Page 12 of Keeping Her Under (Deranged Highway, #1)

Twelve

At eleven-thirty, I head out of my house for a late-night run. After leaving Asher to continue his shift around eight, I went to the site where Summer had totaled her car as he’d told me her phone had never been logged.

There was evidence of the wreckage still littered around the foliage –shattered glass glinting through the leaves, chipped paint scrubbed across the trunk of the tree– but anything big had been cleaned up already.

I’d known the likelihood of finding her phone would be slim, especially in the dark, but I’m still frustrated that I failed.

As my feet slap against the sidewalk, I push my irritation out through my legs.

The muggy night air clings to my skin as the harsh lights of the street lamps light up my route.

I can smell the well-kept gardens and fresh-cut grass.

The dogs I pass don’t even bark. The neighborhood I live in is nothing like Summer’s.

There’s no threat here. No danger of going out for a midnight run. She’ll like it when she moves in.

But first I need to find her boyfriend. I can’t have him hanging over her; the scumbag will try to weasel his way back into her life once he hears she’s living it up in some fancy neighborhood, in some rich fucker’s house.

I grew up with enough lowlifes like him to know he’ll never stop until he bleeds her dry and destroys every part of her he can.

My hands tighten into fists as I imagine them around his neck. Once I find him, no one else ever will.

But to do that, I need to find her phone.

It’s my only potential lead given there wasn’t a laptop at her house, and all of my searches for her on social media have come up empty. Which means she’s either paranoid about Big Brother, protective of her privacy, or has recently scrubbed all her accounts due to some ‘event.’

An event that caused her to drive too fast around that corner perhaps?

Fury burns inside my chest, growing with every step I take through my neighborhood. I should’ve found Summer sooner. I should’ve brought her here. I should’ve protected her from ending up with her shitty boyfriend.

Turning off my street, I cut through a park where the lights don’t reach, where the shadows stretch to swallow the secrets of man. The swings creak in the light breeze, and I slow to a stop in front of them. Sweat drips down my face and back, and I rest both hands on my sides, breathing deep.

A towel is tossed at me, thrown by a shadow I can barely see.

“Wipe yourself down,” Asher says. “I don’t want you stinking up the car.”

Rubbing the cotton across my face, I follow him to the vehicle he’s stolen for tonight – a dark-blue Fiat Panda. It’s parked under a tree, near a broken street lamp, and I use the towel to open the door so as not to leave any prints. Asher’s already wearing gloves.

I slide into the passenger seat while he slips into the driver’s. He doesn’t turn on the headlights as he slowly crawls away from the park.

The streets are empty, no riff-raff up at this time of night. No witnesses to later testify they saw us together. My pulse steady despite the risk of what we’re about to do, I peel my tank top off, dry myself with the towel, then do the same with my shorts.

Reaching for the clothes Asher left for me on the dash, I say, “I didn’t find her phone.”

“Not surprising.”

Annoyed, I pull on the black, long-sleeve shirt. I hoped he’d have a better response than that. Some advice perhaps on how to search –

A phone lands in my lap.

“What’s this?” I ask picking it up.

“A phone.”

“No, duh, dipshit. Is it hers?”

Asher shrugs. “No idea. Haven’t been able to get in.” A smile twitches at a corner of his lips.

My jaw clenches. “You fucker. I was out there for hours. You said it wasn’t logged.”

“It wasn’t. I went out and found it after your call last week. Count it as my birthday present to you.”

“That’s months away.”

“I can hold it until –”

I jerk the phone away from him as he tries to reach for it.

He laughs.

“Asshole.” I don’t mutter it.

He laughs harder.

“Finish getting dressed,” he says as I turn the phone on, but my eyes stay glued to the cracked loading screen.

“It’s fingerprint locked. You’ll have to wait until you see her.”

I still don’t move. Not until I see for myself that it is, in fact, locked as he says it is.

“What, did you think I was lying?” he asks, sounding wounded.

“You lied about having it.”

“You never asked if I had it.”

“Fucking semantics. You could’ve told me before I wasted half the night; I could’ve been napping.”

He laughs. “You decided to waste your day when you didn’t want to join me with those siblings,” he says, talking about the red convertible that sped past us. “They were twins, Rath.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“He didn’t think so when I had her suck him off. And she much preferred that than getting booked with the ecstasy they were trying to distribute around campus.”

Shaking my head, I give up. I grab the black cargo pants Asher brought for me and pull them on before slipping her phone into its pocket.

“Thanks for getting it,” I say. Despite how annoying he’s been about it, I am one step closer to finding her shitty boyfriend and making up for not being there when she needed me.

He doesn’t say anything, but I know how he feels.

Ever since I shot his father dead and staged the crime scene to frame one of mother’s boyfriends –easily enough given it was his handgun and we were all just a bunch of lowlifes that didn’t warrant a proper investigation– Asher feels like he owes me.

Especially since he feels guilty for not having done the same for me. I got raped three more times before we ran away together at fifteen. Part of the reason he went into law enforcement was so he could learn how to protect me.

He still thinks he’s in debt.

Regardless of how much I tell him he’s the one who saved me.

I never would’ve made it on the streets alone.

The Blood Fangs, one of the most violent and ruthless gangs in America, control this area.

They would’ve sucked me up and spit me out – probably in a bodybag.

Instead, I found a way to become a doctor, and now I live in a fancy-ass neighborhood.

In a house that is nothing like the one I grew up in.

Because Asher took the hits I should’ve taken on the streets. Now he’s a dirty cop working for the Blood Fangs. Working to keep me free.

And still, he thinks he owes me.

“You’re an idiot,” I say softly.

“Takes one to know one,” he says, but there’s no snark in it. Just a crushing amount of guilt.