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Because her opinion mattered. She mattered. To me, she mattered more than anything. Without her, I was done.
I was walking to my car, my leg feeling good, when my phone rang in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw that it was Ben, Devon’s lawyer. “Hey,” I said when I answered. “What’s going on?”
His voice was tight, urgent. “Max, we have a problem.”
Immediately my gut tightened. “What problem?”
“This Trent Wallace guy. He just made bail half an hour ago.”
I stopped still, next to the driver’s side door of my car. “What do you mean, he made bail?”
“Someone must have posted it for him. Fuck, I don’t know. I thought he didn’t have any money. The fact is, he paid his bail. He’s free.”
Something hot and cold was climbing up my spine. Something was wrong. Very wrong. “Okay. So what the fuck is the problem?”
“You know that GPS I had installed on his car?” Ben said. “It’s still there. He never found it. So I’m tracking him right now. And the first place he went when he got out was Gwen’s apartment building.”
My vision went red for a second, then cleared again. I was in war mode, like I’d been for four years in Afghanistan. “If he touches her, he’s fucking dead. I’m on my way.”
“Wait,” Ben said. “He’s already on the move again. That’s what I’m calling to tell you.”
“What the fuck do you mean?”
“I mean that he drove to Gwen’s building, and then he left again. And Gwen isn’t picking up her phone.”
I popped open my door and slid inside, positioning my leg. “Tell me where I’m going,” I said, putting the phone on speaker and dropping it on the seat next to me.
“He’s on the move,” Ben said. “He just got on the freeway.” He gave me coordinates, and then he said, “I’ve already called Devon. He might call the cops.”
“I don’t give a fuck about cops,” I said, meaning it. “They can come, or they can stay. Just follow him, and keep talking.” Then I started my car, and drove.
Chapter 23
Gwen
Trent looked terrible. His dyed black hair was sticking up and frizzy, and his face was extra pasty, with dark bags under his eyes. He was wearing an oversized long-sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a huge, dark brown stain on the front. I was too grossed out and terrified to want to know what it was.
He’d grabbed me in the parking lot, thrown me into his passenger seat, put a hand on my throat, and told me that if I made a sound, he’d kill me. I’d tried to scream and fight him off, but he’d punched me in the stomach, one hit that was so hard I’d nearly thrown up. When I could breathe again and see through the tears streaming down my face, he had started the car and was driving.
I’d had some plan in the back of my mind that I could start screaming and call the cops, but the first thing Trent did was grab my phone and drop it on the floor of the driver’s seat, slamming his heel into it again and again. “Shut up, for God’s sake!” he’d shouted at me, his voice cracking.
My hands were shaking. Gone was the smug, smarmy Trent I’d always known as the owner of Candy Cane. This man was pale and desperate and mean. To make things worse, it started to rain as we drove, the rain pelting the roof of the car.
“Listen,” he said as he pulled onto the freeway, the wipers moving frantically. “Just shut up and listen, all right? I’m not going to hurt you. Not if you do what I say.”
I curled my hands over my aching stomach and watched the freeway fly by. God, I couldn’t even jump out of the car. I took a deep breath and tried not to panic. Maybe if I could keep him talking, I could figure out a way to escape. He couldn’t stay on the freeway forever.
“What do you want?” I said.
“That was a shitty move your boyfriend pulled,” Trent spat. “Doing me in like that. I was in the middle of a deal. A big one. I just needed some cash to pull it off. Now it’s all over.”
“Fuck you, Trent.” I shouldn’t say that—I knew that. I shouldn’t provoke him. But fuck him—just fuck him. “You want me to have sympathy because you were using my money for your drug deal?”
“Shut up,” he said again. “Jesus, you always were a mouthy bitch. You think you’re better than everyone else. Well, you’re not. You couldn’t just keep it quiet until I did the deal, could you? And the party—you couldn’t just work that without making a stink? It was important.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “That party was for your drug dealing buddies? You wanted me to do a show for them?”
“I wanted you to fuck them,” he said bluntly. “That would have been helpful, Gwen. I owed them money. Now I owe them even more.”
