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I turned to Noah. “I think I left my purse on the kitchen counter.” I handed him the house keys. “Would you mind running and getting it for me?”
I waited until he was out of sight before making my way down the front steps, my eyes firmly set on the Caddy parked twenty yards away. Despite the tightening in my chest and the tingle of fear in my bones, I was going to face whoever was behind the wheel and ask them why they were following me. But as soon as I opened the front gate to the apartment complex, the car pulled away from the curb, the driver keeping his face ahead as he drove past me. He was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses so I didn’t recognize him. But I wasn’t dumb. I was being watched.
A chill ran through me as I stood on the curb and watched the Caddy disappear down the street and out of view.
Then, like a firecracker went off under me, I ran back through the gate and up the steps, only slowing down when I reached the front door to my apartment. I took a moment to suck in a couple of deep breaths to calm my nerves before stepping inside because I didn’t want Noah to see me in a panic.
When I found him in the kitchen, my face brightened. “Sorry, babe. I just realized I left it in my bedroom. Wait here for me.”
I hurried to my room, careful to close the door behind me, and rushed to the closet. Reaching into the shadows of the top shelf, I felt around until my hand brushed against the cold steel box. Pulling it down, I punched in the sequence of numbers in the keypad to unlock it, and then lifted the lid.
Inside was a Beretta pistol.
A Beretta 98A1, to be exact.
A tactical pistol.
.21mm caliber.
125mm of impressive firepower.
I lifted it out and held it in my hand, feeling a familiar comfort as my fingers wound around the grip.
This would keep us safe.
I would make sure it did.
TAYLOR
Ten Years Ago
“Where are we going?” I asked my godfather, Alex.
We were in the backseat of his shiny black SUV while his driver, Serge, drove.
“I have a surprise for you.”
My face lit up.
“You do?” Alex was too good to me. Always surprising me with gifts. Always lavishing me with nice things. Last week he’d bought me a brand-new Porsche for my birthday. He wasn’t really my godfather. But it’s what he wanted me to call him. “What is it?”
His hand slid over mine. “You’ll see soon enough.”
Excited, I peered out the window and wondered what he had done for me this time, watching as we left the affluent suburb of Lincoln Park behind us. As the miles rolled by, the landscape slowly changed from the kind of comfortable suburbia, where soccer moms drove Range Rovers and packed their kids nice lunches for school, to the slums of my old neighborhood, where moms were passed out on their heroin highs, while their kids were neglected, malnourished, and left to be unwitting prey to whoever was lurking about.
I felt my throat tighten, and I struggled to swallow the sudden excess of spit in my mouth.
I hadn’t been back to this part of town since I’d fled ten years earlier. When my junkie father tried selling me to one of his dealers for his next high. I shifted uncomfortably against the plush leather seat and glanced at Alex. He was watching me, trying to gauge my reaction.
We never spoke about this place. And I never told him of the horrors of living on the streets for the three years before he found me. About the hunger. About the cold—the type that sank into your bones and froze you right down to your very core. About the sleepless nights and the fear. About the rape. But he knew, I knew he did. Because it was like he’d been trying to make it up to me ever since he’d found me starving and cold, and huddled under a cardboard box in a part of town that no fifteen-year-old should ever call home.
When we pulled up in front of the dilapidated little house with grimy windows and weeds growing as high as the porch steps, my stomach began to churn.
“Alex?” I asked, shakily.
Again, his big, warm hand covered mine. “It’s going to be fine. I promise.”
He gave me a familiar look of affection. The kind that I craved so badly from him. I wanted to believe him. But as much as I loved Alex, and as much as I wanted his attention and his love, he could be unpredictable. And sometimes that frightened me.
He came around to my side of the car and opened my door for me, extending his hand. “You can trust me, my darling goddaughter.”
