Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Reese locked the door after Axel left. She stood with her hand still on the deadbolt and listened to his footsteps move down the hall. The safe house plan should have made her feel better. It didn’t.
Reese checked the door again, testing the deadbolt and the chain before dragging a kitchen chair across the floor and wedging it under the knob.
She went through the apartment, checking all the windows. They were all locked or painted shut. There was only one way in, but also only one way out.
Reese went to the closet and reached behind the folded towels on the top shelf. She found the paperback with the cracked blue spine, took it down, opened the hollowed-out center, and removed the envelope inside.
She counted the money and found eight hundred and forty dollars, then counted it again to be sure. The packed bags sat at the foot of the bed. They were part of the plan she had made when she first arrived.
She looked at them and told herself she was only checking what she had, not leaving. The baby shifted low in her belly, and Reese put one hand over the spot.
“We’re okay.” The words sounded thin in her ears.
She changed for bed, then lay down under the covers. In the darkness, she replayed what Axel had just told her. Her current location was listed online.
She imagined Wade driving into Fate Mountain in his white van. He’d ask questions in that calm voice that people trusted. The diner was the first thing anyone saw when they got off the highway. He’d walk in and ask if anyone had seen his wife. Someone would tell him she worked in the scullery.
Reese rolled onto her side and pulled a pillow beneath her knee, her heart beating too hard for sleep. Then an ugly thought settled in. Axel’s protection had failed her.
She tried to push it away. Axel had found the new listing. He’d started the takedown. He’d come to her apartment and told her right away. He hadn’t pretended the danger was smaller than it was. He’d already moved to the next plan. That was what a good man did. It didn’t help.
His protection had failed.
She knew it wasn’t fair to blame Axel. The site was brand new. Axel had never promised that every record in the world would stay hidden forever. He’d told her there could be weak places. He’d said it from the beginning.
None of that calmed the adrenaline pumping into her blood. She had let herself act like Fate Mountain was safe. With a job. An apartment. A man who loved her. Now one listing had made all of it feel temporary again.
She had let herself believe she was home, and she’d started to think she could stay. But the thing she’d been counting on protecting her hadn’t worked. She sat up and swung her feet to the floor.
The safe house would be safer than this apartment. Reese knew enough about Steel Protection to know they took protection seriously. They had brought Nell home.
She thought about the safe house. Someone else would choose it. Someone else would set the rules. Someone else would decide when she could leave. They would control everything. That was the point of protection.
But it made Reese feel like she didn’t have a choice.
She stood and crossed to the window. A car moved along the street below.
Its headlights swept across the lower edge of the curtains, then disappeared.
The engine continued past the building without slowing.
Wade wasn’t out there, she told herself.
But her body didn’t believe it. She went back to bed and closed her eyes. Her mind kept turning over the same thoughts. The safe house and someone else deciding when she could leave.
Reese had made it out of Spokane because she’d left as soon as she had an opening. She’d made that decision herself.
She lay on her back staring at the ceiling when the baby kicked hard. Reese gasped and put both hands over her belly. The kick came again, stronger than the flutters had been. Then a third one, sharp under her palm.
“I know,” she whispered.
On any other night, she would have texted Axel about it. She reached for the phone on the nightstand, her thumb hovering over his name. If she contacted him, he would try to talk her down. And she might stay.
Reese put the phone back on the nightstand. She didn’t trust herself to hear his voice right now.
Nightmares came during short bursts of sleep. Wade’s van outside the diner. A safe house door locking behind her. Back in Spokane with Wade’s hand on her stomach while he told her the baby was his and she’d never escape him.
She woke before dawn with her heart pounding, the room gray and still. She lay there for a moment without moving.
Then a complete plan rose in her mind, and she ran through it. She needed clothes, cash, vitamins, and a full tank of gas. With that settled, Reese got out of bed.
The decision felt like the only choice she could make. She dressed quickly, grabbed the money from the paperback, and put it in her wallet.
Then she started to pack: prenatal vitamins, phone charger, hair ties, toothbrush, clothes. Her wet work shirt hung over the shower rod. She didn’t need anyone knowing she once worked at Fate Mountain Diner. So, she left it.
In the kitchen, she opened the cupboards, realized nothing was worth keeping, and closed them again. The refrigerator held eggs, cream, leftovers from Axel, and a small container of berries. She left the food. It would spoil.
Then she turned to the green onions on the windowsill and stopped in front of them. The white roots filled the lower half of the jelly jar. New green shoots rose from the cut ends, thin and bright. She’d trimmed them over eggs, soup, toast, anything cheap that needed flavor.
She reached for the jar, watching the water shift against the glass, but she knew she couldn’t take it with her.
Reese set the jar back exactly where it had been, picked up both bags, and left the apartment. The hallway was empty when Reese locked the door behind her. She then carried everything downstairs into the cool, pale morning.
The Corolla sat in the lot with dew on the windshield. Reese loaded the bags into the back seat and got behind the wheel. The car started on the second try, the familiar tick under the hood joining the idle.
She backed out slowly and drove out of the parking lot as dawn broke over the roofs. She drove along Main toward the highway, passing the dark bakery and Steel Protection. Axel’s second-floor window was already lit. She eased her foot off the gas, and the car slowed.
He was awake, probably arranging the safe house he thought she might accept.
She could park, go upstairs, and finally say the words she’d refused to tell him. But her throat tightened until it hurt. The baby shifted in her belly, and Reese gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
“Just us,” she said.
That wasn’t true anymore. Reese had built a life here, and leaving it hurt.
She pressed the gas, and Axel’s light disappeared behind her. Reese didn’t look at the diner when she passed it. She didn’t think about missing her shift or Axel not being able to find her.
She got on the highway, and the town disappeared in her rearview mirror. Reese didn’t look back.