“Hey, hey…” I mimicked her voice, laughing.
My eyes flicked over her. Medium height, pretty blondish-red hair in a mess of waves and curls tumbling over her shoulders, and a face like a doll’s—pouty but serious. Her skin was pale with a spray of freckles over her nose and cheeks. Slate-blue eyes were trained on me, making my back straighten. That nervous jitter to her posture and her perfect pink lips made me lean in to her.
Motherfuck, it’s her again.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I growled, my alcohol and weed–induced stupor abating for just a moment. “I told you to fuck off and stay off.” I shook off her hand.
“Yeah, you did, but you wouldn’t listen to what I had to say. And it’s important.”
“Important? What’s so fucking important?”
“You were Dig’s friend. He talked to you that day when I was with him.”
I grabbed her arm and dragged her through the boisterous thick crowd toward where our cars and trucks were parked. I pushed her against the black Camaro. His Camaro.
“What don’t you understand about, stay the fuck away? Look at you. This ain’t a place for you. You’re just a kid. What are you doin’, huh? Go home. Get a life.”
“I wouldn’t have a life if it wasn’t for Dig Quillen! He saved my life. And I know—I know—he called you on the phone to come help, to-to deal with the body,” she whispered roughly.
My fingers grabbed her face, digging into her jaw. “Who the hell are you?”
“Dig killed that guy, Mole. Dig killed him for me.”
Her words flared right through me, like an alternate oxygen, a compound that burned through my lungs, straight through to my brain cells, obliterating everything I’d thought I knew in its wake.
“Dig saved my life, and he got killed for it.” Her eyes searched mine, the white beams of the overhead lights glaring down on us in the dark jungle of the club parking lot.
I peered into her face, my head hanging from my neck. “I saw that room, that bed. That was you?”
“Me.” Her voice was firm, sure.
I was anything but. “You?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
And there, against Dig’s prized car, she told me every horrible detail of her abduction, every disgusting thing that fucker had done to her. How Dig had walked through that door, taken one long look at her, and changed everything.
“Yeah, he called me, and I went and cleaned it all up. No traces left, no body, not even those pizza boxes on the floor.”
She winced, and her chest heaved. I grabbed her, her body wobbling in my grip. Her eyes shot open, and she pushed against me, a panicked moan escaping her lips.
“Who the fuck are you?” I whispered.
“Just a girl. Just a stupid girl.”
“Why do you keep coming here, damn it?”
“I need to tell his wife. I need to tell her that I’m sorry. That-that it’s all my fault.” She leaned over, her body bowing as if she’d been pushed. She gulped in air, planting her hands on the hood of the Camaro. “That it’s all because of me. I’m so sorry.”
“She almost got killed, too, you know,” I said. “Grace was pregnant, and the baby didn’t make it.”
“I know! I heard it on the news. She killed him, didn’t she? The guy who—”
“She killed him.”
“That’s good. That’s really good.”
“You can’t talk about this to anybody. You told your best friends? Your mommy and daddy?”
She violently shook her head. “No, no. Dig told me not to. Not ever. And I haven’t. I won’t.”
The sound of her saying his name stung. “And how can I be sure of that?”
Her shoulders fell, her neck elongated. “I promised him. And I’m keeping that promise.”
There was a force in her posture, a straight line that held firm.
She’d survived being kidnapped, tortured, sexually assaulted, and saved by an outlaw biker who had happened to be dealing drugs to her captor.
This girl couldn’t be more than sixteen. Same age Grace was when Dig and I had first laid eyes on her a thousand years ago at a party of high schoolers, all innocence and sharp logic. Same age that Inès had— My cousin Inès’s adamant face seared my eyes. Defiance, despair, disregard. Even though I’d kept her safe. Even though she’d had me at her side, holding her up, assuring her with soft words, amusing her. My pleading, my strength hadn’t been enough. She’d only slipped through my fingers. Nothing was ever enough for her.
I wasn’t enough.
The girl’s voice broke through my reverie. “I only came to see you. To explain. To find Mrs. Quillen, to tell her—”
“To tell her, what? Her whole life exploded in her face. What are you gonna tell her now that’s gonna make that all better?” I shouted, my pulse jamming in my stiff neck. “Anyway, she’s gone.”
Her face paled. “Gone?”
“She left town. Up and took off. She ran away from all of us. Didn’t even tell me.” I shook, my whole body shook.
She lunged at me, her arms wrapping around my middle. I stiffened in her embrace, my breath snagging.