“I don’t care how you’re safe, just as long as you’re safe,” he says. “Call him. Tell him everything I just told you. Tell him you need people protecting you twenty-four-seven. You need to get out of this apartment, out of the city if you can. Out of the country is better. Do not trustanyone except your dad. Not a fucking soul. Do you understand?”
Is this a trick?
What is he doing? Is he waiting for me to reach for the phone, so I’ll be distracted?
“Ella, call him, now.”
My breathing quickens. I’m sweating from fear and anticipation of having to squeeze the trigger and kill a man I care for. But I reach my leg out, pressing my toes to the phone and pulling it closer, all the while keeping my eyes fixed on Asher’s face. He doesn’t move. Not an inch.
I cautiously bend down and pick up the phone.
“Siri, call Dad,” I say. We both stand in silence as I hold the phone to my ear, one hand still gripped around the gun, my eyes locked with Asher’s.
“Hey, baby,” my dad says cheerfully.
“Dad, I need you to look up Asher and Gable Flynn, now.”
“He won’t find anything,” Asher says.
There’s a pause before my dad speaks again. “I did the moment you met them. They’re clean. Why?”
I swallow. “He’s standing right in front of me, and he says he killed Barnaby.”
“What?” My dad’s voice becomes clipped, tense. “Where are you?”
“At home. I have my gun on him,” I say, and hearing my dad’s voice has my tears resurfacing. One slides down my cheek. “Dad, he says I’m in danger. He says people are coming here to kill me.”
Asher looks like he wants to comfort me. And the worst thing is, I want him to.
“What people?” my dad says before shouting instructionsto people in the background. “Officers are on their way. I’m on my way, baby.”
“Asher, what people?” I ask.
“People like me. People like the man last night,” he says. “It might not be now, but it will be soon. There’s a bounty on your head.”
My throat closes, but somehow, I speak. “Did you hear that, Dad?”
“I heard. Why is he threatening you?”
I don’t want to say what I say next, because I know the moment the words leave my mouth, it makes them real. The moment I say what I’m about to say, I’ll weaken.
“He’s not threatening me,” I whisper. “He’s warning me.”
Asher’s eyes are glassy. I want to go to him. Everything my dad ever taught me keeps me in place, but everything I’ve learned about Asher makes me want to run to him.
“Warning you?” my dad asks.
“I have to go, Dad.”
“Stay on the line with me, baby, I?—”
I hang up, sliding the phone into the back pocket of my jeans. My grip relaxes on the gun, but I keep it pointed in Asher’s direction.
“I’m so sorry, Ella,” he says. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I tried so hard not to fall for you.”
Another tear falls down my cheek, and I wipe it away as I lower the gun. “You have to go. They’re coming.”
He looks at the door, then back at me.
