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Jace stops the car, immediately.
My lunch comes up in my throat, forcing me to jump out of the car. I hurl the contents of my stomach on the side of the road, not caring that the rain is drenching me. Trembling, I straighten up, and from the corner of my eye, I see Jace striding towards me.
He grips my arms, pushing my hair back. “Do you need to throw up some more?”
I shake my head, my hair clinging to my face, and I gaze up at the bell tower, which is the only thing the trees allow me to glimpse.
What is this paralyzing fear?
“We can’t be on this road. I’m supposed to run. Don’t look back,” the words are torn from my lips as if from memory. I don’t even realize that I’m saying them, my mouth is dry.
“Why?” Jace doesn’t budge.
I look up at him with haunted eyes. “Mom said to keep running.”
11
Jace
Halley hasn’t said a word since we returned to the motel.
Her usually cheery face is drawn and haggard while she’s sitting on my bed, the blanket around her. It takes a lot of effort to convince her to at least let me dry her hair, lest she catch a cold.
Her behavior on the road is making me uneasy. I’ve never known this girl to be unreasonable or fanciful, and yet, the way she gripped onto me and the words she said, I had no choice but to obey, if for no other reason than her sanity.
Although the air conditioner is off, she’s still shivering, her eyes look blank and dull.
Having never seen her like this, I’m frantic to get her to talk, to tell me what happened. I order up some soup and sit next to Halley on the bed. “You’ve got to tell me what’s going on.”
Halley is silent and then she looks at me. “I need my laptop and yours.”
Since those are the first words she’s said, I hurry to obey.
She doesn’t come out of the blanket, just sits cross-legged under it and opens both laptops.
Secure in the knowledge that the front door is locked, I slip into the bathroom to make a call to Caleb and appraise him of the events.
Caleb doesn’t say much but his silence speaks volumes. He wants to see the money and says that he’ll look into the matter. If there is anyone I trust, it’s him. Even if for Kendall’s sake, I know if I ever need help, he’ll do everything in his power to help me.
I exit the bathroom, only to see an intense expression on Halley’s face as her fingers move over her keyboard, almost furiously.
I walk over to see what has her so absorbed, and to my shock, I see she’s put a powerful shielding program on my laptop, which is connected to her laptop. On her screen, she has what looks like a police database.
“H-Halley, what are you doing?” I ask.
“Getting out the case files,” she says with a dark tinge to her voice.
“That’s hacking. You could get in serious trouble for that!” I protest.
She shoots me a sharp look. “I won’t get caught. But I need to know what happened that night and what the police found. Since they don’t want to tell me, I’ll find out for myself.”
When I glower at her, she tries to convince me, “There is no way they can track me. I just entered through a backdoor and I’ve got multiple firewalls up. I just need five minutes.”
I bite my tongue, knowing how dangerous it is and yet I don’t want to distract her because that might end up with both of our asses going to jail. So, I sit by her side and watch her.
The focused look in her eyes is something I’ve never seen before and I find it incredibly sexy. Her hair is falling around her face and she doesn’t seem to care, the deathly seriousness of her gaze moving on the screen.
True to her word, five minutes later, she lets out a deep breath and her face relaxes. “I got in.”
