Page 68 of Deliverance

The Holcoms were connected to Drake? I had kept track of Conrad over the years at a distance, just to make sure he wouldn’t come anywhere near me or my city. Not close enough to realize he was in bed with Kingfisher. But I should have known.

“You have two hours,” Drake said. “No limits but no killing her either.” Drake used the muzzle of the gun to trace along my throat. “She has a debt to work off for me, after all. You’ll be a nice addition to my collection, little birdy.”

My stomach churned as the implications set in. Drake was handing me over to Conrad and then going to traffic me afterwards. My breath stuttered as Drake stepped away. He closed the door behind him, the lock beeped as it clicked shut, leaving the two of us locked in this room together.

“You look good,” Conrad said.

My stomach rolled dangerously. I needed to think, to figure out how to get out of here. But the walls were closing in and the buzzing from the overhead lights had gotten louder as the room swam before my eyes.

Memories attacked my senses from all sides. The smell of a back porch. Cold air and cheap beer and the sour taste of fear on my tongue. The taste of fear that no girl should have ever felt. The weight of him. The ground coming up hard. Trying to breathe and not being able to. The police station afterward, the officer’s eyes sliding away from mine when they realized who I was reporting. My parents’ faces after his father left our house. The door of my bedroom closing, and the sudden realization no one was going to protect me.

I pressed my thumbnail into my palm.Hard.

The bite of pain pulled me back into the room, into my body. Into the combat boots with two trackers in them, the knife in my left boot and my jacket with cameras in the buttons that had heard and recorded everything.

I was not sixteen years old anymore.

I was not alone.

I was not powerless.

Conrad took a step closer. “Been a long time,” he said. “I’ve heard you’ve been causing trouble.” He smiled like this was a conversation between two old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. But behind the smile that didn’t reach his eyes, there was a coldness that chilled me. “Imagine my surprise whenKingfisher reached out to me asking if I wanted some time with an old friend.”

“Is that what you think we are?” I said, my voice cracking. “Old friends? You raped me.”

He chuckled as he got closer. “Says who? No one believed your silly little story back then. Besides, you were asking for it.”

I pretended to cower as he got closer. My hands came up slightly, the shaking of them only slightly pretend. I took a step back. I needed him to see what he expected to see. Fear.

He took another step. Then another. His smile widened as he took in my shaking body.

I waited until he was close enough.

Then I broke his nose with the heel of my palm.

The crack was the most satisfying thing I’d felt or heard in fifteen years. He stumbled back, yelping as he clutched his face. I didn’t give him time to find his footing. Fifteen years since that night. Fifteen years of training, of dark streets and back alleys, and every man who had ever underestimated me because of what I looked like. Fifteen years of building something from the wreckage of one night on a back porch. Fifteen years of heartache, betrayal, andrage.

I followed up my strike to his nose with a quick uppercut that sent his chin snapping backwards. He stumbled against the wall, falling heavily into it. Then he rallied. He came at me, swinging wildly like a man who had never had to learn any kind of technique to fight. A man who relied on his size and his daddy’s last name to get what he wanted. I dodged one of his wild swings, sending my fist into his side. He grabbed my shoulder, trying to wrap his arm around my throat. I drove my elbows back into him once, then twice, until his grip loosened.

I grabbed his arm and threw him over my shoulder. He crashed on the floor, the breath knocked out of him. Red tinged my vision as I straddled him like he had straddled me thatnight. Except instead of his hands on my throat and covering my mouth so I would stay quiet while he raped me, it was my hands curled into fists, throwing punches to his face, his arms, any place I could reach.

It wasn’t until his arms fell away, limp as he lost consciousness, that I stopped. I rolled off him onto my back, breathing hard. My knuckles were split, and pain shot through them. I climbed to my feet and looked down at him. I expected to feel satisfaction if I ever faced him like this, and I did, but I also felt lighter. Like the part of me that carried what he did to me that night finally let go of the weight of it all. The rage, the heartache, the abandonment. I just let it go.

I wiped my hands on my pants and turned to the door. One monster down. One more to go.

I was crouched next to the keypad, trying to figure out if there was a way I could short it from the inside when the door was yanked open. I scrambled to my feet. Danny filled the frame.

His eyes found me first, sweeping up and down my body, then he looked past me to Conrad on the floor, and his eyes darkened. His face filled with rage, a look that I hadn’t seen since he was seventeen years old climbing through my bedroom window, his jaw set and his eyes burning.

He took a step forward, and I stepped in front of him, putting my hand flat on his chest.

“No,” I said.

“Evelyn—”

“He’s not worth it.” I held his gaze until some of the tension left his body. “He’s not worth you.”

Marcus appeared at Danny’s shoulder, his expression doing something complicated before settling into relief when he looked at me. He was dressed in tactical gear, his gun holstered at his hip. Behind them, through the warehouse, I could seeflashing red and blue lights and voices barking out orders. The cavalry had arrived.