Page 115 of Make Them Bleed

I stand to go, to step to the side, to slide toward the aisle where Arrow will appear like a magic trick at exactly the right second. I textinside. I texttwo men. I textdoor.The dots appear and freeze, like the network decided to take a nap.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, which is adorable because two seconds later I do.

Coleman steps in, close enough that I can see the beveled edge on his ring. He smells like expensive cologne and sin. “We’re just going to talk,” he says, as if that word means anything when it comes in a suit.

I open my mouth to saynoloud enough to rattle glass. His hand moves. Not to my throat—he isn’t middle-management. To my elbow. His grip is polite and iron. The man with the crate sets it down with a thud that makes the teenager look over with annoyance while the other opens the side door that leads to the loading alley where vans park and romances go to die.

“Don’t,” I say, and the word comes out very small.

“Juno!” Arrow’s voice cracks the air from the front door. “Juno!”

My name ricochets around the shop and knocks a windchime into a nervous little song. I shove at the fabric, sucking scentedair, grab for the edge of a shelf and knock a vase that will definitely be on my conscience later. Hands—two? three?—close around my arms, my waist. My feet leave the ground.

“Be gentle,” Etta says, cool as ice water. “She’s useful alive.”

I don’t get to hear the rest. The door to the alley swallows me whole and the jacket smelling like someone else’s money clamps down while the world tilts. Fingers press into my ribs; something hard nudges my shin; my heel connects with someone’s ankle and he swears softly in a language I can’t place.

“Juno!” Arrow again, closer, then muffled as someone does something to the door or the air or the rules. A car door slides open. A body shifts. A voice saysnowlike it’s the end of something and the beginning of something else, and then the hood cinches and the world goes quiet.

I am picked up and packed away like a vase, like an apology, like a girl who will not be allowed to write her own exit.

38

Arrow

I wake to motion and diesel. My wrists burn. Plastic bites into my skin. There’s a hood over my head and a zip tie cutting circulation at my thumbs. Someone’s shoulder is jammed against mine.

“Juno,” I say, in a low voice. “I’m here.”

She answers through fabric. “Arrow?”

“I’ve got you.” I test the restraints. Ankles tied, hands behind the chair. Chair is metal, bolted down. Floor hum says van. The air says river.

The ride stops. Doors slide. Boots on metal. Hands on my arms. We’re hauled out and walked fifteen steps. The air snaps colder, and rope knocks against a mast. Water slaps the hull. We’re at the marina.

“Steps,” a man orders. His accent is local. He guides my toe to a step and we go up, then down, then through a doorway that changes the sound in my ears. Has to be a cabin.

They sit me in another crew chair. Juno is set next to me. I hear the scrape of her boots. I lean toward the sound.

“Breathe with me,” I tell her. “In for five. Out for five.”

She does it. I do it with her. My pulse stops roaring.

The hood comes off. Light stings. We’re in the main salon of a yacht—white leather, lacquered table bolted to the deck, galley to port. Through the window, I catch the slip number:D4. The name on the stern readsLAUREL NINE.

Juno blinks against the light. Her wrists are zip-tied in front, ankles to chair legs. Her face is pale, jaw locked. She looks at me first, then scans the room.

Three men. Two wear boat jackets and carry themselves like hired muscle. One of them I recognize from Stonehouse. The third wears a navy blazer and a smile I know from a hundred boring family dinners.

Bob.

For a second my brain refuses to make the pieces fit. Then it does, and the click is loud in my head.

Etta Hoy steps in behind him, coat open, hair neat, expression like an accountant. She closes the hatch behind her and gives us a polite nod, as if we’ve arrived for a meeting she scheduled.

Juno’s voice is calm in a way I don’t like. She’s looking at Bob. “You.”

Bob spreads his hands, like a pastor starting the part where he asks for money. “Kiddo,” he says. “I told your mother we were making things right.”