bradley said with finality.
“Can I…how can I reach her? I want to see her.” I asked.
“You don’t.”
“What? What do you mean? She—” My chest constricted.She doesn’t want to see me.
Deputy Shaw must have seen something on my face to make him feel some sort of sympathy because he sighed, “Look, kid. The best thing for all of you is to stay out of each other’s lives. I can’tforceyou to do anything, but I’m telling you…youreallyshouldn’t be seen together. It’ll just get messy. So, please, don’t do anything stupid. For all your sakes.”
My ass fell back into the chair and I nodded slowly.
She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.
Six
June 23, Tuesday
Emory
The buzz of the alarm pulled me from my restless sleep, and I fumbled for my phone on my nightstand to shut it off. I’d already snoozed twice, and I resisted the urge to stay home another day.
But two days had passed and I still hadn’t done it. I was stalling. I spent most of the time deep cleaning my place, sorting through my belongings so the person left to do it when I was gone had a little less to do. I’d punished myself too many times in the last two days in an attempt to relieve some of the guilt in my chest, but I couldn’t stop replaying Bradley’s words in my head.
Enoch andJae, fucking Jae was here too for some reason, had agreed to keep their mouths shut, but Bradley wasn’t convinced that they weren’t going to try and find me and talk to me. After Enoch’s meltdown, I feared he might.
And maybe a small part of me wanted to see him one last time too. Just to hold onto something other than the memory of him broken and crying on his knees before me when I finally pulled the trigger.
Bradley had been sending me texts like he knew it was a fucking countdown to my demise. He was hounding me to change my mind before tonight when I would be officially leaving WITSEC.
We were going to meet this evening at my apartment to sign all the paperwork. Apparently, there was a lot. Probably something to do with the US Marshals Service not wanting to get sued if something happened to me after I left the program. I had a feeling he could have gotten me the paperwork within twenty-four hours but was just stalling because he thought that I might actually leave with him. Whatever the reason, it meant I had to either go to work or pull the damn trigger.
“Fuck,” I groaned, stretching my sore limbs out across my bed as my alarm started to ring again.
Work was probably the safer option. At least it would give me a distraction beyond these four walls and the loaded gun on my nightstand.
I forced myself to get out of bed and shower properly for the first time in days. I should’ve showered when Lottie told me to, but I couldn’t get myself to slow down enough to bother. I was too busy stressing about Enoch. Stressing about the fact that we were living in the same city, breathing the same air, seeing the same sun never set.
After enduring the pain of the hot shower and soap in my cuts, I groaned at my reflection in the foggy bathroom mirror. I had a ridiculous knotted mess in the bottom layer of my hair, and my eyes were puffy and even more red than usual from lack of sleep.
I spent twenty minutes attempting to relieve my hair from the tangles, but I gave up when my arms started shaking.Fuck, when’s the last time I ate something?
I ignored the scabbing wounds and bruises as I dressed in a pair of leggings and a baggy long-sleeved shirt. I didn’t havemy riding gear, and, frankly, I was afraid that Lottie was going to unfriend me if I showed up to work with my bike today. I hadn’t driven my beat-up Honda Accord since the snow fall in May except to drive it around the block to keep the battery from dying. But it was the right choice, because my head was pounding, and I needed something that didn’t require as much focus as riding my motorcycle did.
