I kept running on and on, spikes of adrenaline propelling me forward. Nausea twisted my gut.
I’d quite literally slept with the enemy. I’d been living with them. I’d sworn to avenge the household, and instead, I’d shared my body with one of the men who killed the people there. I’d befriended another.
I ran harder, and all those roaring emotions built to an apex, flooding over in a trickle of tears. Noelle’s voice rose up from long ago in my childhood training sessions. Crying is a weakness. Crying is a weakness.
The chiding statement echoed in my mind over and over, but it didn’t stop the tears from spilling fast and violently down my cheeks.
I knew I was far enough away that the men shouldn’t be able to track me now, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop running—not until I found myself nearing a residential section of town where porchlights beamed through the night.
The last thing I needed was a suburban mother calling the real cops on me, so I slowed to a brisk walk, still breathing heavily. I dropped my arms, and my left wrist brushed against my pocket. I stopped and looked down at the bulge.
The phone.
Noelle had always been the voice of reason in my life. If the men I’d thought were on the side of the law were actually my enemies… then maybe the person who’d reached out to me was my friend after all.
I forced myself to place one foot in front of the other as I strode onward and pulled the phone from my pocket. Bringing up the message from last time, I examined it for several minutes.
What did I have to lose? Julius and the others knew that I’d seen them. No way was I getting back into their apartment undetected. All I had was a shrinking ball of cash, the clothes on my back, and this phone some mysterious benefactor had left for me.
I spotted a small shed to the side of one of the houses, and I veered in that direction, walking as if I belongedon the property. I shook the shed’s handle, and when it didn’t open, I slammed my brace down on it.
It snapped with a crack. One glance over my shoulder was all I allowed before I ducked inside and closed the shed door behind me.
A lawnmower and some gardening tools sat inside, but it was mostly empty. Plenty of room to hunker down and gather myself. It felt safer than walking the empty streets.
I dragged in a breath and typed out a short reply on the phone—an adequate one. The question I should have asked to begin with, knowing anything offered through Noelle’s contacts was more trustworthy than a bunch of strangers who’d all but kidnapped me.
How do I know it’s you?
I hit send before I could second-guess my decision, and then I waited. My mind ran rampant, the events of the past several days flickering past me. How had I been stupid enough to trust the very people I’d meant to hunt down?
The incoming text arrived with a vibration of the phone. My gaze jerked to the screen.
Meet me at the Volcano Aquarium tomorrow morning at 7am.
I stared at the words, and they clicked in my mind. Anyone from around here would know that there were no volcanos or aquariums nearby. It shouldn’t have made sense, but to me and Noelle, it did.
A sewer tunnel—hot as the inside of a volcano, I’d grumbled more than once—ran parallel to the duck pond in the center of the town. It was an emergency meetup point, one set aside only to be used in the direst circumstances.
Only Noelle and I knew about it. Only the two of us knew the quirky name I’d given it as a preteen—The Volcano Aquarium, named after the heat, the location, and the smell of dead, rotting fish.
It was Noelle. I knew it was. We’d never had to use it before. But if there’d ever been dire circumstances, it was now.