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There’s the other problem, though.
The one I don’t like to think about. The main reason I’m going full-on cash and taking the long way to my new home.
Last job I was on, I stayed late and saw and heard something I shouldn’t have. I’m not doing anything about it because it wasn’t enough. But they don’t know that. So, here I am, just moving on, no doubt being completely over the top cautious.
I pull my computer to me and look at my email then my work schedule. Everything’s set to start next week when I should be in my new home.
There are, of course, three emails from my mother. Six from my father. Two from Gran.
My phone pings. I roll over and grab it from the side table next to the very comfortable bed. I think I’m ready to look at it now. It’s charged and the crack doesn’t affect the actual phone, so I switch it on and unlock it.
“Woah.”
Thirty calls from my mother—she doesn’t text because she thinks it’s vulgar—ten from Gran, and a few from a private number.
I switch to my chat. Vic’s online. I hit call.
“Darling girl,” Gran says, “I’m hoping for one hell of a grand tale from your going missing.”
“I told you I was leaving.” I flop onto my back and stare at the ceiling.
“You said you were going to your new place and your mother’s about to self-combust, I’m thinking of selling tickets to the event.”
I snigger, I shouldn’t. It’s my mom we’re talking about. Her daughter. And we both love her. But it’s funny. “Play nice.”
“I will when they will. Honestly, I’m buying them an actual black sheep for Ex-mas”—that’s how she says it —“for the amount of times they call you one. Darling, I’m glad you went, but . . .”
I sit up. “What is it, Vic?”
“There have been these calls, and now, your dad’s really joining in. Usually, he lets her do it all while he smokes cigars with his cronies.”
I wait for her to get back on track.
“Idiots,” she mutters. “But that thing you told me? What you saw?”
My heart squeezes tight as a coldness starts to spread. “Yes?”
“Remember my saying I’ve taught you?”
“Through the flames, life will thrive, or it will die.” Right then, the fact I was in a fire comes to me, spinning the words I’ve always taken as meaning to have strength on their axis, like there’s something beyond the obvious meaning. “Of course.”
“I think your flames are here, my girl. Your test.”
“Vic?”
“Don’t go to your new place, not yet. Don’t use your card and don’t answer unknown calls. They’re looking for you.”
ChapterFive
Mack
There’s something different about Sidney as she stares eye daggers in my direction as I come out from the workshop at Danny’s to find her in the front room.
She’s pretty, standing there all cleaned up, but I don’t mind dirt on her.
Kick-ass black boots adorn her feet, and she’s wearing an oversize floral dress that looks like it should be feeling at home on a lady three times her age, five times her size, and about seventy years earlier. Yet it works.
“Danny’s?”
