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“Damsels in distress.”
“I’m not a damsel in distress.”
He chuckled. “Oh, I know. Just wait till you meet Mel and Victoria. It’ll make sense.” Canaan half expected Elizabeth to put up a fight, but she just sighed again.
“Fine. I’m at the Green Lodge in Hunter. I booked the room under Luna Royal.”
“I sense a theme in your pseudonyms.” He laughed.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going for originality, just anonymity.”
“Mel will be there soon. Don’t open the door unless you’ve checked the peephole, and don’t leave.”
“Okay.” She paused to sigh again. “Thanks, Canaan. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but really, thanks.”
He shrugged. “It’s nothing. We gamers have to stick together. I’ll see you soon, Queenie. It’ll be all right,” he added. It was a promise, but Elizabeth didn’t have to understand that just yet.
SEVEN
ELIZABETH
I’ve lost my mind. It’s the only explanation.
“Are you gonna be okay there?” Mel asked from behind the wheel.
Elizabeth hadn’t stopped twitching in her seat since Mel had picked her up. The woman was exactly what Elizabeth had expected from an agent. Though Mel wasn’t very tall, she had this whole allure about her. From her leather jacket to combat boots and black jeans, and black ripped tee, Mel just exuded majordon’t fuck with mevibes.
Elizabeth felt safer in that car than she had since leaving her home, but there was the very real fact that Mel was taking her to Canaan’scompound. “You’re not delivering me to my death, are you?”
Mel snickered. “Canaan is a good egg. Weird as shit but sweet. You’ll be fine.”
“How long have you known him?”
“I guess you could say we’re in the same family.” Mel shrugged.
“You’re another cousin?”
“Not quite, but close enough.”
Elizabeth wanted to press Mel for more information, but it was pretty obvious that the other woman was not the talkative type.
After nearly an hour of driving, Mel pulled the car off the main road and down a long and winding path through the woods. Elizabeth tried to memorize all the twists and turns in case she needed to get away fast. She craned her neck every which way to try and memorize the trees.
“He’s not gonna kill you and bury you in the woods,” Mel said. “It’s not his style.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so. He wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble if he wanted to harm you.”
Elizabeth didn’t argue. She didn’t know enough about Canaan to say much more. This was either the dumbest thing she had ever done, or it would be her saving grace.
Time would tell, but she was pretty damn sure things couldn’t get much worse.
Finally, there was a small break in the trees around a large black metal fence from which a big wooden sign swung.The Compoundhad been carved into it and painted over with black paint.
Elizabeth shivered. “Just what in the hell have I walked into now?”
She swallowed her apprehension and kept her eyes on the long laneway. Each side of it bolstered thick-trunked trees with big leafy heads swaying in the wind. Through the moving greenery, she spotted a massive rectangular home with a flat roof and way too many windows.
