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“A wedding,” she grumbled.
“Very nice. He treats you right?”
Jewel paused, studied the woman’s face and slowly nodded.
Finn treated her like… someone important. Not a sex object. Not a voyeur. Not a slave. He made her feel like they were on the same plane.
In another life, one where she’d never met Kross, she could probably have a boyfriend like Finn.
They’d take long walks, watch movies and hold hands.
They’d have lazy Sunday afternoons eating baked chicken and cuddling in the hammock after lunch.
In another life, she’d be normal.
For a few minutes, Jewel tried on clothes, chatted with the clerk and enjoyed a taste of normalcy before she grabbed her brother and uprooted both their lives.
She’d run far away, never to see Sky, Jo, Carrie or Finn ever again.
Finn…
The feelings that coursed through her chest when he looked at her—they were a problem, but she could get over it.
He could stay in Belize if he wanted. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
When she walked out of this shack, life would find another way to kick her down again. Kross would still be a threat. And normal? It just wasn’t in the cards.
19
Pinpricks of sunlight seeped through the holes in the shack’s zinc roof. He’d never seen so many clothes stuffed into one cramped room before. They were T-shirts, jeans and underwear overflowing from barrels, hung up on wires and gracing yellow-stained mannequins.
Finn was starting to regret dragging Jewel here. He hoped the clothes were better quality than the appearance of the shop.
His phone chirped.
Nolan.
He opened the message and saw a selfie. Nolan’s face filled the screen, behind him was an airplane window that looked out into a filmy blue sky.
Finn wished Nolan a safe trip and then scrolled through the files he kept on his cloud.
He flipped to the files on Kross’s most recent victims.
At least the guy’s diverse.
He’d slept with and then choked every type of woman—from white to black to yellow to brown. Didn’t matter their skin color or their shape. Kross seemed to delight in variety.
After talking to Jewel, Finn realized why. There was something off about Kross, some broken nerve in his brain that made him both addicted to sex and bored with it.
His sister had died at the hands of a maniac, but after years of chasing empty leads and running into the wind only to return with fistfuls of air, he was relieved to have some answers.
Footsteps resounded.
Finn glanced up and found Jewel and the seller nearing him. She was smiling and talking freely, her hands gesturing out at her sides. She clutched a T-shirt and jeans in one hand.
The owner threw her head back and laughed at whatever Jewel said. Her arms held a heap of clothes.
He scrambled to his feet. “You ladies good?”
