I twisted slightly, making sure Mae and Liam were nowhere to be seen, but the only people I saw were Perry, two new guards I didn’t recognize, and the scowling face of the new warden, Steven Tabor.
My gaze met his, and it burned through me like a wildfire, searching out every scrap of fuel, every dry leaf, anything so it could build into something deadly.
It was a stare that said he knew what I’d done, even if he couldn’t prove it. It was a stare meant to intimidate. Meant to force a confession from my lips.
But it had the opposite effect on me.
I smiled at him.
“I don’t know,” I said, answering Perry’s question. My voice came out a little slurred, which I probably could have corrected, but I let my tongue move lazily, drawing it out. My brain was fuzzy, and moving hurt, but there was a clear voice in my head that told me to stay alert, to watch what I said, because giving anything away now would not only be a disaster for Heath, but also for me. Probably better I just closed my eyes and said nothing at all.
I didn’t mean to drift off.
Perry’s voice grew frantic, and I was vaguely aware of her fingers pressing into my shoulders and her fight to keep me awake, but her voice grew dimmer and dimmer until I couldn’t hear her at all.
I slunk into the blissful darkness once more.
6
Heath
Rowe’s shirt clung to my biceps, digging into the skin. Sweat dripped down my back, plastering the thin material to me uncomfortably as I ran through the backstreets of Saint View. The siren never let up. It wailed through the quiet night, drawing people from their homes and forcing me to hide in alleys until they lost interest and went back inside. I couldn’t risk any of them seeing me. How long would it be before my face was all over the news? Not long, I imagined. I’d probably be the most wanted man in America if I managed to last the week, and the safety of the woods was still too far away. Though I knew Saint View from my years of living here, it was also a highly populated area, with too many eyes just waiting and watching, ready to turn me in at just the sniff of a reward.
I craved the solitude of the woods, but getting there on foot was no longer an option. I needed to move, and move fast. From my hiding spot behind a rusted refrigerator in a vacant lot, I eyed a van parked beneath a broken streetlight. It was old, but if it ran, it was probably my best bet at hot-wiring a car to use as an escape vehicle. I didn’t want to do it. Even as an irresponsible teen, stealing other people’s possessions had never sat well with me. I’d gone along with my friends because that’s what dumb teenage boys did, and I’d been desperate to fit in, but all I could think about, then and now, was how hard people had it around here. Banks didn’t give people in Saint View loans. So if you owned a car, you’d probably scrimped and saved every cent to buy it. It was likely your pride and joy. It also probably didn’t have insurance.
In the distance, dogs barked. I froze. I had no way of knowing if it was a dog squad or just somebody’s backyard pet. But a pounding urgency filled my muscles, telling me I’d left it as long as I possibly could and that if I didn’t get my ass into a vehicle, a dog would track me down in a matter of minutes.
I waited for the elderly man standing on the porch to lose interest in the sirens and go back inside his house. “Sorry, Mister.” I crept from my hiding spot and rounded the car, keeping to the shadows. “I swear I’ll bring it back in one piece.” I lifted the handle and screwed up my face in frustration when the door was locked. I tried the one at the back, but that didn’t budge either. “Fuck.”
Breaking the window would be noisy and draw attention, but if I was lucky, maybe the wailing siren would cover it. In the darkness, I pulled off my shirt, wrapping it around my fist, and threw back my arm, readying to plunge my hand through the glass.
Headlights lit me up like I was a freaking Christmas tree. I froze, arm in mid-swing and knowing full well that whoever was driving had caught me red-handed.
I covered my eyes with one hand when the lights blinded me. It was all over. By now, they’d have cops all over the neighborhood. More dogs barked, probably only one street away, following the trail I’d unintentionally left for them.
“Need a ride?”
I dropped my hand. Liam’s face poked out the driver’s side window.
I gaped at him. And then ran for the back door, yanking it open and throwing myself across the back seat. “Took your sweet-ass time, Banks.”
Liam grinned back at me. “Nah, we’ve been hanging around just waiting for you to take your shirt off.”
I shook my head because there was really little else to do. Liam could find a smart-ass comment in any situation, it seemed.
My gaze drifted to Mae as Liam put his foot down on the accelerator. “How you doing? Having some serious second thoughts right now?”
To my surprise, she shook her head no.
I raised one eyebrow as we whizzed through the streets of Saint View. “No? Because I sure am.”
She twisted in her seat, the belt stretching with her. She reached into the back and picked up my hand, threading her fingers between mine. “You don’t belong in there. You belong here. With me.”
Nobody had ever made me feel the way Mae did. I didn’t know how I’d missed it all those years ago, when I’d been dating her sister. I should have seen the amazing woman she was. How kind and caring, always making you feel like whatever you brought to the table was enough. I’d never felt more important than in that moment. I couldn’t help myself. I grasped her face between my hands and put my lips softly to hers.
She trembled beneath my touch, despite her brave words.
I dug my fingers into the muscles at the back of her neck, kneading out the hard rocks of tense muscle beneath her skin. “It’s gonna be okay,” I assured her. “We just gotta get to Rowe’s cabin so we can regroup and work out a plan. A proper one, not something thought up on the spur of the moment when emotions are riding high.”
She pressed her forehead to mine and nodded.