31. Eli
THIRTY-ONE
ELI
“What the actual fuck?”
We’ve only been back at school for a week, and already I’m getting pushback from parents about homework—twenty students, fourteen logs handed in, and six of them are blank because apparently “reading at home” is a suggestion and not a directive.
I circle a smiley face on a sheet—she’s read four books this week, which is more than some of the adults I know—and make a note to send a sticker home with her on Monday.
I’m tucking it away when my phone screams.
The proximity alert Milo coded into the tracker’s software—the one buried in Sage’s cameo pendant. She doesn’t know about it. She’d kill us all in our sleep if she did.
I barely get my feet under me before the next alert comes—a triple-pulse, the code for an unapproved deviation. Milo’s system is slick: the color-coded map pins her as a pink dot, moving southeast at a steady pace, toward the coast road.
She’s in a car.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck. Fuck!
I shove the reading logs aside and start the engine. U-turn in front of a postal truck. Somebody leans on a horn. It doesn’t register. Nothing matters but the dot.
I can’t lose her again.
Heart in my throat, I drive erratically until I spot her two miles from the diner. She’s a blur of hair and a denim jacket in the passenger seat of a blue Honda.
Jamie’s at the wheel. There’s no sign of distress. If anything, she’s laughing, head thrown back, eyes bright, hand out the window catching air.
Not running, then. Not in trouble. Just—out. With Jamie. A man I have never once had to think about.
I breathe a little easier, hang back, and loosen my grip on the wheel one finger at a time. I put a little distance between us, letting the Honda get two cars ahead.
She’s okay.
Sage glances in the mirror once, and I know she’s checking for me, but I’m good at this. Always have been.
I cut over to the next lane, slow at the light, and track them as they hook a right onto the strip, then up the winding causeway that crosses the bay.
They’re not being subtle. Jamie’s stereo is up—bass so heavy I feel the beat through my own windshield. They fly past the turn for Sage’s apartment, past the boardwalk, out toward the malls by the harbor. I relax a notch.
They’re headed to the shopping mall.
My phone buzzes.
Milo
Hey, just clocked Kitten leaving out the back on the diner cams. She with you?
My thumb hovers. The lie forms before the thought does.
Me
Yeah. She got off early. We’re grabbing food.
MILO
You’re talking again? Awesome! Tell her I said hi.
I put the phone down. The dot turns inland. Definitely the mall.
I get another text three minutes later.
Knox
App shows Fury’s on the move. Status?
Me
She’s with me. Got off early.
Knox
Copy.
They’d string me up themselves if they knew she’d given me the slip. But they can’t be surprised, can they? Sage doesn’t stay anywhere she doesn’t want to be. If she didn’t want us around her, I firmly believe we’d all be just as dead as Brock is.
I tail them for a few more minutes, until the Honda swings into a parking space at the far end of the mall lot.
Jamie and Sage hop out. He slings a backpack over one shoulder and says something that makes her laugh.
I park two rows back, out of sight, watching, because what the hell else am I supposed to do? I could walk up. Let her know there’s no running—not from us. But what purpose would that serve? She’s not trying to hurt anyone.
So I let her go.
She links arms with Jamie as they walk, and they cut across the lot, past a bus stop full of teenagers vaping in a cloud, through the sliding glass doors into the mall proper. I give them a healthy lead, hands clamped to the wheel, breathing like I’ve just outpaced a cross-country runner.
In my head, I can already hear Micah’s voice—So, what, you trailed her at fifty feet, then let her vanish into a Forever 21? Real top-tier protection, Eli—while Milo would just whistle and make some joke about being a voyeur who failed to seal the deal.
I get out of the car and tail them at a distance, drifting through the automatic doors a minute after they do.
The mall is a living organism—too bright, over-air-conditioned, echoing with a half-digested slurry of top-forty pop and toddler meltdowns.
It’s a surveillance nightmare, and I lose them in the crowd, and for three seconds I don’t have her.
Then I spot Jamie’s backpack, a splash of faded red over his shoulder, as they move past a cell phone kiosk and into the open concourse.
They slow at a bank of benches near the escalators, and that’s when I clock the third player in this little escape act: Amy.
She’s already waiting, perched on the edge of the bench with perfect posture and a tote bag in her lap, hair pulled back and sunglasses on top of her head.
When she spots Sage, she stands and waves with both hands, and I swear to God, Sage lights up.
They collide in a hug that’s more crash than embrace. Both talking at once, Amy pulling back to hold Sage at arm’s length, checking her over the way women do when they haven’t seen each other in too long. Jamie hangs back with his hands in his pockets, grinning.
Amy is everything Sage isn’t right now—soft, beaming, unscathed.
She wears a pale pink sundress and matching platform sneakers and a denim jacket just a shade lighter than Sage’s.
She looks like she belongs in this place.
Easy in her own skin, unburdened, the kind of normal Sage tries to fake and Amy doesn’t have to.
Jamie stays to the side, making himself as small as a tall man can, watching as the awkwardness between Sage and Amy melts into something syrupy and loud.
Then Amy hugs Jamie, and Sage laughs, bright enough that it makes me want to go over there and be a part of it.
They wander together, the three of them.
Through the first floor past the kiosk vultures, into a candle shop, then past the glass storefronts crowded with people who look like they’ve never had to explain away a mark on their neck or a night terror.
I follow—not close enough to spook, but close enough to react if needed, and I keep the tracker app open on my phone so there are no gaps.
I grab a coffee to blend in, buy a skullcap to hide my hair. And I let her have her fun.
For now.
My phone buzzes again.
Holden
Knox said you’re out with Sage. Are you here for dinner? I’m cooking.
Me
We’ll be back late. Don’t wait up.
The dots dance, then stop. Then there’s almost a full minute before they start again and a message comes through.
Holden:
Stay safe.
Me:
We will.
The lies are stacking now. Each one clean, precise, the way I write lesson plans—no wasted words, nothing that invites follow-up questions.
They end up in a nail salon on the first level.
Sage is in a pedicure chair with her feet in the water, head thrown back, laughing at something Amy just said.
Amy is gesturing wildly, the way she does in staff meetings when she’s passionate about a topic.
Jamie’s in the chair beside Sage, flipping through a color chart and asking the girls which green he should get.
I find a bench that has a diagonal line of sight. Far enough that she won’t spot me unless she’s looking.
She won’t be looking. That’s the whole point. For the first time in weeks, she’s not checking over her shoulder—she’s earned that.
I watch her for an hour. She’s happy. She’s animated.
She’s the version of herself that existed before the rope—before the threats, before the house, before we closed ranks around her so tight she forgot what air tasted like.
I tell myself I’m being clinical about this.
That I’m observing, not stalking. Taking notes in case I have to explain to the group why the fuck I let her wander out of perimeter. But the truth is, I’m feeding on this.
I eat up every minute she spends relaxed, teasing Jamie, letting Amy pick the pedicure color.
Every moment that’s not a flashback, a panic, a forced smile.
The way she leans over to point at a chart, brushing her arm against Jamie’s—uncalculated, unguarded.
The way she laughs so hard her shoulders shake, a sound I haven’t heard since well before the hospital.
She lets Amy take a selfie. They both make faces, duck lips and crossed eyes.
At four-fifteen, they head toward the cinema. I check the listings on my phone. There’s a horror movie playing about a cult of creepy kids. I buy a ticket on my cell, wait until they’re inside, and take a seat in the back row, to the far left.
They’re down near the middle. Sage in the seat between Amy and Jamie, a bucket of popcorn bigger than her head balanced across both their knees. Best friend on one side, a decent man who makes her laugh on the other, and me eight rows back with the exits in view.
I let myself have it for a second. This is what safe is supposed to look like.
The lights go down. I watch the back of her head in the dark, the occasional flash of her profile when she turns to whisper something to Amy, the way her shoulders shake when she laughs.
I think about the last time I disciplined her. About how she looked, bent over the chaise with her wrists bound and my hands on her skin. Her voice begging for more.
She’d pushed me until I broke open. Pushed past every wall I’d built—the teacher, the leader, the man who keeps everything boxed and sealed and labeled.
She found the beast underneath and she wasn’t afraid of it.
She wanted it. Wanted me—not the version I show the world, but the one who likes control because without it, everything inside me turns to fire.
She’s pushing again now. Different method, same instinct. Testing the edges. Seeing how far she can go before someone pulls her back.
She slipped out of a building I was watching. Left me drawing smiley faces on reading logs while she walked out the back door with another man. And didn’t look back.
I’m not angry.
I’m something worse.
I’m patient.
You wanted to run, little savage? I’ll let you run. But soon you’ll understand what happens when I catch you.