Page 68 of Blade

Indy!Her free skate had been that night.

Florida chimed in, her voice gleeful. “She crashed on the triple Axel and fell apart. She popped her second triple Lutz. She dropped to ninth place! Don’t you want to see?”

No. Ana didn’t want to see. Not any of it.

When they got to the top of the stairs, Jolene puked in the bathroom, then sat on the floor next to the toilet, just like she’d done at The Palace.

She looked at Ana, her face no longer despairing. It was something else—determined, maybe.

“I’ll never get a better ID in time,” Jolene said.

Ana’s heart was pounding. “Will you go home?” she asked, the thought already breaking her heart.

But Jolene shook her head.

“I have a credit card and a passport. I can go to Spain, Ana.”

“What?” Jolene had lost her mind. Hugo was gone—she didn’t even know where he lived.

“I’ll find him, and he’ll help me. I know he will. I know he loves me.”

Ana didn’t know what to say. Hugo had left without a word. And what was she supposed to do now? Jolene was smiling, the life returning to her eyes. Ana couldn’t take that away.

“I have to try,” Jolene said.

She stood up, the smile growing wider. Ana followed her to the Orphans’ room, where Jolene pulled a duffel bag from her closet and started to pack. Going on and on about how Ana could drive her to the airport in Denver and she could take the next flight to Madrid. She knew where Hugo skated. They would know where to find him. She would use her credit card and get a cash advance. She would be long gone before her father saw what she’d done. And then, even if he came after her, Hugo would be there.

“I know he loves me,” she said again. “He never even mentioned that girl from Madrid.”

Ana stood, speechless, listening to the plan. It was absurd. Jolene was sixteen. What would she do if Hugo turned her away? And why was she so afraid to go home?

It was then that they heard footsteps coming down the hall. The familiar boom-boom, boom-boom. They stopped. Listened as a secondset trailed behind them. And then the knock at the door, the door opening, and the shadowy figure of Emile standing in the darkness. Not alone, but with another man. An older man.

Jolene whispered, but it sounded like a scream. “Daddy!”

As the man charged toward them, his face bright red, his belly heaving, Ana felt a rush inside her like never before. She stepped in front of Jolene and spread her arms wide.

“Get out of the way!” he commanded, and Ana struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. In those mere seconds, the picture forming.

Mr. M., the jovial globe-trotter Jolene had described, was a lie. The fear in her voice at the clinic. The words she’d said, pleading with the woman. “My father will kill me.”

Ana didn’t move away, though she couldn’t speak. Part of her frozen. The other part knowing what to do, her arm bracing over her face as Jolene’s father reached them.

Then a blow to the side of her head. Her body on the ground. Jolene’s scream, louder now, a piercing shrill. “Daddy, stop!”

She heard his palm smack Jolene’s face, and now they were both on the ground. Ana started to move, to stand. Jolene held her back with both arms.

“Don’t,” she said to Ana, then braced herself as Mr. M. grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back toward the closet.

“Pack!” he screamed. But Jolene curled herself into a little ball.

“Do it!” Mr. M. ordered, louder this time, and then he lifted his foot and swung it back. He was about to kick Jolene.

But then another voice was inside the room. It was a woman.

“I’ll help her. Go back to the car.”

And then: