Page 23 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

“No, no, NO.” I felt the blood drain from my face, struggling for any words that conveyed both “you’re wrong” and “fuck you for suggesting that” to someone I cared about as much as Erica.

“You don’t understand. What he told Resi that he was trying to do to Daddy was a lie .

To get us out of there safely. He didn’t mean it. ”

“But how can you be sure he didn’t lead you right into that trap?”

“Because he didn’t ,” I shrieked. Automatically, we both glanced over at Alma, who had collapsed into the deep cushions and drifted off to sleep at some point in the last few minutes, her hand partially over her face.

“He. Didn’t.” My heart was pounding as hard as if I myself were on trial.

Reels of the past night flew by in a daze.

What we’d said. What we’d done. What Resi had said about what we’d done.

Tell me how much you loved watching her ?—

“Lemaya did,” I burst out. “The same girl who gave Maeve the shit info that got you all almost caught.”

Erica stayed silent.

If I’d had the strength, I would have gotten up and hurled an antique glass swan across the room. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Not from you, of all people. You know him, Erica. We stayed in your—you let us—you trust him,” I finished helplessly. “You wouldn’t be helping him otherwise. Right?”

“My primary concern was Maeve and the other girls,” Erica said quietly, staring out into the distance as if there were anything—except for the stars—to be seen beyond the monotonous patchwork quilt of suburban lawns that pressed in on us.

I tried one more time. “Erica, he was conned. The same as we were. It was Lemaya. That’s why they caught up with you.

That’s why they chased you down, that’s why Maeve and Sloane were detained!

To try to pin this on him is—is—what about Maeve?

You said she was your primary concern. Are you going to look her in the face and say that about the brother that she’s spent years trying to fight her way back to? ”

Erica continued in an even quieter voice.

“Louisa, please calm down. I want to believe you. I do believe you. But not all slaves turn out to be heroes. Some of them have spent so long being oppressed and beaten down by the system that when they get a little power or freedom, they don’t know what to do with it.

” She softened her voice further. “And then they make the wrong choice.”

And all at once, I felt myself spiraling back to that stifling mausoleum of a room; felt that lurch of panic deep in my chest, while all of my blisters cried out with the memory of what had made them, of the blue lightning zapping the very thoughts from my head, of being unable to scream, of being unable to—I desperately reminded myself to concentrate on my breathing, or I knew Erica would make good on her threat to cut short the conversation.

And then I wouldn’t get the chance to prove her wrong.

“That’s exactly what she said. And that’s what she did.”

“Look, listen to me. It’s just another part of the terrible legacy of slavery, one all of us who’ve taken part in it, even involuntarily, have to eventually come to grips with.

It’s not personal. It says nothing about him, or about you, or your relationship, or your judgment.

It’s the system. But I would be remiss if I didn’t at least try to warn you that maybe he’s?—”

“ No ,” I cut in, and the fierceness in my voice seemed to hit Erica now, all at once. “He’s not her.”

“Louisa—”

“ He’s not her .” I swallowed the lump in my throat, my voice ragged and raw.

“I’m sorry about what happened. I am. I mean, look at me.

” I burst into tears again, gesturing down at my own body, unable to look at it myself.

Honestly, I couldn’t contemplate looking at it fully ever again.

“But he did not do this, and he did not say that. Resi did.”

The moment was cut short by a crash from beyond the circle of light on the veranda, followed immediately by crazed barking from Thalia, somewhere far away upstairs.

I froze, then scrambled up from the sofa so quickly I almost knocked over the delicately inlaid coffee table as it scraped against the aged floor tile.

Fear rose in my throat and in my chest. The house was well-hidden from the road, but that didn’t mean Resi’s guys hadn’t found us; they knew far too much to be sure any hiding place would remain secure for long.

Erica followed my lead, the two of us flanking each other as we scanned the darkness outside. The crash had come from the direction of the garage, but it was impossible to be sure.

“Do you have a weapon?” Erica whispered, and her hand reached for something tucked into her waistband. Erica? Armed? Then again, she wasn’t some flower child. She was a former militant radical and had spent years as a fugitive. No telling what she’d had to teach herself during that time.

I shook my head.

Erica exhaled hard and drew something from under her sweater—a slim, fixed-blade knife in a black micarta sheath, clipped discreetly inside her waistband.

Clearly used. She held it out to me. “Take it,” she said when I opened my mouth.

“Don’t argue. Just keep it on you.” Her voice trembled slightly.

“It’s not for show. If someone grabs you, you aim for soft spots and don’t stop. ”

I took it, stunned, my fingers curling around the solid weight of it. This wasn’t Professor Muller. This was someone who’d learned exactly what the world could do to a girl without a weapon.

And so had I.

“Meanwhile,” she said, “I’m calling Agent Wheatley. Now.”

I must have looked skeptical because she gave a little bless-your-heart smile as she took out her phone. “Louisa, do not even attempt to out-ACAB me because mark my words, you will lose. Anyway, this isn’t just any cop I’m calling. I told you, I trust this one.”

Still shaking, I waited until she ended her terse phone conversation. With no further movement from outside, we ventured gingerly back to where we’d come from. “But why is he so different?”

She sighed. “I can’t give too many specifics.

I don’t know too many specifics. He has his own cover to preserve.

But I can tell you his name’s Emmanuel Wheatley, and he’s been looking into Langer’s organization for some time, based on some of the same suspicions you had.

He only needed someone like Alma to help build his case. ”

“But what about Daddy?”

“If you tell them what you saw at the house, there’s a better chance of proving he’s not involved, and?—”

“No. There has to be another way.” If I spoke to the police, that meant confessing that I’d seen the one person I was forbidden to see.

And if my father got the blame for Resi’s crimes, he could very well end up paying with his money, with his reputation, or with his life.

But if he learned that the slave he still owned had crossed the line in the sand he’d drawn, I had no doubt he would find a way to make him pay first, and with everything.

“He—he has a plan.” He’d better have a plan. “ We have a plan. We just—we need more time.”

“Louisa, we don’t have more time.”

She was asking, like always, for the one thing none of us could afford. But hadn’t we always managed to make time—even just a minute—when it seemed there was none to make?

“Even just a minute.”

Erica let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a groan.

I glanced around the room frantically, my wits fully about me again for the first time in many hours. Where was my phone? I thought I’d seen it on a charger on the bathroom counter. Gritting my teeth, I began peeling myself off the sofa.

“But don’t you see that’s what Resi’s counting on?

If you talk to the police, yes, you’re endangering him and your father.

But if you don’t, you’re endangering us .

” Erica glanced meaningfully out to where we’d just come from.

At the perimeter of the impromptu safe house that we both knew could be breached at any time.

“ Alma, and Maeve, and Sloane, and now, the longer we stay here, Ivy, too. And—” She flicked her eyes upstairs.

“The kids,” I breathed. I’d seen what Resi and her helpers were capable of doing to adults. Putting them near children was unthinkable. “Fuck.”

“Do you see that this is beyond what we’re capable of doing on our own anymore? We need the police. And for that, we need Alma. But we also need you .”

I hiccupped. I now felt like the most selfish person alive. But I still wanted more time.

“Like it or not, Louisa, you and he started something that’s now bigger than both of you,” Erica explained.

“This may have all started when boy met girl, but now that others are involved, the calls aren’t all going to be yours to make.

Louisa—” Suddenly, her voice cracked. “Some people have sacrificed an awful lot for this.”

Her face had suddenly gone deathly pale. She tried to recover, but she’d slipped up, and she knew it. And I knew it, too. She’d lied.

Milagros was not fine. And Erica was not unbreakable.

“Erica—” I started, but she waved me away, turning her head. It was surreal.

It’s not that I really thought Erica couldn’t be vulnerable. Couldn’t be in pain. It was just that by now, I assumed she must have learned all the ways to cope that no one had ever taught me because no one had ever thought I’d go through anything hard enough to need them.

But how did anyone cope with this ?

“I always knew,” Erica said, taking off her glasses and dropping them on the delicately inlaid end table, “that she and I were on borrowed time. We were already so much luckier than we should have been, luckier than anyone should have been. This isn’t a world where people like us get to live in peace for very long.

In the end, they always come for you. They always make you pay the price.

But I just thought—” Her voice wavered as she swiped at her eyes desperately.

“I should have seen it coming. I should have?—”

“Why are you here , Erica?” I almost leapt up from the sofa again before reminding myself how much it had hurt the last time. “You need to be with her.”

Erica swallowed, fighting back control. “Milagros knows me better than anyone, and she knows—assuming she’s conscious, which I can’t be sure of—why I’m not with her.

That has to be enough. The story of slavery is one of endless suffering, and most of it we’re powerless to stop.

But this, we can.” She raised her head. “And that’s worth everything. ”

“Erica.”

She just blinked.

“You made a promise to Milagros, all those years ago, that you’d come back for her.”

She mostly didn’t move, but she raised her eyes, telling me to go on.

“I think you’d be the first to admit that she didn’t have any real reason to believe it, after what the world had put her through.

But she did. And you did. And—” I looked desperately around the room.

“And Ivy. Those kids had no reason to expect anything but more abuse from her. She literally inherited them, and she could have done anything with them, or to them. But she chose to love them.”

Slowly, Erica nodded.

“Well—I made a promise to him . And he promised to believe it.”

Amid the veranda, silent except for crickets, I watched Erica’s slim collarbone move up and down minutely as if, incredulously, it was now her who was struggling to breathe normally.

“You said you’re going back to this guy tomorrow morning, right?”

Erica nodded.

“Then give me that long. That’s all I ask. If I don’t figure out something by then, I’ll go with you.” I went for my phone.

“But, Louisa, what—” She stopped short as if something had occurred to her. “Wait a minute. Where’s Ivy?”

As if on cue, Ivy threw open the doors to the veranda and stumbled toward us, out of breath, her eyebrows, impossibly, even higher than they’d been before. “I don’t mean to scare anyone,” she said, panting. “But I think someone might know you’re here. I need to go check on the kids.”

“What? How do you know?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.

“After a night like this, I needed a cigarette, so I walked down to the end of the driveway,” Ivy confessed, noticing the looks she was getting.

“Do not tell the kids. Or my nursing professors. At least it’s not smack, okay?

Anyway, I saw a strange car parked down the street.

It gave me a funny feeling, so I kept an eye on it.

And then I saw someone get out and start walking toward the house. And I think he saw me.”

There was no way to tell whether the noise we’d heard was related. But it wasn’t necessarily not related.

“Ivy, where’s?—”

Wordlessly, Ivy handed me the burner phone, charged and ready, and with my hands as steady as they could be under the circumstances, I dialed a number I knew by heart, one I hadn’t intended to call that night, or maybe ever again. I turned back to Erica while I listened to the ringtone.

“Who are you calling?”

“I think if you can involve the cops, I can involve someone even worse than that.” I held up a hand when I heard the voice on the other end of my dad’s phone: a female voice.

The housekeeper. It wasn’t unheard of for her to take messages, but given the circumstances, it sent a chill right down into my bones.

“Miss Louisa. Thank heavens. Your parents have been?—”

“I need to talk to Daddy. Please,” I cut her off as politely as I could. “Where is he? Why isn’t he answering?”

“Sorry, miss, but he can’t come to the phone right now.”

“But why not? This is really important. He’ll want to hear from me.”

“I know he will, miss. He’s been desperate to find you. But still, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. He’s—he’s with other people.”

“Who?” I demanded, already knowing there was no possible answer that wouldn’t make the situation worse.

“The police.”