“What the hell were you dreaming about?” Ben was law enforcement to the core, the same as their father had been. And she was a social worker. Both of them had taken professions where they could be of service to people in need. “You look all sweaty and flushed. Are you having nightmares again?”
Hayley blushed. She was grateful the bad dreams didn’t happen as often anymore, but no way was she going to tell her straight-laced brother that she was fantasizing about her lying ex-boyfriend. “Are you ready to move me?”
“Yes,” he said. Ever since their dad died, they’d only had each other. Their mother passed away when she was two and Ben five. She had no memories of a mom. Only the strength and love of her father—and then that of her brother, who’d finished raising her.
He pointed to her bags by the door. “Is that all your stuff?”
The gray and blue suitcase was durable but inexpensive. Practical. Like herself. “Yep.”
“Good. We should get going.” He must have read the hesitation on her face. “You’ll be safe at the new place.”
Hayley shook her head. “As long as Santos is free, I’ll never be safe.”
She couldn't get the image of Maria sprawled on the white carpert, her eyes open, but unseeing. Blood pooled around her head and shoulders. Blood and brain matter had gruesomely decorated the bed. Her husband Rodrigo Santos, a prominent attorney with rumored ties to crime organizations, shot her in the mouth.
The asshole had blamed Maria for their problems, claimed she’d had no right to leave him, to file for a restraining order, or to tell the truth about his wretched abuse. Hayley had been in Maria’s closet packing her things when Santos had arrived. Maria told her to hide, to stay quiet, in the closet. Her friend had been confident she could talk her psychopathic spouse off the ledge. When the shot rang out, Hayley had swallowed her scream while she watched her friend fall to the floor, a broken doll with wide eyes.
Rodrigo hadn’t seen her, but Hayley had watched as he looked at his dead wife, smirked, and turned on his heel, casually walking out of the room.
Only Hayley's cowardice had kept her from the same fate. She’d spent many isolated months buried under worry and grief and guilt. Marie had died horrifically, and Hayley had done nothing to prevent it.
You would have died with her. She knew the inner voice was right. Rodrigo was one nasty piece of raw sewage. He would have killed both of them that night if he’d known Hayley had been there in the luxurious bedroom, helping Maria with her bid for freedom. Evidence against Santos was thin—no DNA, no murder weapon, and an alibi that would’ve been considered ironclad if Hayley hadn’t witnessed his heinous act. She was the only thing standing between a killer and his freedom, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to stop her from testifying.
After witnessing Maria’s cold-blooded murder, her brother Ben insisted she move out of her apartment and into an FBI safe house. The tiny place had a state-of-the-art alarm system and three guns stored in easy-to-get locations. She knew how to fire a gun now. Guns used to scare her. Their ugliness, their weight, their noise…she used to hate everything about them, but no longer. Ben had taught her how to handle a weapon, how to aim at the center mass of an attacker, and how to shoot him until dead. Empty the clip, Hayley. Don’t stop shooting until the perp is down.
She’d spent restless nights on the couch with the TV on, and the loaded 9mm on the coffee table. The safe house was small, soulless, and bland. She hated it. But her brother had essentially made her disappear. He had tried, in every way possible, to disconnect her from old memories and ties so that she eventually could rebuild her life as someone else.
“Quit my job, cut my hair, learned self-defense,” she mumbled as she stood up. Nothing fixed the hole inside her. She was empty, a shell of her former self, and helpless to do anything about it.
“What?” Ben asked.
“Are you coming with me?”
“No,” he said. “I have a lead on another woman Santos might have…attacked.”
His hesitation reminded Hayley of just how fragile she’d been in the weeks following Maria’s death. “Is she dead, too?”
“No, but she’s been catatonic for years.”
“That doesn’t sound promising.”
“Her sister Betty Lewis is her caretaker. I’m hoping she might be able to give me something.” He shook his head. “Look. It’s a long shot, but you never know.”
Hayley tried not to hope. She’d learned quickly that hope made the disappointment unbearably bitter when things didn’t work out. She wiped her eyes and nodded. The sooner she got on her way to this new hideout, the better. “Okay,” she told her brother. “I’m ready.”