Chapter 13
JUDAH
Amelia was being far too amicable for someone who had just been abducted.
I had kidnapped plenty of people and even kept a pair of earplugs on hand should such an occasion arise.
The constant screaming and “please don’t kill me!” was always rather taxing.
But there she was—sitting in the front seat, ankles crossed, pretty as a picture.
She was up to something. I just didn’t know what.
The truck rumbled as I navigated the mess of highways that would get us out of New Jersey. Not that crossing the state line would protect us from John Valentine, but the first rule of self-defense is to make space. The more space, the better.
I glanced at Amelia out of the corner of my eye. She was just . . . sitting there. She wasn’t looking out her window. She was staring straight ahead, as if she was the one driving.
Why isn’t she freaking out?
Why isn’t she asking questions, like where I’m taking her or what’s happening to her brother or how long we’ll be gone?
Does she know more than she’s letting on?
I squeezed the steering wheel as I tried to figure out what was going on in that brilliant head of hers.
I had read all the articles, news pieces, and interviews. I knew everything there was to know about the genius in my passenger seat and her eidetic memory. Usually, knowing more about the subject than they knew about me gave me the upper hand.
But with Amelia Hawthorne, I wasn’t so sure.
Her silence was unsettling, and I was never unsettled.
Did she think I hadn’t done a good job? I’d seen some sloppy kidnappings over the years. Nausea aside, Amelia had gotten a premium abduction experience.
The glow of light from passing cars, exit ramps, and buildings danced across her features. Her long lashes cast shadows across her high cheekbones.
She was simply . . . pretty. Like daisies in a meadow full of tall grass. Delicate. Graceful. Sweet.
Far too beautiful and pure for the darkness she had found herself in.
I looked back at the road, but still, she didn’t move.
She wasn’t frowning. She wasn’t smiling.
She held the most neutral expression I had ever seen.
I could read anyone. I knew the twitch at the corner of someone’s mouth meant contempt.
The pull of someone’s temples could be surprise or irritation, depending on the context.
Dilated pupils were always a dead giveaway of deception or arousal.
But not with Amelia. She was as neutral as a blank piece of paper. There was absolutely nothing to pull apart and dissect.
Her sky-blue eyes turned to stormy gray as midnight crept closer and closer to dawn. I glanced at the clock to see how much time I had before Valentine realized I wasn’t coming back.
I had only made this drive a handful of times, but I had committed it to memory for this very reason.
I glanced at the clock again. If I kept on the normal route, we’d get stuck in the bottleneck of Friday morning DC traffic. I flicked the turn signal, checked the mirrors, and made a cautious lane change to circumvent the north side of Baltimore and skirt the Maryland-Pennsylvania border.
Avoiding major cities meant avoiding traffic cameras that tracked license plates. Wearing sunglasses at night to hide my face would have been suspicious as hell, but as soon as the sun was up, they’d be on my face and both of our visors would be down.
“You drive like my grandma and she’s dead.”
Amelia’s quip nearly made me jump. She hadn’t spoken since we left the airport lot. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was expecting the first thing she said to be, but it sure as shit wasn’t her ragging on me for being a safe driver.
“Problem?”
She shrugged. “I’m just saying. Shouldn’t you be driving with . . . urgency?”
I shifted my hands back to ten and two. “It’s best not to commit additional crimes when committing a crime.”
Amelia peeled her eyes away from the road and studied me. It took every ounce of resolve to not look at her. “Riiiiight,” she said with a droll disbelieving hum.
I squeezed the wheel again, keeping my eyes trained on the road as I merged. When I settled in the right lane, Amelia spoke up again.
“Why didn’t you put me in the trunk?” she asked.
“Trucks don’t have trunks.”
“The trunk of the car that you blew up.”
“Disposed of.”
“Semantics.”
I huffed. “Because you strike me as the type to kick out the taillights and flag down help.”
“Because I’m being kidnapped,” she said, studying me with narrowed eyes, as if she was clarifying what was happening—not arguing about it.
I rolled the term around in my head and decided against using that particular piece of the English language. “You’re being proactively relocated.”
“Against my will.”
“That’s where the proactive part comes in.” I peeled my eyes away from Amelia as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Are you going to be sick again?”
“No,” she mumbled. “But I think I started my period.”
“Do you have any pads or tampons with you?”
“I did, but you blew up my bag,” Amelia sassed. “Remember?”
She pointed at a sign that marked a slew of gas station options at the next exit. “Can we stop?”
My gut said no. We needed to keep going. We needed to put more distance between us and Atlantic City. We needed to cover as much ground as we could under the cover of darkness. Besides, gas stations had security cameras.
But I couldn’t exactly say no . . .
I bit back an irritated huff and flipped on my turn signal. “Open the glove box.”
For a fleeting moment, Amelia actually looked annoyed. But as quickly as the expression came, it was gone. She opened the glove box as I circled the exit ramp. Her shock as she pulled the box of tampons out was palpable.
“Why on earth do you have an entire box of tampons in your super-secret backup vehicle?”
“Because they’re sealed, sterile, and incredibly convenient for packing gunshot wounds.”
She arched an eyebrow. “And you’ve had experience packing gunshot wounds with tampons?”
“Yes,” I said simply as I sat at a red light before turning right onto a street with two major gas station chains and a mom-and-pop store.
John would assume I went to the run-down, poorly lit store, so I went with the second chain station and parked by the back door, next to an employees only sign.
“Keep your head down,” I said as I unbuckled.
Amelia’s lip curled in disgust. “You’re not chaperoning me while I go to the bathroom.”
“I am,” I said. “We shouldn’t stop, but I did. This is called compromise. Get used to it.”
If she had really started her period, she’d argue but go anyway. If she was bluffing, she’d make an excuse for us to keep going to another stop.
But Amelia climbed out of the truck, tampon in hand.
We walked calmly toward the side entrance of the store. I yanked the door open and held it for her as I kept my head on a swivel. The moment the clerk clocked us, I kissed the top of her head and said, “Do you want a snack, sweetheart?”
Amelia stiffened.
Come on, little fox. Play along.
Her eyes scanned the rows of snack cakes, chips, candy, and sodas. “Chocolate and salt.”
“Chocolate-covered pretzels?” I offered, certain they’d have some.
“Yeah,” she said after a moment of contemplation. “Dark chocolate. Not milk chocolate.”
I steered her toward the alcove at the back of the store that had doors for the restrooms and another marked employees only.
“And a Coke,” Amelia said, turning back to face me. “And maybe some ibuprofen?”
I nodded as I cut in front of her, knocked on the door of the women’s restroom, then poked my head in to make sure no one of the less-than-savory variety was lurking, lying in wait.
Logically, I knew we were ahead of John Valentine, but I didn’t want to get complacent. I backed away from the restroom, tipped my head toward the door, and kept my voice low. “Try to be quick.”
Amelia nodded, clutching the tampon to her chest as she scurried in and let the door close behind her.
I kept an eye on both store entrances as I scoured the aisles with Amelia’s grocery list in mind. We needed to be frugal with the cash we had on hand, but these were necessities.
Survival was about trust. If we got in the weeds, I needed her to know that I had her best interests in mind, even if it wasn’t always evident.
Once I had found everything she had asked for, I made my way to the front. “Slow night?” I asked the cashier behind the register, who was more enthralled with doom-scrolling through the videos he was watching on his phone than what I was doing.
Good.
He muttered something unintelligible as he scanned my haul, rang up my total, and bagged it up.
I paid in cash and glanced over my shoulder at the bathrooms as the kid hemmed and hawed at having to count out change. Amelia still hadn’t come out.
I pocketed the change, grabbed the bag, and beelined for the bathrooms. I waited a beat, then knocked on the door. “You okay?”
Nothing.
No water running. No toilet flushing. The women’s restroom only had two stalls, a sink, and a trash can. There were no windows, closets, or other ways of getting out. No one else had come into the gas station either.
I knocked again, but when there was no answer, I pushed the door open. Both stall doors were closed, but I spotted her shoes beneath the far stall.
“We need to get going, sweetheart,” I said.
No answer.
Unease ate at me. “Amelia?”
A thump in the men’s room drew my attention. I bent lower and swore under my breath as I realized that the shoes weren’t connected to anything.
Dammit.
The women’s restroom door slammed behind me as I shoulder-checked my way into the men’s room just in time to catch Amelia’s fingers disappearing from the windowsill. The postcard window opened outward with a hand crank. There was no way my bulk could fit through.
I swore under my breath as I bolted out of the bathroom and hurried back through the gas station.
The cashier didn’t even look up as I darted out.
Amelia was sprinting across the parking lot toward the neighboring gas station and its excessively bright lights. Barefoot.
Unless she was the main character in a commercial for sport-mode tampons, there was no way that woman was on day one of her period.
Lucky for me, my legs were twice as long as hers. I caught up with her with fast, silent strides. The arm that had the bag wrapped firmly around her middle, while I clapped my other hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming.
“I’m over here, buying you chocolate and saving your life. The least you can do is not run while I’m doing those two things. I hate running.”
Amelia bit my palm.
I hissed and yanked it away to see if she’d drawn blood. It felt like she had.
She squirmed and kicked as I held her securely against my chest with one arm.
“Let’s get something straight, little fox.
I am not the bad guy here, but you’re more than welcome to think that I am.
Frankly, I would rather look like a bad guy and keep you alive than have you die because you were just trying to do something good. ”
She opened her mouth and sucked in a breath, preparing to scream, but I was faster. I cupped her cheek, pressed my thumb to her lips, and put my mouth to the finger that separated us, feeling her startled breath tangling in my beard.
To anyone driving by, it looked like we were kissing. Maybe the security cameras had caught a fun game of cat and mouse.
But this wasn’t a game. When daylight broke, we were going to be hunted by people who wouldn’t even blink before pulling the trigger. I needed her to understand the gravity of that. We couldn’t waste our head start.
“I’m going to tell you four things. You can choose whether or not you believe them, but they’re the truth.
” I paused as she jerked again and waited until she stilled.
“First, when we get back in the truck, I’m going to turn that phone back on and confirm that your brother is safe for now.
” Her eyes widened, and I slowly removed my thumb and put a little more space between our mouths, but I never moved my hand away from her cheek.
She was so soft. Like cashmere. “Second, I’m not going to hurt you.
I promise. Believe that promise or don’t.
It doesn’t change the fact that I will not hurt you.
Third, we’re going to be on the road for a while, but I promise I’m taking you somewhere safe. ”
“Are you taking me to Joel?” she asked with an edge that told me she was likely to bolt again if I didn’t give her the answer she wanted.
But I wasn’t in the business of lip service. “No. It’s safer if you two are separated.”
Amelia swallowed, the corner of her mouth trembling.
“Now,” I said. “Will you walk back to the truck with me? Or do I need to throw you over my shoulder?”
Her nostrils flared, her expression immediately morphing from fear to anger. “I’ll walk.”
I nodded and kept a hand on her back as we started across the parking lot.
“You’re going to share your pretzels with me,” I muttered as I kept an eye on her bare feet.
I debated going back into the gas station bathroom for her shoes, but her high heels would only be a hindrance if we needed to make a fast break.
I also had a feeling she would run again if I left her unattended.
“That was only three things,” Amelia said as I escorted her back into the truck. “Unless the pretzel thing counted. And if it did, I’m not sharing.”
I hopped behind the wheel and begrudgingly handed her the snacks, even though I wanted to be petty and keep them for myself.
Trust. It’s about trust.
I cranked the engine before reaching into the bag for the burner phone. “Fourth is that your life is going to change. But I’m trying to make sure that you’re alive to live the rest of it. I need you to trust me.”
Amelia lifted her chin in defiance. “Then you can’t keep me in the dark. I need to know what’s going on. You can’t call me a teammate and treat me like a hostage. If you treat me like a hostage, I’ll act like one. This trust thing goes both ways, Jude.”
I kept my gaze firm, our eyes locked in a standoff, but inside I was unraveling at the sound of my name on her lips. “Then I guess we’ll just have to work on that.”