My knees hit the tarmac and with the impact came fury, laced with the blistered anxiety I’d carried for days and days now, ever since Nash had cornered me about the calls to the yard in my name.
“...she said please a lot in an accent like your ma’s.”
Fuckfuckfuck. The feds steered Decoy into the back of their motor and shut the doors, caging him inside while they sat in the front. Chances were, they’d let him go in a matter of minutes, but what if they didn’t? What if they carted him off and lay in wait for whoever came to claim the HGV?
It couldn’t be me. It was gospel that me and Saint had to stay as far from the feds as humanly possible. We did the dirty work. Any hint of our prints or DNA in the system and it all came tumbling down.
It was why my phone was turned off in my bag. If this shit went south, Decoy would have to call it in himself. I was incognito right now.
Untraceable.
Unreachable.More panic flared up, sharper than before. The second phone was switched on, but it remained as silent and blank as it had been since I’d fired a pleading text into the ether.
Answer, for fuck’s sake.
The panda car’s engine purred to life. A fed got out and returned to the HGV to lock it and slap apolice awaresticker on the windshield. Fuck, they were taking him in. But for what? It was bullshit. Decoy was cleaner than clean. He had to be for his boy.
ForIvy.
The panda car eased off the hard shoulder and merged into motorway traffic. I watched it disappear, then I stood, debating my options as I reached for the second phone in my pocket.
If it was still blank, I had no choice. I’d stow a ride on a lorry heading southeast and find my way to the big white house in Surrey. Pick my way in until I found them. Kill any fucker that got in my way until they were safe.
Until it was the fuckingendof me.
Cos that’s how long I’d love Embry. Until the end. And maybe when I was dead, he’d know the truth—that there were two people on this earth who’d always come before him, but it didn’t mean I loved him any less.
I couldn’t love himmore.
It was a lot to contemplate in the seconds it took to tap the passcode into the silent phone. A head-rush of emotion that still came to rest in the primal desperation I’d lived with for ten long years.
Then I saw the message, and air expelled from me so fast I sank to my knees again.
Unknown number:We’re fine. I thought for a moment... but I was wrong.
It was the message I’d been waiting for, but I had no time to appreciate the deadweight on my chest lifting before a new one settled in its place.
I miss him.A bruising sensation that wasn’t going to change for two reasons.
One: with the feds on our backs, I needed to lie low. A couple of days away from the compound “fucking some girl” or whatever.
Two: The message. It said all the right things.
But I didn’t believe her. Never could until I saw them for myself, which meant a long ride in the opposite direction to where the other half of my soul needed to be.
Fuck. I rubbed my chest, wincing at the sharp pain lancing my heart. I was used to being torn in two. To being obliterated by the kind of pain I couldn’t explain to anyone. But as the years rolled by, it never got easier.
I stood and considered the dicey walk to the service station. I’d have to wait until dark or I’d get nicked for jaywalking. But I didn’t have the patience for that shit. Without Saint or Alexei beside me, schooling me in the art of watching and waiting, I needed to move before I fucked something up.
Decoy was long gone. I took a chance and powered on my regular phone while I tapped out a message on the other.
Mateo:go to the field in the morning. need to see it for myself
How I was gonna get there, I had no feasible clue.
Then a text buzzed in from a burner number, coded and with a location pin, and I closed my fucking eyes again.
Embry.
