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"We're gonna have to move," I voiced my thoughts aloud a long couple of minutes later. We had a one bedroom. And while we had a basement, I figured that was a place she was never going to want to live in, not even if we refinished it.
"There's a house for sale across from Repo and Maze," Lo agreed. "Two beds, two baths. Two minutes from the compound."
"I'll call the agent sometime tomorrow."
She made a murmuring noise, her fingers tracing down my arm, then twining her fingers between mine.
"I want our girl back," she said, articulating what we were both thinking.
"Me too," I agreed, trying not to harp on the pit in my stomach, trying to remember that Ferryn, for all her youth, was mature for her age. She would be okay. If she survived V's compound in one piece, she could survive anything.
"What are we going to do about the legality of this?" I asked, knowing that a girl suddenly popping up in the town might make some people - like the cops - rather curious.
"I have a judge who will grant us guardianship."
"What'd he do?" I asked as my hands sifted through her hair, wondering as I so often did how it was always so soft. I knew Lo and her people had something on everyone, something they could use against them, use to blackmail them. If you were a person in power, Hailstorm had a file with your name on it jam-packed full of dirty secrets.
"Before or after his trip to Neigh Ranch?"
"Do I even want to know what Neigh Ranch is?"
"Ever hear of pony play?" she asked, and I could hear the smile in her voice.
"You're shitting me."
"His Honor Mister Ed," she agreed. "Have some very private pictures of him getting brushed down with blinders on. It's good stuff. His wife - who spends every waking hour working at the local church - would not like getting her hands on those."
I had an evil genius for a wife, one who read raunchy shit and wanted to reenact it and put flower blankets on the bed and, well, I still fucking loved it.
More and more each day if I were being honest.
"Babe?"
"Yeah?" she asked, sounding half-asleep. As she should be. She hadn't slept in days.
"Feel like I should know our daughter's name."
"Oh, Chris," she supplied, shaking the sleep away.
"Short for?"
"Christienne."
Christienne.
"She likes tea. And cats. And speaks French."
"So we can look forward to her one day cussing us out in another language?"
"Maybe it's time for some night classes," she agreed, leaning up to kiss the underside of my chin.
"Our whole world is about to change," I said.
"I know," she agreed, squeezing my hand. "I kind of love it."
"Me too."--ReignThe car came screeching up to the gates.
For the second time.
That T-bird.
With the same guy at the wheel.
Vance.
But this time, with his sister Iggy in the passenger seat, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.
He muttered something to her, huffing out a breath when all she did was shake her head at him, then climbing out of the car alone.
"Ferryn was at my parents' house a little while ago," he supplied immediately, cutting through all the bullshit. "She's gone already. And she wouldn't tell Iggy where she was going because she didn't want to put her in the middle. But I thought you would want to know. She showered, ate, took care of her cuts, shaved her head, and took off."
"Shaved her head?" I couldn't help but repeat, brows drawing together.
While, as a whole, Ferryn was pretty down to earth and level-headed, there was always a small bit of vanity in her, as with just about anyone her age. She was fanatical about her hair. It seemed so unlike her to shave it off.
But that was important to know.
We had to get that out there to all the people looking for her, the police stations, everyone. A shaved head would make her look completely different.
"Okay," I said, nodding. "Thank you. Anything else, Iggs?" I asked, moving toward her open window.
I had a good enough rapport with her after about two thousand visits to our house.
"She said that... she needed to become lethal," she told me, eyes a little red-rimmed and watery. With as tight as those two had always been, I knew this was weighing on her as well.
"Lethal," I repeated, not quite grasping it.
"She said she needs to be a weapon, that she can't rely on you all to protect her anymore."
Because we had failed her.
I'd failed her.
Even though I had a text from Lo that claimed the other girl - Chris - said that Ferryn hadn't been abused. Other than the bumps and bruises she got for striking out first.
It wasn't about the severity of the damage done to her.
It was that no harm should have ever come to her on my watch. And my watch was twenty-four-fucking-seven hours a day.
