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We prepare as much as possible, gathering food and filling water bottles. We plan to leave the day after tomorrow. The weather is looking good, but we still need to be organized.
I’m going through the kitchen cupboards, making sure we haven’t missed anything that might come in useful. I crouch at the cabinet under the sink, and something catches my eye. There’s a metal object hidden behind one of the pipes.
A phone.
My heart jolts. I reach in and pluck it out. I assume it must belong to the gunrunners, a hidden burner phone that they use to organize their crimes. If I can turn it on, there might be the chance we can use it to call for help. We wouldn’t have to hike after all.
I frown down at the screen, then turn it over in my hand. On the cover, a sexy cartoon woman in a red dress stares out at me from one eye, the other hidden beneath a swathe of hair, and my confusion deepens.
“Cade? Isn’t this your phone?”
He lifts his head. “What?”
I hold it up. “Isn’t this yours?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“But it is. Look.” I turn it around so he can see the cover. What would the chances be of one of the gunrunners having the same picture? “You said you’d lost it in the crash.”
“I did.”
His gaze shifts away, a muscle in his jaw ticking.
“You’re lying. Why are you lying?”
Reed overhears. “What’s going on?”
“I found Cade’s phone.”
“You did? I thought he’d lost it. What’s going on, Cade?”
Cade’s expression has turned dark, his brow furrowed, his lips compressed. Alarm spikes through me. Did he hide the phone under the sink? Why would he do that?
“Does it work?” Darius asks.
I push the button and hold it down, hoping to bring the phone to life, but nothing happens. My stomach drops in disappointment. For a moment there, I’d been picturing the phone screen coming on and us being able to dial the emergency services to come and get us out of here.
“Nothing,” I say. “I guess the battery is dead.”
“It was dead when I found it after the crash,” Cade says.
Reed narrows his eyes at him. “Then why say you couldn’t find it? And why hide it under the sink?”
“I don’t know how it got there. It must have fallen out of something.”
I stare at him, the understanding that he’s lying sinking deeper into my gut. The phone had been wedged behind the outlet pipe. It wasn’t as though it could have dropped out of a pocket and ended up there. Someone had to have put it there.
“Why wouldn’t you want us to know you had your phone?” I ask.
Cade exhales a long breath then covers his face with his hands. “Fuck. I guess you were going to find out at some point.”
“Find out what?” Reed says, his tone serious.
“I was in trouble, back in the States.”
Reed frowns. “What kind of trouble?”
“Money trouble.”
