Another fifteen minutes passed before Aleks seemed to relax a bit more. He was still fingering the bracelet, though. “Can I ask what the words mean?” I asked. Aleks looked at me and I pointed at the small oblong piece of metal that had some words I didn’t recognize stamped into it. The rest of the bracelet was made of thin, braided leather.
“Oh, um, meu melhor… it means ‘my best.’ It’s this saying my brother and I have.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Did Dante give it to you?”
Aleks nodded. “I, um… I’m not used to carrying a phone yet. I know I should be after two years, but I was never allowed to own anything, so carrying something around with me is sometimes hard to remember. I often forget my phone at home. Sometimes my wallet and keys too. I’ve had to start keeping cash in all my pants pockets just in case.”
I felt a shard of pity go through me at his words. He hadn’t told me about his past, but I didn’t need the details to know it had been horrific.
Hell, that word probably didn’t even adequately describe it.
“Anyway, I still have this fear that… that someone is going to take me like when I was a kid. It’s stupid, I know—”
“It’s not,” I cut in. “It’s absolutely not.”
Aleks held my gaze for a moment, then nodded. “I keep thinking someone will take me and if I don’t have my phone or they take it from me, Dante won’t be able to find me again and they’ll take me away… so Dante had this bracelet made for me so I could always wear it. He says it has something in it that makes it so he can always find me, but no one will be able to tell by looking at it.”
I nodded in understanding. He was talking about a tracking device. It was what Jace had used to find me at Mr. Jennings’ house.
“Hopefully someday I won’t need it,” Aleks said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“There’s no shame in it even if you do,” I said. I’d told Aleks about my cutting when he’d asked about the scars on my arm. Like the others in my family who knew, he hadn’t judged. And while my therapist had given me some alternative ways to cope with stress, I still found myself sometimes wishing I could have the security back that came with making myself bleed. My therapist had said the urge would fade, but probably never fully go away. There was always the potential that the strangest thing could trigger the behavior, so I understood where Aleks was coming from.
I gladly agreed to the topic change when Aleks asked about Mavand Eli and how their honeymoon was going. My brother and his husband had elected to spend a month on Mav’s Harley. They hadn’t had any particular destination in mind. They’d just gotten on the bike and started driving. As of that morning, they were somewhere in New Mexico.
While I was talking, I felt a prickle of unease go through me. I tried to pass it off as a momentary thing, but when the hair on the back of my neck stood up, I began searching our surroundings. Nothing stood out at first as I scanned the dozens and dozens of faces. But as soon as I widened my search, I felt my stomach drop out.
Because one facedidstand out in the crowd.
Fear gripped my insides as I watched the man talk to another man that was with him. When they both looked in my direction, I fought the urge to scream. Terror for Willa took over and I quickly handed her to Aleks. “Here, take her,” I said.
“Wha… what? Why? What’s wrong?” Aleks asked, picking up on my frantic tone.
“Aleks, take her.” I kept my eyes on him even as I tried to keep the other two men in my periphery. God, what if it wasn’t just the two of them? They were standing about three hundred feet away, near the entrance to the marketplace.
Aleks took Willa from me. “I’ll lead them away,” I said. “You go to the nearest store and tell them to call the cops. Don’t leave until the cops come, do you hear me?”
“Caleb—”
“It’s Rush, Aleks. Tell Jace it’s Rush. He’ll know what that means.”
I quickly climbed to my feet. Aleks did the same, but when I made a move to leave, he grabbed me. “Caleb, wait—”
I pushed Aleks’s hand away where he was holding onto the waistband of my pants to keep me from leaving. “They can’t get her, Aleks,” I bit out. “Get her to safety.”
With that, I hurried away from Aleks and Willa and climbed up the small rise. I pretended not to have noticed Rush and the other guy. But I kept them in my line of sight as I neared the road leadinginto the marketplace. But instead of turning toward the marketplace, I went the opposite direction. I managed a discreet glance over my shoulder and saw that Aleks was moving toward a small gift shop near where we’d been sitting. When he disappeared inside, I chanced a glance over my shoulder.
Rush and the other guy were following me.
And they’d gained a lot of ground.
I was about to duck into a store myself, when I slammed into someone in front of me.
“Whoa there,” the guy said. “You seem like you’re in a hurry or something.”
I tried to push past him, but he refused to release me. Before I could say anything, a gun was pressed against my belly. The man’s body was so close to mine that I knew there was no way anyone was going to see it.
A few seconds later, I heard a familiar voice at my back – the one that had haunted the worst of my nightmares.
