It’s time to go now, Nova. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, I need you to look around and say goodbye to it all. Then get in the truck and leave. Start driving east and never come back. A lawyer will call you just as soon as you’ve hit the state of New York, at which point, you’ll receive the rest of your information.
If you don’t leave, I’m gonna come back and whoop your ass. And if you waltz into the afterlife any less than seventy years after me, I’m gonna make your eternity worse than the front steps of Hell.
I’m so fucking proud of you, Nov.
Always have been, always will be.
Now run.
I love you from now until I see you again.
Ry.
I glance up from Ryan’s letter and look around Nova’s bedroom with new eyes. The place remains trashed, and the woman he intended to save is already in danger. She’s already with Tank, and Aster still carries grief as fresh today as it was thirty years ago. Will he do to her what Conroy did to Arabella?
Can I stop it?
I glance down again and stop myself from fisting the pages. Swallowing my rage, I breathe through my fury.
She fucking knew. From the day I climbed out of my car at Ryan’s funeral, she fucking knew. The times I thought I was playing her, she was playing me. The tears she cried and her questions about fairness were a fucking game.
I was her villain. But she allowed me in anyway.
She could’ve called the cops and had me removed. She could’ve refused my advances every single step of the way. And though my next logical question should bewhy?Why would she let me close, knowing who I am and who I work for? She answers that question, too. At the bottom of the letter, in red pen and a furious scribble, she writesRichard Who?
Over and over and over again, she traces the ten letters and digs her pen into the paper.
Richard Who?
She was told to run. Instead, she went hunting.
And stupid me,Igave her the name she needed to finish this out.
Fuck.
22
NOVA
TANK IS NOT A NICE PERSON
My head throbs. My eyes ache. The world spins as rough, calloused hands slam me against a wooden chair that suspiciouslydoesn’tshift despite my weight hitting it.
It should have scraped along the floor, even if only an inch. It should have tilted back. It should have done something! But it catches my weight with ease, and as I dazedly look down, while my hands are dragged behind my back and the stinging friction of bindings wrap around my wrists, I’m treated to the ominous reality that my chair has been bolted to the floor.
“Wake up, bitch.” My captor yanks my arms, straining my shoulders until I’m not entirely confident they’ll stay in their sockets. Pulling the bindings tighter, he chuckles when an involuntary hiss ricochets along my throat. “You awake yet?”
“You hit me really hard.” I blink once, twice, maybe a third time, and work to clear the shadows from my vision. I could assume I’m in a poorly lit room, if not for the fact that I see just fine out of my right eye. “Why’d you hit me?”
“Cos I like it.” He gives one last tug, eliciting a cry of agony that turns to nausea in the pit of my stomach, then, straightening, he wanders around and reveals his massive frame and disdainful smile.
He could be seven feet tall, if my eyes aren’t lying to me. Maybe more. Probably not less.
He could be the guy Lincoln said would come, too.
Likely.
He’s my width, times three. Broad across the shoulders and extra muscular in the chest. He wears a tight, dark green shirt, and although he weighs something near the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound mark, I can count the lines crossing his stomach.
