Page 30 of Restitution

I ignore her, even though I want to tell her to shut her fucking mouth.

Jason’s hold on me slackens. “She has a stepbrother. Christopher Fields. He kicked the shit out of her when he found out she was pregnant.” He slaps me when I stare at him. “Do you fucking hear me?”

He shakes me and slaps me again. “Are you listening to me?”

Another smack.

“Help me find that piece of shit,” he cries. “Fucking please.”

“Stop,” I say quietly.

But Bernadette hears me. “Stop what?”

I close my eyes, gritting my teeth until they hurt before I shove Jason away. “Go back,” I say. “Turn around and go fucking back.”

“I ordered you to kill him.”

I shake my head, trying to communicate with Jason to leave without speaking. I point behind him, stepping into his personal space, mouthing,Go back – please.I beg him with my eyes, fucking pleading for him to get the fuck away from me.

Frowning, he looks at me in confusion. “What?”

I sigh and hope the world forgives me as I clench my fist and smack him as hard as I can in the side of the head, knocking him clean out. He drops at my feet, and something cracks in my chest.

I’m so sorry.

I search for his phone and send Ewan his location. I want to say something else in the message, but I can’t risk them discussing it and Bernadette overhearing them, since they’ve already hacked the lodge’s system.

“Are you deaf?”

I roll my jaw a third time and shake my hand. It throbs fromhitting Jason too hard. “For once in your life, stop fucking talking, Bernadette.”

I’ll regret that later.

The text to my new phone comes twelve hours later.

StaceyNew:Where?

I lie on the couch in my apartment, half asleep, half buzzed from taking a line. The word is jumbled in random letters for a second, but when I focus, I can see it properly.

I glance up at the camera in the corner of the room with one eye screwed shut. As I sit up, the bag of ice slips from my ribs, my skin red from the coldness. I have bruises all over my face from Jason belting me with his fists.

Shirtless, I stand up straight and crack my neck from left to right, yawning as I stretch my arms above me. I didn’t mean to sleep – I knew the message would come, so I was icing my injuries while I waited.

Must’ve dozed off.

My place is bare. No decorations, no pictures hanging on the wall. If it weren’t for the dog bowls in the kitchen and the toys strewn across the living-room floor from the last time I had Milo and Hopper up here, someone would think it was unoccupied.

I miss the dogs. My mother’s been looking after them, but since she left to go to the lodge, the staff at the manor have been watching them. Milo seems lost, and Hopper keeps searching the grounds. Either for me or Stacey.

I hope the latter takes them when I die.

I lean on my kitchen counter, set a line out to calm my nerves and try to type back as I sniff it. It takes me ten attempts to spell the message correctly.

Me: Knew you’d come to your senses, Freckles.

Although I’d rather tell her I’m sorry and that I didn’t mean a fucking word I said, or to goddamn shoot at her, my messages are also being monitored. Bernadette thinks I’m actually going to kill Stacey to save my dad and Base.

A quick death. The ultimate sacrifice.