Andy leans close, close enough to whisper in my ear. “Getting rich off this guy, are you? Look at how busy you’ve been. Is he paying you for the sex, too?”
A bitter cold travels down my spine. If Andy thinks Rupert and I are in a relationship… what else might he try to do?
“Get the money out,” Andy says, pushing the barrel harder against me.
Obediently, I push the button to withdraw, then type in 17200.
Sorry, the screen responds.The maximum you can withdraw in a day is $300.
“Fuck!” Andy slams a fist into the ATM. “Damn it!”
“If you break it, you buy it,” the attendant calls out.
Andy ignores him. “Get the money,” he says, nodding at the screen. I hit the withdrawal button and type in 300, then my pin, and the machine whirrs.
He won’t be happy with just this much, but we’d have to visit dozens of ATMs to empty out my account.
Once I pull the cash out, he snatches it out of my hand, shoving it into his pocket.
“To the truck,” he says, poking me again. “We have another stop to make.”
Back in the cab of the truck, he takes my wallet and takes out my debit card again, looking it over. “Credit union. Hm.” Then he tucks the card away again and puts the truck into drive.
rupert
The video footage is horrifying.
The store manager sits uneasily in his chair as I peer over his shoulder. I’m sure someone’s already called the police on me, but I plan to be long gone before they arrive.
I watch as Peony enters the frame, innocent with her cart full of groceries. A twenty-year-old F-150 sits a few parking spaces over as she heads to Kellen’s car.
Then, I see him: a scruffy blond man, tall and ragged, approaches her from the side. Even the manager gasps as the man leaps onto Peony, throwing her to the ground.
“Our security team should have caught this,” the managergrouses as the man on the tiny black-and-white screen drags Peony away. I’m bristling all over, my blood far too hot inside my veins as he throws her inside the pickup.
There’s only one person who would so blatantly target her. This must be her ex-boyfriend, Andy. As I had suspected and feared.
My mane rises high off my neck and shoulders as my fury grows. I long to dig my claws into him and tear his head from his neck the way I would a rabbit. If I got the chance, I would rip out his throat while he still breathed and chew him to pieces.
“Yes,” I growl, “your teamshouldhave caught this.”
“Can you make out the license plate from here?” Kellen asks, pulling me out of my haze of red rage. The manager replays the footage, showing when the F-150 first arrived in the lot early in the morning.
“He was waiting for her.” I peer closer at the screen, then point. “There. That’s the license plate.”
Ignacio hastily types it into his mobile as Kellen puts a hand on my shoulder.
“We should go, Rupert. Before…”
I know. The last thing I need is to get arrested before I can find Peony.
Spinning on my heel, I stalk out of the office past startled employees and customers—all of them gaping, whispering, pointing, recording with their mobile cameras. It’s everything I feared about showing myself, but right now, they’re all merely background noise. I can deal with the fallout after Peony’s safe.
“I’m going to call the license plate number in to the cops,” Kellen says as we hurry out of the store, past a crying mother with two children at her side.
“Wow, big doggie,” one of them says as I pass.
As if the police can help. It will take them hours to do anything of value, when Peony’s life hangs in the balanceright now.
