Page 1

Prologue

Sawyer

(Age Fourteen)

Plink. Plink. Plink. The water dripped, resembling teardrops, from the leaky kitchen faucet into the stainless-steel sink basin. My heart raced as I quieted my breathing. The lock was harder to pick than I expected, but once it was open, I could escape to the bus stop in the next town over. Just a little more and it should open.

I gently shifted the straightened hairpin, willing my hands to stop shaking. Come on. As my fear of being caught grew, a bead of sweat trickled down the pearls of my spine, and an unconscious shiver overtook my body at the sensation. I stilled as I heard a creaking sound in the distance. Blood rushed in my ears.

I can’t get caught.

I didn’t know if I’d survive getting caught. Once I found what I was searching for, then I would be free. As free as I could be until they shipped me off to the next monster, because I knew they would find me at some point. They always did.

I had made this arrangement work for three months when I should have left after two weeks. The reason I had stayed was for the six-year-old twins, Anna and Justin. Their freckled noses scrunched and their square teeth that were a little too big for their faces shined when they smiled. I had made it my mission to make them smile. They were sweet, unhardened from the life that stretched ahead of them. A life I knew all too well. Soon enough, they would build walls, and everything wouldn’t hurt as it did now. The walls they most needed were the ones they would build around their hearts. Walls that blocked out any possibility of light. Fortresses that would keep them safe from the people who made them feel. Because sometimes the expectation of good was more heartbreaking than always expecting the impending downfall of bad luck.

I knew bad luck better than anyone. My life was a series of bad luck draws, broken promises, and moments where I simply fell through the cracks. I once thought the impenetrable walls I had built were the saddest part of my life. However, I have found safety in their protection, and it didn’t matter if there was any light or not. I understood the darkness, or rather, I understood that darkness could not be understood and, therefore, it could not be trusted. There was no gray area with darkness. All that mattered was that I survived another day, because every day I endured was one step closer to freedom.

I had suffered in this hellish place for three long months only in order to prolong the warmth of sunshine for the twins. They had gained three more months of childhood, and I was stripped of three more months of mine. But when he had taken the only thing I had ever cared about, I knew I’d risk everything to get it back. I would willingly give over my small accumulation of mismatched belongings—everything except this. It was the only thing I had ever loved. It was the only thing that was truly mine. It had been gifted to me by the only person who had ever loved me, and it was behind this lock. I wanted to scream in frustration and pound my fists on the wall.

The silence returned, and I worked diligently on the lock with my sweaty hands. After a couple more minutes of working, I finally opened the latch that had been holding the lock shut. The moonlight illuminated the space, but not clearly enough for me to see into the cabinet, I reached my hand inside and felt around. There was an object that resembled Anna’s tattered baby doll and another that had to be Justin’s baseball from his dad. Their parents had been killed in a wreck, and when no extended family had been located, they ended up here with me.

I stretched my arm as far as I could, standing on my tiptoes as my fingers skimmed across a stack of papers along with something that resembled a thick envelope. I withdrew the envelope and saw a stack of money stuffed inside. I wanted to vomit, knowing that money was intended to buy me new shoes, but I immediately replaced it. I knew the last thing I needed was to be on the run with something that wasn’t “mine,” even if it had been intended for me. As helpful as it would be, it wasn’t worth the risk.

I continued my search and finally found what I was seeking. As I pulled it out, it caught the light and reflected a dull shine. At that moment, I realized we were the same. I also only had a flicker of light left in me, and everything else was the grit that kept me alive. I placed it in my pocket as anger burned through my chest. I wanted to place the baseball and baby doll on the counter, but I knew that would only result in punishment for little Anna and Justin. I wouldn’t let Mr. Phillips hurt them how he’d hurt me. If I could get free, I would tell anyone who listened about the hell it was to live with the Phillips, but until then, I had to get out.

I locked the cabinet so no one would be the wiser and quietly tiptoed toward the door. My small backpack was slung over one shoulder, filled with only the things I brought. I paused at the doorway, brushed a kiss to my thin bruised fingers, and pressed them against the chipped paint of the doorframe. I was too scared to kiss Anna and Justin’s soft freckled foreheads, for fear of waking them up, so this would have to do. I willed their lives to turn out better than mine. One day, I would do everything in my power to protect kids like Anna and Justin, kids that were . . . just like me.

Chapter

One

Sawyer

(Present Day)

The sound of gravel crunched beneath my tires as I drove down a rural road in Rhodes County, Kansas. I rubbed my temple to ease the tension, but my eyes continued to burn from lack of sleep. The eye drops I had used before walking into court this morning, which claimed to “relieve redness within minutes,” had worn off at some point in the last seven hours. I was running on four hours of sleep in the last two days, and I wasn’t sure that any eye drop could fix that. I had already logged a good 1,900 miles within the last three days, and I had ingested enough caffeine to fell an elephant. Casting an occasional glance in the rearview mirror, I saw sad gray eyes staring back at me.

“I promise I’m doing the best I can, Connor.”

We hadn’t talked since we left the courthouse, and I hated this as much as he did. I had attempted conversation a couple of times by asking about the 1000-piece puzzle he had been working on at home, but he wasn’t engaging. I didn’t blame him. I hated small talk too, especially in moments when it seemed especially shallow in comparison to the unbearable weight of the moment.

“Yeah, whatever,” he mumbled.

He rolled his eyes and turned toward the window. If only he knew how little influence I effectively had. People always assumed we were the powers that be, but most often, things depended on an entire team of individuals who might not see eye to eye. Additionally, there were the judges who were elected but lacked any knowledge of the laws they were expected to enforce. Good ol’ boy judges with the right last names littered our state like most states, more concerned with keeping up appearances than keeping kids safe. Connor had lucked out with a judge that appeared to want the best thing for him.

I would “Yeah, whatever” too if I didn’t know all the background information. However, there was not much that I didn’t know about Connor Hanson. His dog-eared file rested in my caramel-colored, faux-leather tote bag in the front passenger seat. The thick, light blue folder stretched at the seams and spoke of his years in and out of foster care. Nine-year-olds shouldn’t have this much heartbreak. Their biggest concerns were supposed to be about hanging out with friends and building Lego sets.

My childhood was far from ideal, I understood those heartbroken storm cloud eyes more than I wanted to. I wished I could fix this. I wished I could make parents love their children and always put their needs first, but sometimes that simply wasn’t the case. Sometimes individuals like Connor came from a family tree riddled with addiction, and more often than not, the parents needed as much help as their children. Addictions were hard to break and even harder to break when someone hadn’t made any measurable efforts. No one on the team was favorable to reintegration when they thought no steps forward had been made by the adults in the situation. It was only a matter of determining whether the effort was linked to a lack of understanding, challenges, or lack of follow-through.

I glanced at my reflection in the rearview mirror. My elbow-length, wavy blonde hair was in a French twist to make me appear older. Having what many deemed a “baby face,” I always did everything I could to portray a professional appearance so that my opinion wasn’t immediately discounted because of my age. I was consistently the youngest person in the room, and it had been that way since I had graduated early from college and was immediately hired as a social worker.

My makeup and clothing were flawless despite my lack of sleep. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of makeup tutorials and videos on how to have “presence.” The gist was to occupy the largest amount of space in a room, which was ironic considering all I wanted to do was take up the least amount of space possible.

I worked diligently to assess what life skills I was inadequate in and tried to fill that void with advice from strangers on the internet. You couldn’t exactly walk up to someone on the street and say, “I don’t know how to be a normal human. Can you help?”

People would see me as a freak more than they already did. These instructional videos were how I knew my makeup was on point, similarly to how I knew my gray pinstripe, slim, high-waisted trousers with a tucked in silk blouse and sky-high heels worked best on my body shape for business attire. I analyzed photos of completed outfits online and purchased my clothing accordingly, except for the occasional outfit that Talia talked me into. Her choices tended to be more bright, patterned, and sexier than anything I typically wore. To Talia’s dismay, those outfits sat in my closet most of the time, untouched because the life of a social worker didn’t require sexy outfits.

Even though I still exhibited the signs of being inexperienced in life skills, watching the instructional videos helped. I had to remind myself that at least I was a fully functioning, law-abiding human who tried to be kind and considerate. I had ten lifetimes of experience on how to be a vile one.