Olive,
I don’t want to talk to you.
I don’t want to see you.
Don’t try contacting me again.
By the time you read this, I’ll be dead.
—
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hayes
“You feel like eating?” Lochlan asks from outside my temporary prison cell. He was in one long enough. He knows how to make something work on the fly.
“No.”
“If I open the gate, are you going to try to leave again?”
“Yes.”
He sighs, rubbing his hand over his head. “It’s nearly midnight.”
“So?” The moon has been out for hours, but the floodlight beside the barn is the only thing providing me with any light.
He holds up a piece of folded paper in his hand. “I want to give you this, but I need to know that your freak show from earlier is over with.”
“Why? Afraid I’ll hurt you again?” His purple cheek and swollen eye socket stare at me through the cage bars.
He chuckles. “You look worse than I do, pretty boy. Besides, I got you in here once, I’ll do it twice if I have to.”
“You only managed because you got me in a headlock when I wasn’t looking. It was a cheap shot.”
“A cheap shot that saved you from doing something stupid.”
“Doesn’t matter now.”She’s a married woman.
He tips the paper forward between the metal bars, handing it to me.
“What is this?”
“Jo told me I needed to give this to you asap.”
I unfold the first crease, but my cracked and bloody hand stills.
—
Dear Jensen,
—
“Is this a joke?” I don’t take my eyes off the handwriting that I know by heart.
I don’t have to unfold the second half of the paper to know it’s from her.
“Read it, I’ll be on the porch.” He unlocks the padlock on the cage but doesn’t open the door, strolling back up to his farmhouse, and leaving me to read the letter in my hand.
