Page 6

C HAPTER 6

I f there was a threshold for the amount of caffeine that could be safely consumed in a single morning, I’d surpassed it hours ago. My eyeballs were vibrating. I didn’t sleep. I tossed and turned all night, thinking of Anthony and Portia, and then tried to compensate with my sister’s stash of organic fair trade dark roast.

Searching everything I could about Portia Slate and her bodyguard, I’d been to infinity and back. Nearly anything I could want to know about Portia, from her birthplace (New York) to her height (five-seven), from her favorite dessert (chocolate mousse) to her favorite vacation spot (Mykonos), waited online like a catalogue spread of oversharing. Despite a hefty social media presence (1.5 million Instagram followers), it wasn’t all coming direct from her; she’d been interviewed, quoted, photographed. There was no shortage of interest in her.

But her bodyguard, I couldn’t even find a name. He was nothing more than a blurred figure in the background of every photo. Surely, he had a family. Parents, if nothing else. But truly, I had no idea the kind of person who went into private security. Maybe he had no one to notice or mourn his death.

There was also the break-in at Anthony’s house last night. I had no idea what to make of it, but it couldn’t have been anything good.

It was a complex problem, but I solved complex problems all the time. It’s just a puzzle. As I sorted through the pieces, I realized something that usually helped with the hardest problems was going back to the beginning. So that’s what I did.

Portia’s disappearance might have been the true origin of it all, since it happened the furthest in the past, but as far as my involvement went, the catalyst had been Lou Griotti’s death. That’s what brought Anthony to town and moved him in next door. Without that, there never would have been an estate sale or a body in the closet. I would have spent Saturday splashing in Libby’s pool and lounging in the sun rather than being interrogated as an accomplice.

I shouldn’t have been surprised I couldn’t find an obituary for Lou online, but somehow I was. I still didn’t even know how he’d died.

Libby found me in the kitchen, guzzling coffee and rapidly blinking out the window, staring at his house in a trance. As per usual morning routine, she turned on the TV to a local news show and set about preparing breakfast.

“What’s up with you?” she asked.

My jitteriness must have been obvious. Perhaps it was my tapping foot or the mug of coffee threatening to spill in my shaky hand. “Nothing. I couldn’t sleep.”

She secured Ada in her high chair and deposited a small pile of Cheerios for her to immediately club with a fist and send scattering. “Well, maybe if you stop staring at the m-u-r-d-e-r-e-r next door, you could relax.” She glanced at Max as she spelled out the word.

He was too busy driving a small toy truck through the Cheerios obstacle course, which his sister had provided on the tabletop, to notice.

I took another sip of coffee I most certainly did not need, rather than respond. I’d come to a conclusion, and had been trying to figure out how best to approach telling Libby, because she would surely try to stop me. Unfortunately, the caffeine had robbed my brain of tact, and the words just fell out.

“I want to go to his funeral.”

She paused filling a sippy cup with orange juice and looked up. “What? Whose funeral?”

“Who do you think?” I said, and nodded toward the neighbor’s house.

She secured the cup’s lid and tipped it twice to make sure it wasn’t leaking before she handed it to Max’s outstretched hands. “They’re having a funeral? I thought Anthony was the only relative in contact with him.”

“He is . . . Wait. How do you know that?”

When my sister blushed, it was at a fraction of the intensity my face burned, but still. I saw a pink wave unfurl into her cheeks. “I may have asked Nicole what she knows about the case,” she said sheepishly.

“You did what?!” I squawked. “You talked to the detective’s wife and didn’t tell me?”

“Don’t yell at me! I’m not the one going over to his house late at night and getting snatched. My information gathering is much safer.”

My stomach bottomed out. I thought for a second she meant last night when I’d snuck out, but quickly realized she was referring to the night before when I confronted Anthony about the news story.

I poked my finger into a Cheerio and traced a figure eight on the tabletop, trying to sound casual. “What did you learn from Nicole?”

She cast a glance over her shoulder toward the neighboring house, as if Anthony might overhear, and then leaned in with a telltale glint in her eye. She was ripe with gossip and looking only the slightest bit guilty about it. “He’s a financial consultant from Manhattan. Single. No spouse, no kids. He and Lou were estranged from the family. Lou left him everything.”

I digested the information and realized Anthony had told me things he hadn’t told the cops. Or at least Detective Warner hadn’t told his wife, who then hadn’t told my sister. I wasn’t about to tell Libby the financial consultant part was a cover and Anthony and his uncle were a tag team of fixers who covered up crimes for other people, because the only way I could have known that was by sneaking into his house the night before and hearing it straight from his mouth.

“Did you happen to find out how Mr. Griotti died?”

Libby frowned, perhaps realizing that was still a hole in the story. “No. I’d heard it through the grapevine he’d passed, but never the reason why. Nicole said Daryl is really stressed. Especially with all this Portia Slate stuff happening so close. At least he’s not on that case too.”

Right then, and as if on cue, the morning news show returned from commercial break. The bubbly anchor, who was ten shades of perky blond, somberly narrated a headline that caught my attention.

“A new development in the Portia Slate missing person case this morning has authorities reconsidering what may have happened to the tech billionaire’s wife.”

My stomach dropped to my toes once more. I stopped breathing. I dove on the remote Libby had left on the island and turned up the volume.

“Authorities recombed the area around the Slates’ estate in Woodside,” the anchor continued. “After several hours, they found what they are calling the first big break in the case.”

My breath lodged in my throat again. Surely, they could not have found Portia’s body. The story would have been framed differently from the start if that was the case. Instead of dragging us along for mystery theater, they would have gotten to the point in the first sentence: Billionaire’s wife found dead.

I waited an excruciating few seconds for the reveal.

“Mrs. Slate was reported to have been wearing a pair of blue running shoes when she went missing last week. One of those shoes has now been found in the woods outside her home.”

The image cut to an interview with a hardened-looking, middle-aged man in a beige police uniform. Alan Prescott, San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office popped up in the bottom of the screen. He stood outside, under a copse of shady oak trees near the end of a gated driveway, and spoke into an invisible microphone.

“We combed these woods multiple times, but this is a large area. Even with our resources working around the clock, it’s entirely possible the evidence was overlooked until now.”

I could only imagine what Portia was doing in those woods that caused her to lose a shoe. Running from her husband? Running for her life? Maybe she tripped and there was a struggle, and her shoe came off. Maybe she took it off on purpose and left it behind as evidence because she knew she was going to die. Maybe she never made it out of those woods alive.

“At this point, we can’t be certain what the shoe means,” Prescott said onscreen. “But it does confirm that Mrs. Slate was, in fact, in these woods before she went missing.”

The image cut back to the news anchor. Her mouth set in a solemn line. “We will continue to report on this story as it unfolds. Of course we are all still hoping for the safe return of Mrs. Slate.” She looked down for two seconds, as if to cleanse her palate, before moving on to the next story.

“I wish they’d stop calling her Mrs. Slate, ” I said bitterly. “Or the billionaire’s wife. She was a person.”

“ Is a person,” I heard Libby say.

“What?” I turned to see her spreading Nutella on a piece of toast for Max.

“Portia Slate is a person. You said was. They don’t know if she’s dead yet.”

I bit back the urge to tell her I was almost certain Portia Slate was dead, her husband had killed her, and our new neighbor helped his uncle make it disappear. I glanced at Anthony’s house and felt a rage boil up inside me. I could go to Detective Warner and tell him everything. I could drive up to Woodside and knock on Prescott’s door until he listened to me. I could kick in Anthony’s door and demand he tell me the whole truth.

But none of that seemed likely to achieve anything.

Or...

I had another thought. One that suddenly made me feel alive with brazen power and terrified at once—both of which could have been caused by the caffeine.

I could do it. I could figure out what happened to Portia Slate and gather enough evidence for an irrefutable story someone would have to listen to. I could take it to the blond news anchor still narrating the day’s stories on TV. I could take it to someone at the Chronicle.

If no one else was going to stand up for Portia Slate, I could.

But I had to have more than a theory and a few anecdotes. I needed proof of something.

Movement out the kitchen window caught my eye. Anthony exiting his front door and heading for the Cadillac.

Surely, there was evidence of the cover-up inside his house. The thought of breaking in swam like a tempting little fish through my veins. But I knew that was a bad idea. There’d been a dead body in that house, and I knew he owned at least one gun. Not exactly the optimal candidate for my first breaking and entering. No. I would have to be patient. I would have to be smart. I would have to wait for an opportunity.

And the perfect opportunity was one day away.

“I am going to go to the funeral tomorrow,” I said definitively. I was banking on the fact there would be a reception at the house after.

Libby managed to sound completely judgmental in her silence.

I busied myself scooping up the Cheerios mess Ada had made. I started babbling in defense of myself. “I, for one, think it would be horribly sad to have no one show up to your funeral. If he was estranged from his family, it might only be Anthony there.” I didn’t let on Anthony had told me this would likely be true.

I risked a glance at her and could see the flicker of interest in her eyes. She was the one always pushing me to take more risks, be more adventurous. She didn’t know what I was up to, of course, but still. Saying no would be counter to her efforts. She rested her hands on her hips and sighed as she surveyed the chaos of breakfast with small children. It wasn’t too bad, all things considered. Ada was sticky with slobber and mushed Cheerios, but confined to her chair. Max’s hair was tangled in a nest, and he had Nutella and toast crumbs smeared cheek to cheek, but he was happily kicking his legs under the table and sipping his juice.

Libby turned to me with a resigned look on her face. “Well, I’d be remiss to let you go alone, so we’ll have to find a babysitter. And something black to wear.”

The next day, I borrowed heels from Libby; we had the same size feet, despite me being three inches taller. I’d dashed to a local department store for a tasteful black shift dress, because I didn’t have anything readily funeral appropriate in what I’d packed from home. I put in a pair of pearl earrings and painted my lips red.

Libby wore ballet flats with bows on the toes and a black A-line dress with cap sleeves. As we approached the church, she dabbed at the bodice of her dress with a tissue pulled from her enormous purse, trying to blot out a stain bequeathed by one of her children, but only succeeding in adhering tiny shreds of tissue to herself.

The old mission-style church and its accompanying courtyard took up a whole block on the outskirts of the trendy downtown area. A black iron fence marked its perimeter with slats crowded enough to look like pinstripes. A tall palm tree near the front steps swayed in the light summer breeze.

“Lib, come on. We’re late,” I said, and hurried up the sidewalk. The handoff with the babysitter had not gone as smoothly as hoped, hence the stain on Libby’s dress and our tardiness.

Libby scuffled along behind the hard clicks of my heels. “With all due respect, Pen, he’s dead and won’t know the difference.”

I cast her a glare and reached for the iron handrail bisecting the steps. We were two minutes late, and I hoped the absolute dearth of people outside meant the service had already started—and not that we were, in fact, the only guests to show up.

Sadness stung my chest at the thought of the latter. My throat tightened. A vision of Anthony sitting inside, alone on a pew, with his head solemnly bowed, made me ache.

I arrived at the front doors and reached for the old iron handle on one of the wooden panels. When I pulled it open, the distinct aroma of wood, leather, and candle smoke hit me in the face. The density of the air said the church was not empty and the warmth was due to a crowd of bodies huddled into the narrow space and not any kind of heating system.

I stopped at the edge of the vestibule and my mouth fell open.

“Holy sh—” Libby cut herself off right in time. She quietly cleared her throat. “I mean, wow. ”

Packed was an understatement. At least fifteen pews lined each side of an aisle, and each one was brimming with guests. Shoulder to shoulder, rows of bodies in black sat; some wore delicate fascinators, veils, or sunglasses. A few heads discreetly turned to see my sister and me arriving unfashionably late, and I swore I recognized the nighttime anchor from the local news station. Two rows behind him, unless my eyes were deceiving me, was a pro basketball player and his wife.

“Is that . . . ?” Libby said, pointing at someone nearby, as a priest in flowing white robes walked to the pulpit at the front of the room.

“Come on,” I said, and grabbed her arm. Midway up the church, I spotted open space at the end of a pew near the wall. I walked on my toes to stop my heels from clicking on the tile floor. Libby crept along behind me, gawking at the crowd, and mindlessly dusting the flakes from the tissue off her front.

“Excuse me,” I said to the man nearest the empty seats when we climbed in and sat down. He cast me a glance and did a brief double take, like he might recognize me, and I realized I’d forgotten to account for the fact everyone still thought I was Anthony’s girlfriend.

Damn it.

“Okay, I swear I just saw a celebrity chef and at least two influencers,” Libby gushed in what was hardly a whisper. She sat halfway on my lap as she tried to squeeze in next to me. She gasped. “Oh! And that’s—”

“Shhh!” I hissed, and batted down her hand she’d lifted to point at whomever she’d recognized.

She glared at me and leaned in close enough so her lips brushed my ear. “Okay, but please tell me you are aware we walked into a church full of famous people.”

An uncomfortable heat pushed up into my face. Most people were looking at us, given our late arrival and less than silent entrance. Covertly staring back at them to get a read on the room was no small feat. But Libby was right: Three out of every five faces I saw, I recognized. Nearly all of them were obscured behind a hat or sunglasses or a tall collar, as if they were trying to hide in plain sight. I wondered if there was some kind of code of silence for celebrities, and they were all sworn to secrecy that they were in attendance, simply by the nature of their fame.

Anthony had told me his uncle made bad things go away for people, and the types of people who got into the kind of trouble that needed to be fixed, and could afford the level of fixing Lou provided, were of a select demographic.

We were sitting not only in a church full of famous people, but a church full of Lou Griotti’s clients.

In a daze, I scanned the crowd for Anthony. From my current vantage point, all I could see were the backs of heads, but even from afar, I made out the set of his broad shoulders, the disheveled tumble of his dark hair. He sat in the front row nearest the aisle. It was an obvious place to look for him, but even if I hadn’t known where to find him, I would have known him by the outline of his shape. His normally rigid posture slightly dipped today; his head drooped. Despite everything else, he’d lost a family member—one of his closest, based on all accounts. And that was sad.

Libby suddenly clawed at my arm. “Oh, my God. What is he doing here?” she hissed, and nodded across the aisle. I followed her gaze to find a face that did not surprise me in the least.

And yet, I still stiffened at the sight of Connor Slate. He wasn’t in disguise. He wasn’t trying to hide, like anyone else in the room. He confidently sat between two men in black suits, and while most everyone else in the crowd leaned on a partner for support, the space beside him that should have been occupied by Portia Slate was most notably not.

The priest moved into reading a Bible passage, which I tuned out, as I stared a hole into Connor Slate. He sat, eyes forward, unfazed. I glanced at Anthony, also eyes forward and listening to the priest, and then up at the blown-up photo of Lou Griotti surrounded by billowing flowers and a shiny black urn on a pedestal.

Any doubt I had that it was all connected vanished. Portia, her bodyguard, Connor, Lou, and Anthony.

I swallowed a thick lump at the thought of what it all meant, when the sound of Anthony’s name drew my ears to the front of the church.

“And now, Anthony Pierce, Lou’s nephew, would like to share a few words.”

Anthony rose from his pew and buttoned his suit jacket. He nodded at the priest before he walked up to the pulpit and faced the crowd.

I sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of him in his suit and tie. He was striking. It was the first time I’d seen him wear anything other than all black, and the white shirt beneath his jacket brought out a rosy flush to his cheeks. His dark eyes roved over the audience, landing nowhere, until they found me. He’d opened his mouth to speak, but stopped as if he’d stumbled. For a second that lasted a lifetime, he stared at me with a vulnerability I hadn’t seen before. It was plain and raw on his face, and the sympathetic urge to run to the front of the church and hug him hit me with enough force that I had to recross my legs and remind myself he was involved in a murder cover-up.

The moment passed, and he gazed out at a distant point in the back of the room as he began speaking.

“Thank you all for coming today.” His voice came out rough and thick. Like gravel in a tumbler. He cleared his throat and started over. “Thank you all for coming today. My uncle Lou would have appreciated it, though he would have died before admitting it.” He softly laughed at his own pun, which sounded unplanned, as a few chuckles tittered around the room. The flush in his cheeks grew deeper. “Sorry.” He smoothed a hand over his jaw, as if trying to wipe the smile from it. “No, Lou was never one for much outward affection. He kept his heart close. He and I are a lot alike in that regard. And if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have had much of anyone in this world. He was the kind of guy who showed you what you meant to him through actions. I don’t think any of you would be here today if you didn’t know that.” Another titter and some nods of agreement.

“Listen, I’m not a man of many words, but I will say this: My uncle Lou was there for me when I didn’t really have anyone else, and that kind of loyalty leaves an impression. I would have done anything for him.” He paused for a brief second as he looked out over the room. If I wasn’t mistaken, his eyes landed directly on Connor Slate. “And I still will.”

Several members of the crowd stirred, adjusting their posture and clearing throats. I couldn’t tell if it was his delivery or their reaction, but the words landed like a threat.

Anthony turned to the photo of his uncle and pressed his fingertips to his lips. He then touched the photo and muttered, “Love you, Uncle Lou” before he walked down from the pulpit.

He returned to his seat, and the priest asked everyone to stand and turn to a page in the hymnal to join in a song.

I soundlessly mouthed the words and then listened to a few prayers. At the end, the priest announced there’d be a private burial of the ashes back in New York at a later date, but a reception would be held at Mr. Griotti’s house immediately following today’s service, and all were invited. I silently celebrated the victory and realized my plan would work out better than I’d hoped if even half of the people in the church showed up to the house. The distractions would be overflowing.

As soon as the service ended, Anthony moved like a black flash and hurried out a side door to disappear.

“Okay, who the hell was this guy?” Libby whispered, still swiveling her head around the room. “I mean, no family, but a funeral full of famous people and billionaires?”

“Yeah, it’s strange,” I muttered in a serious understatement, and to shield the fact I had the answer to her question. “How long do we have the babysitter for?”

Libby checked her smartwatch with a flick of her wrist. “Two more hours.”

“Great. Plenty of time,” I said, and headed toward the doors in the throng of people.

“Plenty of time for what?” Libby called after me, but I didn’t answer.

The old Victorian bustled with guests. It was ten times as crowded as the estate sale had been. People floated in and out from the kitchen and dining room, which were littered with food and drinks. They perched on the sofas in the living and sitting rooms. Conversations bubbled; reserved laughter burst out. It felt like half funeral reception and half Hollywood party. I was grossly mistaken about no one showing up to Lou Griotti’s service.

And I was also mistaken in my hope Anthony had cleared up the rumor we were a pair. More than one stranger squeezed my arm and muttered condolences, thinking I was an extension of the grieving nephew. Several others eyed me from a distance, as if staring at me would help them understand how someone like me would end up with Anthony Pierce. I did my best to ignore all of it.

To my despair, the gathering remained contained to the ground floor. No one had ventured upstairs, and though my curiosity to snoop kept tugging me toward the staircase with the force of gravity, I didn’t want to be the one to commit the faux pas.

By the time my sister had had two glasses of champagne and was bonding with an A-list actress over the rare chance to be away from their children, I saw an opportunity to escape down the hall. The crowd remained concentrated to the front of the house in the rooms designed for company. I doubted anyone would be hanging out in the back corner room, unless it was Anthony vying for a moment of peace, but I made sure he was deep in conversation with a handsome woman, who looked like a local mayor, before I snuck off into the caverns of his house.

On reflex, I shuddered when I passed the closet with the green doorknob. The door at the end of the hall leading onto the back porch was still boarded up from the break-in, a second memory that made me shudder. I shook off the bad energy from both and turned to the last door on the left of the hall.

The office was an obvious place to start. Surely, the safe had been emptied of whatever it had held, but the rest of the room might have still contained useful information.

I was thankful to find the door unlocked, even though it was shut. When I entered, I closed the door behind me and glanced around. I bypassed the desk, which held only a set of gold pens, a glass paperweight, and last month’s issue of Forbes on top of it, and crossed the room to the painting. Behind it, the safe was closed—of course it was—and up close, I could see scratch marks from where Anthony must have tried to open it with the crowbar.

“What were you hiding?” I whispered. I poked the keyhole and wished I hadn’t surrendered the key.

With a sigh, I turned back to the desk. Inside the top drawer, I found an assortment of pens, a roll of stamps, paperclips, a bankbook. I picked up the bankbook and flipped it open.

“Whoa!” I blinked at the figures I saw inked into the grid of boxes. Forget selling the house. Anthony was set for life if he, alone, had inherited his uncle’s money. I scanned a few pages, in case there was a deposit from Connor Slate in a sum worth fixing his wife’s murder, but nothing obvious jumped out.

I replaced the book and opened another drawer. This one held a hole punch, an old computer mouse, and a box of envelopes. As I shuffled through the flotsam and jetsam of boring office products, I realized anything incriminating would likely be locked up. Based on the clientele in the living room, I figured Lou Griotti probably had an encrypted hard drive full of information that could sink the careers of every person out there—if not land them in jail too. I doubted he tended toward carelessness in his line of work.

“Damn it,” I muttered, and closed the drawer.

The only other place in the room to look was the closet, where Anthony and I had hidden.

I turned the old brass handle to open the door as I shivered at the memory of being crammed inside it.

The space was very small, as I knew from experience. Other than the hanging suit jackets, it held a row of shoeboxes on a shelf and the filing cabinet that had dug into my thigh when we were hiding.

“Bingo,” I said, and knelt in front of it.

I pulled open a drawer and scanned the labeled tabs sticking up like tiny flags.

Tax returns. House maintenance. Car info. Utilities.

Lou Griotti did keep meticulous files, but about mundane things. Even if there was some secret code in his notes on landscaping or a cryptic money trail in his tax returns, it would take me days—weeks, even—to find it.

I shoved the drawer shut and stood with a huff.

Feeling like my plan may have been in vain, I reached for the shelf above the coats and grabbed a shoebox.

Shoes. A pair of men’s loafers, which looked like they’d been worn maybe once.

I put it back on the shelf and reached for the next one, right as I heard the office door open.

I jerked in surprise, both at getting caught and at what I saw in the box.

A single blue running shoe. Women’s size 8.

The ground felt like it shifted beneath my feet. The world stood on end. I hardly had time to register I was holding Portia Slate’s other shoe, and had found the evidence I’d come for, before someone spoke.

“Are you lost, Dr. Collins?”

I whipped around at the sound of the voice.

A vaguely familiar-looking man stood in the office doorway with a sinister grin on his face. An uncomfortable sensation at the sight of him, some unconscious knowing, made me take a step back closer to the open closet.

I clutched the shoe, like it somehow might protect me. “I . . . um . . . no,” I muttered, trying and failing not to sound nervous.

He stepped farther into the room and kept grinning.

“You aren’t?” he said in an unsettling purr. “The gathering is out in the front of the house.”

Seeing him against the backdrop of the old Victorian, the darkly paneled walls, the shiny wood floor, I suddenly knew where I recognized him from.

“You were there that day. The day of the estate sale,” I said as the pieces slid into place. He was the man with the tweed jacket in the foyer examining the table when Libby and I walked in—and the man leaning on the car outside Libby’s house the day the reporter showed up.

“Indeed,” he said.

I took another uncertain step back as I tried to reason why he’d been at the estate sale, outside Libby’s house, and was now here, at the reception, calling me by my name. The pieces were oddly shaped, and the thread running through them sounded an alarm deep in the most primitive part of my brain.

He must have read the confusion on my face. “I work for Mr. Slate,” he said.

My entire body turned to ice in an instant. He knew what I was doing. He knew I knew what his boss had done and was here to stop me. An instinct told me to run, but he was blocking the door, and I had nowhere to go.

I shifted my weight onto my back foot, trying to look casual. I was still wearing Libby’s borrowed heels and would very much have liked to swap them for the running shoe in my hand. If only I had its mate. “What do you do for Mr. Slate?” I asked.

He smiled at me again, a chilling and sinister grin, with only his lips, that made me take another step back. There was hardly anywhere to go, unless I climbed back into the closet, and I didn’t have a large man as a shield this time.

“Tie up loose ends. Mostly,” he said.

My body froze over again. Standing there with Portia’s shoe in my hand, I couldn’t have been more of a loose end if the words were tattooed on my forehead. Desperate, I said the only thing I could think of.

“Anthony knows I’m back here.”

This put a pause in his approach toward me. “Does he?”

I fought to sound brave again. “Yes. He’s going to come looking for me.”

To my equal-parts confusion and despair, this only seemed to make him happier. “I’m counting on it.”

Then he lunged at me.

He was large enough that I couldn’t easily get around him. With the desk on one side of me, and the open closet on the other, my options were limited.

His hand closed around my wrist, and in a reactive move of equal force, I swung the shoe at his head.

“Let go of me!” I shouted as the rubber heel bounced off his temple.

He reeled back, but only slightly, as if he was used to taking blows to the head. “You’re going to put up a fight, aren’t you,” he growled.

I swung at him again, but he blocked my attack while still holding my other wrist. In a flash, he swung his own arm around to his back and pulled a gun out from under his jacket. I instantly stopped struggling and stared at the black beady eye of the barrel pointed at me. My heart was beating so hard that it had nearly stopped.

“You can either walk out of here with me, or I can carry you out, but either way, you’re coming with me. Now.”

My brain tried to calculate the steps to the door; a pattern of moves to get around him; the correct words to scream for help— something to save myself. But with a gun pointed in my face, the best my brain could summon was standing frozen and gaping in disbelief.

“Good girl,” he said at my apparent acquiescence. He tugged on my arm to get me to walk, and it snapped me back to life.

A primitive roar ripped out of me as I swung for his head again in one last desperate attempt.

He ducked with a huff, dodging it, and then gave me an annoyed look. “I guess we’re going with option two, then.”

The gun came flying at my head before I even blinked. It whacked my temple with a sickening crack.

And then everything went dark.