call feeling better than I have in weeks. Going back to the city will be dangerous, but considering Gabriel’s men have found me three times already, I wonder if I am any safer floating on the fringes of society.
Remembering my run-in with the junkie outside, I shiver. My money is running out, and so is my luck. I can’t keep hanging out at dodgy motels while I wait for Gabriel’s thugs to catch up with me.
I need a solution, and going back to work is the best I’ve got.
The wine is sour, and the pizza I order for dinner is the wrong kind of greasy. Nevertheless, I consume them both greedily, and by the time I’m done I thoroughly hate myself.
I toss the box to the floor and groan. Harry starts to cry, as though he’s also upset about my life choices, even though he ate a princely meal of assorted deli meat, cheese, fruit, and raw carrots—all of which cost me an arm and a leg at the gas station and took me ages to cut up into little pieces.
We really cannot keep this up.
I pick Harry up, bouncing him around the room, humming the tune he likes. This seems to make him cry more.
“Shh,” I murmur. “It’s okay.”
He dials up the volume and the people in the room next to me bang on the wall angrily, like that’s going to help.
I rock him back and forth, eventually soothing him to a stage of choked sobs and sniffs. Just as I am about to lay him on the bed, he croaks something that makes my heart skid to a halt.
“Dada.”
I freeze, bent halfway over the bed, a lump forming in my throat. I wonder if he’s saying “dada” in the way that a parrot says “I love you,” just making sounds, with no understanding of the word.
But my son is not a bird, and when he says it a second time and ramps up for a second round of howling, I know I have to act fast. I set him on the bed and grab my phone—my original phone, not the burner I have to use to avoid being tracked. I keep it on airplane mode if it’s on at all. I will have to sell it soon.
I swipe through the photos until I find one of Gabriel. I have no idea if this is going to work, but I’m willing to try anything to avoid my neighbors coming over to shut Harry up themselves. I hold the screen over Harry’s face, watching him hopefully.
Harry’s eyes lock onto the image and he releases a world-weary sigh that is far beyond his years, of which he has less than two. He stops crying and reaches up, trying to touch his father’s face. My heart cracks right down the middle.
“Go to sleep,” I say in a deep voice, both sounding and feeling ridiculous.
He puckers his lips and blinks slowly. My God, it’s working.
Something itches under my skin as I watch Harry fall asleep. It’s the same discomfort that has plagued me for a month now. I think it’s a combination of guilt and longing. I should hate Gabriel, but instead I miss him. I miss the feel of his heavy arms around my shoulders, the soft press of his lips on my neck, the almost primal protectiveness he had where Harry and I were concerned.
Yet how can I miss him when I know the first thing he will do if he finds me is take Harry away? I remember him threatening to do so all too clearly. It sticks in my mind like a rock in the sole of my shoe, digging in with every step I take.
I try not to let my thoughts dwell on Gabriel. I have a purpose now, besides staying just out of his grasp. There is darkness spreading through the city, and I intend to dig all the way down to the roots to expose it.
Later that night, flashing blue and red lights glow through my curtains, without an accompaniment of sirens. I tiptoe out of bed, trying not to wake Harry, and peek through the window. Another stretcher, another figure shrouded in plain white cotton.
This cements the realization that I cannot stay in this motel any longer or in any ones like it. I need to get out of here.
4
Gabriel
I adjust my cufflinks, listening to the chatter through the wooden door. The press are waiting for me, and they are hungry.
My war with Andrew Walsh