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Chapter One
Rose
About half an hour. That’s all it took.
Without even trying I’ve turned my whole life upside down and now I don’t know what I’m gonna do.
I can’t stay and I know once I go, I can’t come back.
My dad. He’s my whole world. He’s also the one thing in Valor that’s home for me, as well as being my best friend.
But the change in him lately has been so quick, and now that I know what he’s done I can’t go back.
We’ve never fought, but lately, it’s all we do and today… tonight was the last straw.
Walking to who knows where I fight back tears as my mind echoes the final hurtful things he said to me.
The moment I knew my dad had turned.
He’s working for them now.
For weeks now he’s been working all hours. Not his usual habit working for the tax department.
He sleeps until noon now and is most often out all night, sometimes not coming home for days at a time.
I know he doesn’t drink or smoke, but washing his clothes, they reek of the stale tobacco and alcohol smell only seedy bars have.
Tonight, after finding thick rolls of cash in his pockets I confronted him.
Demanding the truth and almost wishing I hadn’t once I find out.
“It’s none of your damned business,” he barked, snatching back the rolls of money.
“Just a little side job to make up for all those years I paid for your tuition and a mortgage? You should try it sometime, Rose. An actual job,” he sneered.
I still feel the pain in my chest as it replays in my mind, over and over. The years I was in college before I had to drop out were the one thing dad used to feel proud of me for.
He worked so hard to keep a roof over our heads, and he managed to pay most of my tuition with me working part-time to make up the rest before I had to leave when I lost my job and tuition went up.
“Just tell me it’s nothing illegal,” I begged him, not wanting to see him waste his career let alone his life, our home on anything reckless.
His bitter laughter scared me, and I realized before he even said it that I had to go.
I knew deep down I couldn’t stay because it wasn’t safe.
“Illegal? Why, my new employers are the law, darlin’,” he drawled before laughing again, louder that time.
There was a darkness in his laughter, an edge I didn’t like.
He didn’t even sound like my dad anymore. It’s like the only family I had left was gone in a single moment.
It’s common knowledge that the law in Valor has two sides, the official one and the other no one talks about. The one nobody wants to be on the wrong side of.
And without him even having to say another word, I knew who my dad was working for now, which side of the law in Valor he was under.
I’m shivering by the time I notice it getting dark, I didn’t pack much except what I could grab on my way out.
About thirty dollars in my bank account.
A car slows, and some creepy looking guy asks me how much before skidding off once he looks me up and down.
How much for-
Ugh!
Get yourself out of here, Rose. What the hell am I doing?
I don’t pray much. Never even thought about it. But something makes me look up into the darkening sky, something in my heart, I can feel it.
It’s the one time in my whole life I’ve needed divine intervention when there was nothing else.
Send me some help, please. My knight in shining armor.
I’ll never ask for anything again, just, please. Get me someplace safe that isn’t this town.
Walking alone as the darkness falls, the only road out of Valor suddenly seems like the scariest place.
A few cars zoom by and it occurs to me nothing will happen unless I do something.
I’ve never hitched in my life, always been told how stupid it is. Too dangerous.
Especially in Valor.
But once my belly’s rumbling and my body’s shivering, I feel my thumb nervously creep out to the side.
Hoping.
Praying that my shining knight will come for me before the cold, dark night begins to swirl around me.
Wishing for the strong dark and quiet type over the creepy, sweaty type in a Prius.
The rumble of a motorcycle exhaust slowing behind me has me pulling my thumb in quickly.
I need a ride, not some biker who’s probably paying the crooked cops in this town.
The kind who has my dad under their thumb now.
But once the thunder of the bike is matched by the thunder from overhead, and the rain that starts to hit me in hot heavy drops, I change my tune.
Anything would be better than staying out here and getting soaked with nowhere else to go.
