I hold up the box.
She nods. “We’re going,” she says. “Now. You’re not coming back.”
I don’t protest. I don’t try to grab my things. I don’t try to say goodbye. And I don’t ask if we can take Mom with us.
I just follow her. Like it’s easy.
And it is. Because what’s waiting behind me? It’s nothing good. And what’s waiting in front of me? Is everything I want.
She presses her hand between my shoulders, and I move, one step, then two, three, four. I lose track after that. Then we’re in her car, and then we’re driving down the street, away, and the beach is fading and her hands are tight around the steering wheel, and mine are tight around the box.
“Are you okay?” she asks, finally, after long pulls of silence.
“I got the drives,” I say, instead of answering. “All four of them.”
Something purrs approval under my skin as I lie. The secret thumb drive in my pocket burns. My leverage. My new just-in-case box.
I love my sister and I trust her. But only so far. And this life has taught me that only so far ends eventually.
My sister’s lips press together. “Good job,” she says, and the words, she has no idea what they mean to me. Someday I might try to tell her.
But I just stare out the window, my eyes blurring, the stained and sandy clothes on my back the only things I own, and the freedom on my tongue tastes like blood and salt.
— 61 —
12:36 p.m. （204 minutes captive）
2 safe-deposit keys
Plan #6: Don’t die.
“You’re definitely going in the trunk,” Duane tells me, stepping off the last ladder rung with a little groan to his breath I can’t miss.
“Scared I’ll stab you again?” As I struggle to straighten, my body would very much like me to stop, but I ignore it. Gotta keep going until I can’t anymore. Otherwise I end up in the trunk.
I step back, toward the barn doors, and he makes a noise, pulling the gun out of his waistband.
“Remember, I’m worth a lot more alive than dead.”
“Now that I’ve met you, I have a feeling your stepfather wouldn’t mind if I brought you back dead. He’d probably sympathize with me once I told him what trouble you were.”
“You don’t know him like I do. That’s definitely not what he wants.”
I’m so focused on him and any way to escape, I almost don’t catch it, the movement up in the hayloft. I think it’s wishful thinking, because there’s really no way out here, but then my thinking’s not wishful, because Iris Moulton is creeping across that hayloft, her giant-ass petticoat stripped from underneath her skirt and clutched in her hand like a weapon. My entire stomach flips like I’ve been double-bounced on a trampoline because holy shit, I am the damsel in distress and I might just be getting saved. She’s got her lighter in her other hand, and I understand instantly what she’s got planned. It’s perfect. She’s perfect, and I can’t even savor how much I love her in that moment because of that asshole and the danger.
“Are you going to be quiet now?” he asks me, and his voice trembles. It doesn’t shake. I’ve snotted off to him and outwitted him and stabbed him, and he is finally where I want him to be: at the end of his rope.
She’s at the railing. He doesn’t see her; all his focus and rage and frustration is on me.
“Just one last thing,” I say, drowning out the snick of the lighter as Iris lights her petticoat on fire. “You might want to look up.”
He laughs. He does not look up. “Do you think I’m gonna fall for that?”
“No.” I shake my head as Iris lets go of the tulle and the petticoat falls in a whoosh of fire and lace. “But I do think my girlfriend’s better dressed than you,” I add.
I catch just the barest twitch of his confused frown at my words before the flaming tulle envelops him. Layers upon layers of it fall over his head, the flames greedily eating up the fabric. He screams, animal instinct taking over, just like she said in the bathroom. He drops the gun as he tries to pull the petticoat off, but it’s roaring around his shoulders and he has to fall to the ground, rolling in the dirt, all cool gone as survive kicks in.
The gun clatters to the floor and get it, hurry, fuck, fuck, my knees scrabble across hard dirt, and when my hand closes around it, I want to cry. I want to drop it. I want to not be here.
I don’t want to be her again, but I make sure the safety’s off, and I point it at him and Ashley hums under my skin like a bad habit, trigger-happy and oh so broken and way too jumpy.