For the millionth time, I wish the estate’s security wasn’t so tight. But it is, so here we are.
I find Jansen sprawled across the kitchen counter after I gather my gear. It’s so uncomfortably normal that I want to turn around and leave the room.
Nothing has been normal around here for months. For more than a year. Not since a broken but brave girl knocked on our door and demanded we treat her with respect, while still learning what that looked like.
I don’t want to go back.
But I’m so goddamn scared of the future.
What if today fails?
Jansen and I are both risking prison tonight. And if things don’t go smoothly with the wedding, who knows what kind of danger Clara, Walker, and Trips could be in?
This plan is absurd. Sure, we built in redundancies, but we’re going against one of the most powerful families in the state, one with even more powerful connections across the country based on the names we found in the directory last night.
But I say nothing, and I don’t duck out of the kitchen, especially after Jansen tilts his head, catching sight of me in the doorway.
“Ready?”
“Yup,” I say, lying through my teeth.
He nods, then runs up the stairs to take his now typical exit through the attic window. I haul my bags down the alley to the junker of a pickup truck we bought a while back, the hood of my coat pulled low on my head, the wind biting my less protected skin.
Once I stash my stuff, I walk another block where Jansen meets me to go the rest of the way to the coffee shop. The heat inside the building burns after the cold air, and I let Jansen order us drinks while I approach the cop waiting at a table in the corner.
“You’ll be there tonight?” I ask, skipping pleasantries.
“Unofficially, but yes.”
I slap down what I hope will be my last zip drive for a while. “The girls should be there. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty damn sure.”
He looks skeptical, and I can’t deal with it, not from a cop.
“Listen, I can’t do shit for those girls. But you can. It’s your choice. I’ve got other things to worry about today.”
He takes a slow sip from his coffee, then pockets the drive. “Will I see you there?”
“No.”
He raises a brow, but Jansen interrupts his interrogation.
“We’ve got to head out,” he says, handing me a Mountain Dew that I know they don’t sell here, the scent of grass reaching my nose from his cup.
Turning away from the cop feels like a door closing.
I’ve always handled the important things myself. I kept the roof over my family’s head. I tracked down every threat I could find against Clara, against my friends, even investigating the guys my sisters have mentioned. I’ve robbed pedophiles, deleted videos and messages, done everything I could, but always alone.
This is big. The future of five girls rests on what this cop does with the information I’ve given him. I’m trusting my enemy with something that is objectively so damn important that I shouldn’t leave it to anybody else.
But I’ve got my own girl to worry about.
My own fucked-up little family needs me, and to focus on them, I have to trust my greatest enemy to save the rest.
Misery really does make for strange company.
Chapter 56
Jansen
