Page 70 of Never Lost

“How’s this for living proof I’m a mensch?” Max asked before turning to Erica. “By the way, I’m sorry to hear about?—”

“She’s a fighter. Drive,” Erica cut him off, sliding into the back seat next to me and slamming the door.

“You heard her,” Max told Obadiah, who’d been grumbling unspeakable things under his breath nonstop since we got in the car. Max was treating him like a slave, of course, but for the first time in a while, I didn’t care. He’d earned it.

“Is this because you’re supposed to be dead?” I asked Erica.

“That, and because I’d rather not be spotted getting into a car with Max Langer.”

“You do know that most peoplebragabout knowing me, right?”

“Max and I have mutual friends in the abolitionist community,” Erica explained, ignoring him and turning to me, my legs curled up against her thigh on the tiny back seat. “But we’d rarely interacted, and frankly, when I found out you suspected him in Maeve’s disappearance, it didn’t surprise me in the slightest.”

“Translation: I’m rich, so I deserve to be eaten.”

Erica pressed her lips into a firm line that, if it was hiding a smile, none of us would ever be the wiser. “Anyway—” Her eyes shifted over to Obadiah warily.

“Stop the car, get out, and wait there until I let you back in,” Max said, turning to our reluctant driver. “Try to run and I put a bullet through the windshield and into your ass. In this neighborhood, I doubt anyone would notice another body on the sidewalk.”

Once he’d obeyed, Erica went on. “Max called some of those friends, and they directed him to me. As a result, both Maeve and Sloane showed up at Ivy’s house in an armored SUV about an hour or so ago. Sloane’s been freed, but she has nowhere to go, of course. And Maeve, well?—”

I remembered the conversation in the SUV. “Wheatley said that someone with an offshore?—”

“It was me,” interrupted Max.

“Oh.”

“Once again proving that the rich play by a different set of rules,” sniffed Erica.

Max groaned. “You see what I mean? Hell, I could strap on a breastplate and a sword and start calling myself Spartacus and it still wouldn’t be enough for your esteemed professor to stop sharpening the guillotine.”

“Well, I suppose Iamglad none of us was able to kill the sale,” Erica admitted. “Or Maeve would still be stuck in detention. But if she isn’t officially freed ASAP, you can bet Iwillsee that you’re eaten. With a knife and fork, if necessary.”

“Fair enough. Although buying a slave is hard enough to do through a shell company. Freeing one is even harder. They seem to tighten the laws every time I turn around. Now there’s a requirement for the owner to appear in person.”

“Can I see her?” I asked suddenly. “I trust you. I really do. But I want to see her, in case?—”

In case he asks. I want to be able to say I saw her safe, with my own eyes. And that I explained everything.

Erica seemed to understand. A second later, she had dialed Ivy. And there on the camera was Maeve, cuddled into the same sofa and blanket in Ivy’s filigreed garden room. She looked like, well, someone who had just spent two nights in jail—a jail where the guards were free to abuse the inmates with no repercussions whatsoever. Hunted, hollow, haunted. Hurt.

But alive. And her arm appeared to have been properly treated, at last, whether thanks to Ivy or someone else.

I closed my eyes.“Ça va, Maeve?”I asked, trying not to make a big deal about it.

“Oui,”Maeve replied softly.“Ça va.”Finally, she screwed up her face into some kind of a smile.

But it soon dimmed again, her eyes searching for something behind my right shoulder.Someone.

My heart broke. Shit.

“We’re on our way to your brother, Maeve,” I continued in halting French. “I promise.”

And we’d goddamn well better be because if I didn’t find him, well, that was my heartbreak alone. But I’d never forgive myself for breaking his sister’s heart, too. After all, he’d done his part. Crossed an ocean. Done the impossible for anyone under any circumstances, let alonethose. It was up to me now.

And Maeve had been through enough.

“And I promise you’re safe,” I continued in French.