Page 71 of One Filthy Kiss

Ric is still leaning against the counter.

“Can we go outside?” I ask.

I’m aware that I’ve been wearing the same clothes for twenty-four hours, and that I need to shower and brush my teeth, but I feel like a kid on vacation who wants to cram everything into the first day and then crash.

Amber stuffs the last morsel of her breakfast into her mouth and climbs down from her seat. “I want to go outside.”

Ric sets his coffee cup down on the counter and heads for the front door. “Let’s go get some fresh air.” He addresses me. “I think we should leave the exploring for another day?” The sentence rises at the end like he’s asking for my approval, and I nod.

That’s when the fear starts to crawl back in.

Perhaps I’ll never be able to let it go, but I sense there’s plenty Ric isn’t telling me.

After living in the city, taking a deep breath in Stowe is like sucking in pure oxygen. I cough, my eyes watering as Amber runs around the cabin with her arms raised above her head, letting off steam.

The cabin is at the foot of a grassy mountain with perfect views of the lake resort below our elevated position. Other cabins are dotted around the hillside, surrounded by private gardens filled with wildflowers and trees the name of which I have no idea, strategically placed to give the occupants privacy. Movement in the sky catches my eye, and I glance up to find a cable car ferrying people up to the peak of the tallest mountain.

“The SkyRide Gondola,” Ric says, tracking the cable car with his eyes. “That’s Mount Mansfield, the tallest mountain in Vermont.”

“Do people ski down it in winter?”

“Sure, this is typically a winter resort.”

He’s wearing his tour guide hat again. But I can’t stand here soaking up the fresh air and acting like I’m a tourist with nothing more to think about than which hiking boots to wear. Not when I have no idea where Gio is.

Amber runs past us, circling the cabin like a kid who has never seen grass and mountains before. Well, to be fair, she hasn’t seen mountains in real life before, but I love her reaction to the sheer freedom of running around with no one telling her to watch where she’s going or to stay away from the road. I’d run and shout and wave my hands in the air too if Ric’s silence wasn’t scaring me so much.

I wait until she’s out of earshot before I speak. “Ric, is Gio…?”

Alive?I can’t bring myself to say it out loud.

“He’s safe, Meg.” He faces me then, perhaps so that I can see that he’s telling the truth.

“But?”

“But The Fi—Amber’s father got away.”

The world spins like a carousel, and it takes me several moments to catch my breath and bring the clear blue lake back into focus.

It isn’t over. He’s still out there somewhere, and we’ll never stop trying to get away from him. Goosebumps pop on my arms, and I rub them briskly to keep myself warm. The sun is peeking out from behind the mountains, and the only clouds in the sky are the wispy ones like dandelion puffs, but the scenery has already dulled with this information.

“Is Gio hurt?” My voice is dull, the words clambering to be left unspoken.

“He’s fine. He doesn’t want you to worry about him.”

My relief is short-lived, soaring like a gull above the waves and then dipping again to face the next problem. “Does he know where we are? Amber’s father.” Ric almost called him something else, but I’m not sure what it was.

“No, Meg. I wouldn’t be letting Amber run around like this if I thought that he’d followed us here.”

He’s right. I can still hear Amber when she’s behind the cabin, but it only takes a moment for someone to snatch her and run away with her. I need to get as much information out of him as possible while she isn’t listening.

“So, what do we do now?”

It’s obvious that we can’t stay here indefinitely. I was so caught up in the excitement of escaping the city that I forgot to ask what our next steps would be once we made it here.

“We sit tight.” Ric stares straight ahead, his expression neutral, as if we’re discussing where to eat dinner tonight. “The other cabins—that’s where the rest of the security team are staying. There are no tourists on this part of the mountain. No one will even get close without us knowing about it.”

That’s what Gio said in New York, and Amber’s father still slipped through the net.