Page 17

Max

"How far out are they now?”

"A half-hour," Maya replies, her voice taut. "You sure this is a good idea?"

I sigh, running a hand through my hair. She’s got every reason to be worried.

Sending someone down to the cabin could open us up to the people who have been following us, and I am distinctly aware of that.

But we can’t get by much longer on what we have here, and I need to stock up our supplies and touch base.

And, more than that, I need to get someone else in this place to cut the tension that has been filling it like heavy smoke since the revelation a few days before.

When I told Cara about her father, what his business actually is and the people it involves, I could tell that I had made a mistake.

She doesn’t believe me, refuses to. I’ve brought food for her every day since, and she has snatched the plate out of my hand without another word, hardly so much as making eye contact with me.

"Yeah, I’m sure," I reply.

"What’s going on?”

Maya’s blunt tone cuts through the bullshit in my mind. She might be the youngest of the three of us siblings, but she’s the most intuitive, always picking up on whatever is going on inside my head.

"Nothing."

"Yes, there is," she shoots back. "Tell me. Or I’ll come there myself and find out."

I smirk slightly. I wouldn’t put it past her. Maya’s a fiery girl, and she’s willing to say exactly what’s on her mind.

"It’s fine," I reply. "Just been out here by myself for too long. Looking forward to seeing Max and Veronica, that’s all."

"Yeah, I don’t know how long I would be able to put up with that princess," Maya sighs, and I can almost picture the way she would toss her hair over her shoulder when she says it. She might not like to admit it, but I get the feeling she’s more similar to Cara than she’d like to admit.

"I’ll speak with you soon," I promise her. "I don’t want to stay on the line too long."

"Good call," she replies. "You need anything, you know where to find us, right?”

"Yeah. Speak later, Maya."

"Speak soon."

She hangs up the phone, and I am suddenly cast into silence, standing there in the kitchen.

I shoot a look towards Cara’s door, and I’m not sure whether I’m willing her to come out or stay right there.

I’m sure that she’s got a whole lot she’d like to say to me, but she has been keeping it under wraps since her outburst a few days before.

She doesn’t believe me. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise. How could she? This is her father I’m speaking about, and no matter what he’s put her through, their bond is still there.

I wouldn’t take something like this about my father without some kind of protest, and no matter how much evidence we have pointing to being right, she’s not going to just roll over and take it.

I glance towards her door; she has been hiding in there for what feels like forever now, and I doubt that she’s going to try to come out and show her face again anytime soon.

She thinks I’m some kind of liar, spinning stories to try and make her father look like a horrible person.

The truth is, there’s nothing I could do to make him seem any worse than he already is.

It’s just a matter of whether or not she believes me, and I know she doesn’t.

Veronica being here might change things.

There’s a reason I have specifically requested Veronica to be the one to drop off supplies.

Of everyone who works with my father, she is the one who has seen the gritty hell that Cara’s father puts people through.

Veronica might have been able to escape him, but the same couldn’t be said for so many of the other people who were trapped in the same situation.

It kills me to know that there are dozens still out there who never got a chance to see the outside world, to know that there were people out there who would care for them if given the chance.

I push a hand through my hair, letting out a sigh, and head to the shower. My brain is a scrambled mess right now, so stuffed full of questions and doubts I hardly know where to start.

My phone buzzes again, and I glance down at it. It's my father’s number, much to my surprise. Frowning, I grab for it, lifting it to my ear and trying to figure out what is going on.

"Everything okay?”

He sighs, that rush of static straight into my ear.

"I just got off a call with your sister. She said there was something going on with you."

I rub a hand over my face. I should have known that Maya would mention something. She thinks she’s helping me, helping keep the mission on track, but she’s just creating more drama where there doesn’t need to be any.

"There’s nothing going on, Dad. I’m fine."

I can tell that he doesn’t believe me—the long silence says more than words. It’s not that he doesn’t trust me, I know he does, but rather that he knows as well as I do how quickly all of this can go to shit if I’m not being careful. I can’t afford to be distracted.

"What’s going on with her? The Leone girl?”

"Cara?"

I can practically hear the flinch down the line.

In all this time, he has referred to her as the Leone girl— nothing more than part of our plan, a way to pull all of this together.

If he calls her by her name, I suppose, he’ll have to acknowledge that he’s ripped someone away from their real life—that he isn’t so different in this way from the man we are trying to take down.

It’s not a flattering comparison, and he knows it.

"Yeah, Cara."

"She’s fine."

"Fine, fine, fine," he mutters. "That’s all you can say. I know when you’re keeping something from me. I know?—"

"Dad, you’re paranoid," I shoot back. "You know how Maya gets. Starts seeing ghosts where there aren’t any."

He pauses.

"You’re right," he concedes, though I can tell he doesn’t like admitting it. "But she’s alright? Nothing going on with her? She hasn’t been giving you too much trouble?”

I hesitate for a moment before I respond.

I could tell him, of course, about the escape attempt she tried to pull on me the other day.

But there’s no point. All it’s going to do is stress him the fuck out, and he’s going to freak and think that I can’t handle this.

But I can. I will. Nothing is going to stop me.

"No trouble," I reply, mustering as much certainty as I can. "She’s just stayed in her room. I’ve hardly talked to her."

Another beat of silence. He is analyzing my words right now, trying to figure out if I might be trying to hide something from him. I realize, all at once, that I am holding my breath.

"Good," he mutters. "Get in touch when Veronica arrives, okay? I want to know that she’s made it there in one piece."

I let out the breath.

"Yeah, I will," I promise him. "I’ll speak to you soon, Dad. Bye."

I hang up the phone. I don’t know what he made of everything in that conversation. But he seemed satisfied with my answers, vague as they were.

I make my way towards the shower until I feel the phone buzzing once more in my pocket. Without thinking, I snatch it up and lift it to my ear.

"Dad, what is it?” I demand, a little more sharply than I intended.

But instead of hearing his worried tones down the line, I am met with a sudden and distinct silence.

A shiver runs up my back—fuck. Is it him?

I pull the phone away to check the number, and it’s blocked.

My heart leaps in my chest. Someone has intercepted the burner phone’s number—someone is probably tracking my location.

I hang up the call at once and dump the phone on the counter, striding off towards the bathroom before I can overthink things. The last thing I need is for someone to catch wind of where we are, especially with things between Cara and me being so tense.

I need to think, restrategize, and hope the anti-hacking software on the burner phone is successfully blocking our location.