Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
“No.”
But, wait.
My heart sank.
No.
No, dammit.
I didn’t want to believe she was capable.
She’d helped us, for God’s sake.
“Runa?” York called, as I sat up, my heart hammering against my ribcage.
My soul screamed No!
But my mind, my mind knew that there was only one person who knew where Denali and I ended up each time we moved. Which I shared with her because she’d been the one to get us out of Dodge when I needed help. She was the one with the horror story about what happened to her former roommate. And I wanted to entrust one person with our whereabouts in case I disappeared, in case I was murdered.
“Amanda.”
“What?” York asked, sitting up with me as I pulled my knees to my chest against the headboard.
“Amanda. It’s Amanda.”
“Who’s Amanda?”
“She’s a therapist I went to when I’d been worried that I was paranoid about people following me. She… helped me. She gave me ideas on how to be sure I was being followed. And when it was clear I was, she gave me the money we needed to get out of town. I don’t… I don’t understand how she could have gone from that to… to this…”
But there was no one else.
“Unless… maybe there’s a tracker on my car.”
“No, babe.”
“It makes sense!”
“It doesn’t. When Eddie took your car in, I had him go over it with a fine-tooth comb. He would have found a tracker.”
“In something we own, then.” They’d been in my various apartments and hotel rooms.
“That you haven’t come across by now? You didn’t have much.”
“But… but why would she help and then turn around and help someone try to hurt us?”
“Money is an evergreen motivator. Or fear. Both work equally well.”
I mean, she made decent money. But she wasn’t rolling in it. And these guys certainly were willing to threaten, maim, and kill.
“When you’ve talked to her, has she asked questions that felt normal at the time, but in retrospect feel like she was fishing?”
My mind flashed back to our most recent call. How she’d pushed at me a few times. Enough to make me feel uncharacteristically frustrated with her.
“Maybe. Yeah. I mean… I hadn’t given her exact addresses to the motels and such, but she’d probably asked enough questions to stitch it together.”
“I’m gonna need her name, babe.”
“You can’t kill her.”
Though, if this genuinely was her, why was I feeling protective? Putting me in danger was one thing. Putting my daughter in danger was unforgivable.
“I don’t kill women. But I am going to have Arty look into her. See if she’s connected to anything he’s already looking into. If not, she might be getting a phone call. Or a visit. I’m gonna get answers. It’s the only way this ends.”
He was right.
Even if I hated it.
Even if some part of me was still trying to cling to the idea that Amanda was a good person, that she would never betray us like this.
Because she was all I had for so long.
But, I reminded myself, that was no longer the case.
I had York now.
I had Eddie and Harmon and Saskia and everyone else in the club. People who accepted me and agreed to protect me, no questions asked. People who would never, ever sell us out. Not for money; they had more than enough. And not out of fear; they had nothing to be afraid of.
“Her name is Amanda Jane Landon.”
“Alright,” he said, climbing off the bed. “You stay here and wait for Denali. I have some work to do.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
York
“Yeah, I heard you,” Arty said as I stress-cleaned his apartment. It wasn’t as bad as it typically was, but we’d been using him more than usual lately, so I figured everyone straightened up when they visited.
“But I’m not hearing anything about the shrink because…”
I was being impatient.
But, fuck, I’d heard Runa call out for me on that phone, heard her scream when she was being attacked, seen her right after that attack, been there as she cried, and seen the way she jumped at every odd noise at the clubhouse in the days that followed.
This had to end.
I needed to know who the shrink was in contact with. I needed names. I needed addresses. Then I needed bodies in the back of a U-Haul. Then in the mouths of crocodiles deep in the Everglades.
After that, well, I had some ideas for future plans.
One of them being a nice little house with a yard for Denali. A jungle gym. A cat and a dog. A place to put down roots. Christmases in the same place every year. A table to gather around on Thanksgiving. Friends. Family.
Because, yeah, that was where my mind was going.
Not just Runa and Denali in that house, with me popping over as an outsider.
I wanted to be there.
I wanted to put Denali to bed every night. Then I wanted to sit on the back porch with Runa and a cup of coffee, talking about our day, making plans for the future.