He stills over the phone.
“What is it?” His deep voice drops to a growl.
Something in me breaks and I’m sobbing and crying to my boss, even though I know he doesn’t care. But it’s so good to hear his voice. I feel safe, just for a moment.
“Mandy.”
You can barely get words out. “I, um… I’m sorry. I just— I hate to bother you, but he’s after me, and—”
“Where are you?”
20
SALINGER
Dread strikes, like I’m a little kid again and my father is after my mother. This time, I’m not a scrawny teenager stuck in the middle of nowhere. This time, I can handle it. “I’m coming to get you.Tell me where you are.”
“I don’t…” The words sounded slightly muffled. “I don’t know. By Fifth and Redwood, I think?”
“Stay on the phone with me.”
“I can’t—he’ll hear me!”
The line goes dead.
I’m going to fucking killhim, whoever he is.
It’s late. Traffic is light. Fuck speeding tickets, and fuck red lights. I floor it and make it to the cross street in five minutes. I park my car and jump out, scanning the empty street for her.
I resolve to stick a tracker on her. Shit, I’m never letting her out of my sight.
I almost call her but she said she was worried about him—whoever that shit-stain was—finding her.
Is she hiding somewhere? It had sounded like she was.
I turn down a dark alleyway, on high alert. I walk slowly, my feet crunching on broken glass.
Nearby, a dog barks.
That has to be Mandy. It sounds like Pepper’s bark.
Increasing my pace, I quickly make my way down the alley, still on the lookout for anyone ready to jump out at me, in case this is a trap.
Crawford might like to think he’s the only person who can fight, but I grew up in the same compound, and we’d gotten in plenty of drop-down, drag-out fights. I am fully confident I can hold my own against whoever is after Mandy.
No one touches what is mine.
I check behind a stack of pallets. Nothing.
Across the alley is a dark loading-dock area. There is another, muffled bark.
I stand at the threshold. In a dark corner, I hear whimpering, someone shushing.
“Mandy?”
Her dirt-stained face appears from behind a dumpster.
Before I can register it, I’m by her side. With a cry, she throws herself in my arms, sobbing. I pet her hair as she shakes and sobs against me. “Mandy.” I pull her to my chest.
