AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That thought makes me take an impromptu turn north, onto an out-of-the-way street. I check behind me carefully, and sure enough, several seconds later, the same car turns the corner.
Damn it.
Okay. I’m being followed. I definitely can’t drive to my family’s house now—whoever is after me will show up there too. Whether it’s Attolinis or Gattos or some stalker creep, I just don’t want them near my family. Better to just lose the tail and then go on with the plan.
I gasp and hit the brakes, narrowly avoiding hitting a pedestrian. The car behind me is going way too fast—are they even going to stop? And now there’s another car right behind them. I might be paranoid, but they’re sticking right along with the other car, and I just don’t feel good about it.
The moment the person is out of the way, I panic and accelerate again, quickly changing my route. It feels like the minutes blaze past as I drive out of Manhattan toward Rockefeller State Park. Every time I look in my rearview mirror, I see the two vehicles tailing me, no matter how many cars I manage to swerve around to get some distance.
Distance isn’t going to help me. Whether or not it’s paranoia, I just need to lose them and take a beat. Spotting a quickly approaching turnoff into the woods, I turn sharply, gritting my teeth at the sensation and speeding up after the turn.
I don’t even check to see if the cars follow. I find a little nature spot parking spot and kill the engine, taking the keys with me as I hurry into the beautiful autumn woods. The air has a crisp bite to it, but I’m still bundled in the jacket I threw on earlier, and my panic has warmed me nicely.
After several minutes of hiking down a faint forest trail that I’m positive I can follow back, I pause and listen. The sounds all around me are peaceful—rustling leaves and a woodpecker somewhere nearby. Still, my heart is pounding and my stomach churns. I hug myself and look around.
There are voices. Men’s voices. They could be close, or it could be the echo of some innocent hikers enjoying a nearby trail, but I still shiver at the sound and tentatively step off the path, moving quietly away from the sound.
The last time I came to these woods was with my entire family, in the summer. I remember my father putting out a picnic blanket before realizing the bottled orange juice leaked inside the little ice chest and seeped into most of the food. He and my mother had laughed it off, thinking it was just a fluke, but I had come clean that Angela and I had eaten the cookies out of it, and we forgot to put the lid back on before closing it up.
Stop being such a scaredy-cat rat, Miss Goody Two Shoes,she’d hissed.You’re such a spaz.
She’s right. I am a spaz. I lean against a tree and groan. Is the fear making me this nauseous? I haven’t ever felt sick like this before.
The vomit takes me by surprise. I lean over, cough and retch before wiping my lips and grimacing.
Right. Pregnant. I should have expected this, but beyond my mom’s mild pregnancies when I was little, I know next to nothing about what to expect.
Something cracks far behind me, and I tense and whirl. I hear another faint echo of voices. It could be the same men or someone new, but I still stumble away from the spot where I’ve been standing. I swerve around another tree and step over a tree root—
And then my stomach drops out from under me as I plunge forward, gasping when I crash into fall leaves that slide with me down a deep ravine. I try to catch myself a couple of times to no avail—and then I only barely manage to keep myself from screaming when my ankle connects wrong with the forest floor once again. Sharp pain flies up my leg.
I’m breathless and freezing and covered in leaves and spiderwebs. I groan and shut my eyes, praying that if anyone was following me, they won’t check down here.
Chapter 16
Nico
“What?”I snarl
Ace’s voice is small on the other end of the phone. “I—uh…do you really want me to repeat it? Or—"
I take in a steadying breath, but it might as well be fresh oxygen to a building flame. Sybil ran?
Sybil ran.
“Fottuta donna impossibile,”I swear, flipping a U-turn immediately and ignoring the honking traffic around me.
Hurt and shock war in my chest. Why? What the hell is she thinking? Did I say something wrong earlier? No. Everything this morning was fine. It was cathartic, which I’d felt we needed. I was trying with her—couldn’t she see that?
Why the fuck did she run?
I don’t realize I asked that out loud until Ace responds over the phone I’d forgotten in my hand. “I really don’t know, Boss. And look—I know it happened on my watch, so it’s my fault, but…well, she tricked me,” he says flatly, sounding almost hurt. “Stole the car.”
Worry begins to fight with the other emotions, and I growl, “What direction did she go?”
“Up York Avenue, but—"
“Does anyone know where she is?”
