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“You should be,” she shouts, then pulls back on the throttle, slowing the boat.

It takes everything I have not to sigh in relief.

“I shouldn’t have taken my frustration out on you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” she agrees. The boat hits another wave. “Why did you?”

“Stress.” It’s not quite a lie.

“Mmhmm,” is all she says, and I can tell she’s not fully buying it. Of course she isn’t.

“How far is it?”

“We need gas first.”

“Shit.” I ignore the pain as the burn on my shoulder pulls. “I don’t want you to be seen.”

She looks up at me. “Okay.”

“What?” My eyes narrow in suspicion. “That was too easy.”

“Listen, if you wanna pay to gas dear, sweetBettyup,” she pats the console affectionately, “I’m not going to stop you.”

“Fair enough, princess.” I roll my eyes, though, and laughter peals out of June like a bell.

Something tight in my chest loosens, just a bit.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

JUNE

“What all did you get?”I frown at the three brown paper bags from the marina. “That’s a lot of bags.”

“Water. Sports drinks. Nothing too exciting. No one saw you, right?”

“For the last time, no one saw me. I stayed in the cabin. Which, for the record, was awful. Now tell me what you got?”

The incorrigible man just pulls out a water bottle. “Drink up, princess.”

While I chug it, because he’s right, I need to hydrate, he makes a quick call on the satellite phone to his HQ, muffling his voice as he talks to his chain of command. He rattles off the coordinates of my beach, with instructions for Pierce to meet us there.

My stomach twists at that.

GPS coordinates are numbers, tidy and neat. They don’t convey the enormity of what it means to let other people in on where we’re headed.

I swallow, watching the blue-on-blue horizon line fly by. It was my dad’s and my secret. Just our place, though other people knew about it, and sometimes we even saw other people on that stretch of lonesome beach.

But giving it to the government, so Pierce can meet us there? It feelswrong.

It feels like fully admitting that my dad was a criminal, and it hurts.

It’s silly, illogical, but that’s the truth.

“We’re here.” I focus on the jetty looming on the port side of the boat. Massive blocks of rough black granite mark the edge of the channel. White water froths along the manmade rocks, waves crashing onto the barrier as the tide rushes out.

“So this is it, huh?”