This isn’t lust.
This is reverence.
“You don’t have to fix everything,” she murmurs.
“Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
My phone vibrates on the nightstand.
We both freeze.
I grab it.
Ghost.
I answer on the second ring. “Yeah.”
“Viper and Saint found Tessa. They picked her up,” Ghost says. No greeting.
Tessa.
My vision narrows.
Images flash through my head. Carly on my porch. Her wrists. The way she flinched in her sleep.
A cold, surgical part of me catalogs what I’d do to anyone who laid hands on her. Anyone who sold her.
Put them in the ground.
Slow.
“And?” I ask.
“She’s talking. Not a lot. Enough.”
I don’t look at Carly, but I know she’s listening.
“There’s another girl,” Ghost continues. “Transfer set for tonight. Different location. They move her before dark.”
A beat.
“You’re coming?” he asks.
I look at Carly then. At the tape on her wrists. The scratches on her legs. The softness in her eyes that wasn’t there yesterday.
Every instinct in me says stay.
Every other instinct says end it.
“Yeah,” I say finally.
I end the call.
The cabin feels smaller.
“Another girl,” Carly says quietly.
I nod once.
