Page 49 of Luck of the Devil

“I’m sorry,” I said, sinking back into the seat and staring out the windshield. “I know you’re not trying to keep me drunk. That was an asshole thing to say.”

“It’s not easy gettin’ sober.” He shot me a glance. “It’s not easy stayin’ sober. Soon, you’ll take it one day at a time, but right now, you’re takin’ it one minute at a time. Maybe even one second. Yeah, you’re gonna need shots to get through this, maybe more than you feel comfortable with, but think about how much you were drinking before. We both know it was a lot. Your body’s addicted to it, so you’ll just have to baby yourself until it’s ready to give it up.”

I slowly shook my head, silently berating myself for putting myself in this position.

“You sure you don’t need a drink?” he asked quietly.

“No. I know my hand was shaking, but I promise it was because of something else. See?” I held out my hand, relieved when it held still.

He shot a quick glance in my direction, then turned back to road. “You slept like shit last night and you look exhausted. The cell phone coverage sucks for the next hour, so it’s not like you can get much work done on your mother’s laptop. I’ll wake you up when the coverage is better.”

I nearly protested, but he was right. I felt like I could sleep for a week, and I knew from firsthand experience how shitty the cell phone coverage was, so I settled back in the seat.

“That was easier than expected,” he said with a chuckle.

“While I may have gone along with your orders this morning, don’t get used to it,” I said in a firm tone. “I’m not one of your employees you can just boss around.”

“I never said you were,” he said, but without the bite I’d expected. “But we both know sleep’s the best thing for you right now. It’ll help clear your head, so you’ll be ready to see your grandparents.”

I chose to ignore that it was another order and closed my eyes. As I drifted off to sleep, I tried to remember a single time my old boyfriend Keith—or any other man—had taken care of me. I couldn’t come up with a single instance. It used to make me feel independent.

Now it just made me feel sad.

Chapter 14

I wasn’t sure how long it took me to wake up, but I stirred a few times, only to fall back asleep. Finally, I opened my eyes and took a moment to orient myself to my new reality. To being here with Malcolm, on our way to see my grandparents after all those years.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked softly.

I took a second to assess. “I have a headache, and my stomach feels gross, but … better?”

He grinned. “I told you that you needed sleep.”

He was right, but I didn’t want to admit it.

I glanced out the window, seeing nothing but countryside. “Where are we?”

“We’re about an hour out of Jonesboro.”

Anger surged me. I jerked upright and the throbbing in my head intensified. “You said you’d wake me after an hour! I could have been working!”

His brow lifted slightly, and he jerked a gaze toward me for half a second before focusing back on the road. “And how do you feel?”

I gritted my teeth. “That’s beside the point.”

He smirked. “What’s done is done. You’re awake now, and we have decent coverage to connect the laptop to a hotspot on one of our phones.”

It wasn’t worth a fight, especially since I did feel better. With a sigh, I reached for the laptop at my feet, then placed it on my lap.

“You missed a couple of calls and a few texts,” he said, pointing to my phone in the console.

I picked it up and checked the screen, wondering who would be calling me. Either Louise or my dad, because there really wasn’t anyone else. Only the calls weren’t from either of them. Both were from the same phone number. It looked familiar, and it took a moment to recognize it as the cell number Mason Deveraux had called me from last week.

His calls were an hour apart. Dread burrowed in my gut. Why was a man as busy as the lead prosecutor for the attorney general of Arkansas putting so much effort into calling me when I was the one who’d contacted him?

I flipped over to my messages and saw that Becky Comstock had sent me several texts, each one with a video clip, only the thumbnails were gray images that had the videos’ numeric labels rather than images.

“My neighbor came through,” I said.