Page 163 of Deacon

Lila: Who is this? Let me talk to my daughter!

The reply came almost immediately.

Unknown: If you don’t want your daughter hurt you’ll do as I say. Take the phone with you and get out of the apartment and get to that address. Your life for your daughter’s life. What’ll it be? If you tell anyone, Jade dies.

My fingers went numb around the phone. I tightened them until I could type.

Lila: Fine! I’ll come, just don’t hurt her!

Unknown: Better hurry!

I stared at the last message, pulse beating in my throat.

Then I scrolled upward.

More texts waited above it.

Sent earlier that afternoon.

The first one made my stomach turn. By the third, I couldn’t breathe right. Whoever had been messaging Jade knew how to hurt her. They mocked her, threatened her, dragged me and Jackson into it, pressing against the exact fears a sixteen-year-old girl would hide from her mother because she thought she could handle them herself.

The distraction Cage had noticed.

The way I had kept checking Jade’s face lately because something felt off.

She had been carrying this alone.

And now whoever sent those messages had her.

I got off the bed.

My thoughts crashed together so quickly I could barely separate one from another. Matty would stop me if I walked through the living room. Evan would follow. Dad would call the police before I made it to the elevator. One look at my face and somebody would know something had changed.

And if the person holding Jade saw police, saw Saints, saw anyone...

If you tell anyone, Jade dies.

I went to her desk.

My hands shook so badly that the first pen slipped out of my fingers. I grabbed another, tore a sheet from the nearest notebook, and wrote fast enough that half the letters barely looked like mine.

Someone texted Jade’s phone. They say they have her. They told me to come alone they’ll kill her. I couldn’t tell anyone. I’m going to get my daughter.

I left it in the middle of the desk where nobody could miss it.

Then I looked toward the window.

The fire escape.

Jade had loved it from the day we moved in, insisting it made the apartment feel like something out of a movie. Tonight it was the only way out that didn’t take me past my brother, my father, and the people who loved me enough to stop me.

I eased the window upward.

Every scrape sounded deafening. I froze twice, listening for footsteps in the hall, but nobody came.

Cold night air hit my face when I climbed through.

For one absurd second, I thought about how many times I had warned Jade never to use this thing for sneaking out. Now I was lowering myself onto it with her phone clenched in one hand because someone had offered me the only deal a mother would never refuse.