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“Yes.”
“Julia the jewel thief?”
Christ. It was almost funny. Almost.
“Yeah... I guess I am.”
“Holy shit.”
A long stretch of uncomfortable silence followed. My heart began to sink.
“So you lied to us,” said Roman. “About who you were. About everything.”
“No,” I countered sternly. “Everything else I told you was the truth.”
“You didn’t tell us much,” Erik pointed out.
“Exactly. And there was a reason for that — a good reason. And now you know.”
I saw them trying to process everything, each at different speeds. Erik seemed sympathetic. Zane, shocked. But Roman was the angry one. Or if not angry, at least betrayed.
“We did the job,” I said, eager to tell them everything, “and somehow it went flawlessly. They were armed — which was cataclysmically stupid — but the guys took the jewels without firing a shot.”
“And you… drove?” asked Erik.
“Yes. It was the only way I’d allow myself be involved. I just wanted to finish it, you know? To be rid of Louden. Totally free of everything to do with him.”
“So what happened?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but something stopped me. I could feel the cold creeping up again. The same icy, haunted sensation I always felt when waking up from the dream.
“I… was driving…” I somehow sputtered. “And we were getting away. No, we got away. Almost. And… and then…”
Erik slid closer to me. He reached out and placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I focused on the warmth. On the feelings of love and respect I’d developed for all of them.
“Louden betrayed me,” I said bitterly. “We hadn’t even finished the job, and he was going to edge me out.”
The cold made me shiver, sending waves of gooseflesh all along my exposed skin. Erik squeezed my shoulder.
“And then what happened?” he asked gently.
“The gun came out,” I choked. “I didn’t know what he was going to do with it, but I wasn’t about to find out. I grabbed for it. I got his wrist but he yanked it away. And… and then the gun came back… and…”
“And it went off,” Roman finished for me. “And you got shot. In the shoulder.”
I nodded, looking down in the direction of my scar.
“It was so loud,” I breathed, trying to choke back tears. “So explosively, impossibly loud. But I was still driving. Still steering. In the back seat Jarrett was screaming, trying to warn us. And then Louden reached for the wheel, and the radio was blasting because he’d hit the button during our struggle for the gun.”
It all played in my head again, this time quickly instead of slow. I saw it all unfold. Every detail. Everything leading up to the crash.
“I crashed the car on purpose,” I said. “Wrapped it right around a telephone pole. Jarrett went through the windshield like he’d been shot from a cannon. And Louden… he hit the dash so hard it actually knocked him out.”
“And what happened to you?” asked Roman.
“I somehow managed to fasten my seatbelt. Right before I steered off the road.”
Zane let out a low whistle. “Whoa.”
