He rises, fills a cup with water, and comes to my side. Settling beside me, he hands me the glass. “Drink some water.”
I nod, taking the glass from his hand.
Bruno’s bark comes first, and then Bruno himself. I smile into the glass. How persistent this boy is about keeping Salvario away from me. It’s been two weeks, and he still won’t warm to him.
Salvario rises from the couch. A sudden thought flashes through my mind, if this were the old Salvario, he would have done everything in his power to make Bruno behave, including giving me panic attacks by nearly killing him.
I brush the thought aside. It’s unreasonable, backed by no evidence. We’ve never encountered such a situation before, and since Salvario loves Bruno, this is the logical response—to let Bruno maintain his little dictatorship.
He climbs onto the seat beside me. I wrap my arms around his neck, kissing his head.
Salvario settles into his seat. Rosie approaches him, tail wagging, but she doesn’t get too close. He extends his hand andpets her head, which Bruno does not appreciate. He barks so loudly his whole body vibrates with the force of it.
I laugh. “You must have done something truly terrible to him before sending him to me two years ago.”
He purses his lips. “As far as I remember, I did nothing to offend him this deeply.”
I shrug. “That’s also a problem, you don’t remember everything.” Especially the bad memories. He remembers all the good ones, like all the time we spent at Pa’s house. He doesn’t remember the memories where we cried.
Salvario’s phone rings. He takes the call while Rosie makes her way to me. She squeezes in on my other side. I recline my seat, lifting the leg rest until I’m nearly lying flat, snug with my babies.
Salvario’s sharp “How did this happen?” pulls my attention to him. He’s frowning hard, his expression dark with anger.
“Find him.”
He ends the call and meets my eyes.
“Hunter’s escaped from the hospital.”
“What? How?” I shoot upright.
He grits his teeth. “No one knows how.”
Have his injuries healed enough in just two weeks for him to escape?But then again, when I saw him a week ago, he looked fine. He must have healed further since then.
All the nightmares I’ve had this past week crash back at once. After I saw him, the nightmares changed. Before, he used to die in my arms. Now, he torments me in another way—telling me I can never escape him, touching me in ways I enjoy inside those horrible dreams, leaving me a wreck the moment my eyes open.
It takes me hours every morning to shake off the nightmares, to convince myself it’s just my brain misfiring.While we sleep, the frontal cortex shuts down, hence the dreams being unreasonable on so many levels.
But now that he’s escaped, there’s a chance those nightmares could become reality.
Shut up, Wen. Nothing like that is going to happen. He can’t get past the security you live behind.
My self-reassurance isn’t very convincing, but maybe if I repeat it enough, my mind will settle.
“Don’t worry, Princess. I’ll find him, and now that he’s no longer under your father’s protection, I’ll kill him.”
My heart stumbles over its rhythm, then slams back into motion. Hunter would have been safe in my father’s prison. Now he’s not. But should I worry about him? No, I shouldn’t. Still, the knot in my gut doesn’t loosen.
Hunter
“What’s the plan?” I ask Logan, setting down an M4 carbine and picking up a Glock 18.
“I only managed to gather twenty men willing to die for us, and they aren’t well trained. I’ve been drilling them for a week, but that’ll only keep them alive a few minutes longer. Against Chris, we’re an ant-sized force facing an elephant-sized army.”
“It’s enough.” I settle into a chair. Logan leans against the table across from me.
He shrugs. “For a suicide mission? Sure.”
