the road, pulling us away from my prison. I keep myself down against the dirty floor, noticing a dead bee inches from my face. Did this car become its prison? Was it unable to escape and found death? Am I free or am I still in my very own prison?
“Do I take you home or straight to the police? Where’s your father?” he asks.
And as I lie on the floor, wondering how I ended up here, I realize that Shepherd is probably thinking the same thing. He left everything for this, everything for me. But why would he even bother? I’m not worth any of this.
“Hey! Killian! You alive?”
“Sadly,” I say as I roll onto my back to look up at him.
He shakes his head. “Not fucking ‘sadly,’ you pessimistic little shit.”
“Why’d you give up so much for me? I mean, you drop me off somewhere and then what are you going to do?”
He shrugs, but he doesn’t seem overly confident for once. “Whatever I want.”
“Would you take me with you?”
“Just go home, Killian.”
That sounds worse than Tony catching me. “I don’t want to go home. Do you really think Tony will stop with this? He’ll find me again and this time, he really will kill me.”
Shepherd glances down at me for just a split second before falling silent, like he’s trying to think. “I’m not risking shit for you if you’re not honest. Why the fuck do you not want to go home? That officer I killed… he was trying to kill you, wasn’t he?”
“I honestly don’t know. I don’t know why he shot at me.” And I honestly don’t.
“You love to lie. You told me as much.”
“I never said I loved it. I said I’m good at it. And I’m being honest. I just don’t fucking know, so take me with you.”
“Why should I risk everything for you?”
I think about what I can give him and realize I’m not sure. I already tried persuading him with my body and he didn’t seem interested. Maybe I’m the only one interested in that kind of thing. “I’ll… I’ll pay you.”
“How much?”
He seems interested, so I know that I need to use money to keep him by me. “Whatever my dad has in his safe, it’s all yours.”
“We’re going to break into your house?”
“Yes.”
“How much is in the safe?”
“If I knew, I’d have said, ‘Hey, I’ll pay you ten grand or twenty grand or five dollars.”
“Five dollars. I like that one.”
A small smile tries to play at my lips. “Good because it’s dropping by the minute.”
“We’re not doing it tonight, they’ll be watching the house. Tonight, we need to switch out vehicles and hide,” he says. “How bad’s your arm?”
“Well, I’m not dead yet, so that’s one positive. Can you get these handcuffs off me?”
“Sure. We need to ditch the car first.”
“Seriously?”
“You don’t understand how deep Tony’s hold runs in this city, do you? He’s got… workers all over that are probably already on the lookout for a car matching this description. We need to ditch it.”
Ten
Shepherd pulls the car into a bank parking lot and gets out. “Come on.”
“Now?”
“Yep. Grab my dog,” he says as he hurries off.
I try to unfold myself from the car floor as the monster stares at me. I’m positive the dog’s going to eat me as I realize that it’s still wearing the seat belt that Shepherd wrapped over it. As I reach for it, it makes a noise which helps me to decide it can stay in here. I get out as Shepherd looks back at me.
“The dog!”
“It growled at me!”
“It’s like a greeting. Grab him.”
Why can’t he just grab the demon? “Yeah, it’s a greeting as in ‘reach for me again and I’ll rip your hand off!’”
“Well… if he rips your hand off, then we won’t have to worry about getting the handcuffs off. It’s a win-win,” he says.
I grumble as I reach back into the car and quickly press down on the seat belt release. The dog has a thick chain wrapped tightly around his neck and the chain attached to that must weigh an obscene amount. “Don’t eat me, don’t eat me, don’t eat me.”
I snatch up the chain and scoot back quickly as the dog hops out and wags his tail. Then I run for Shepherd, hoping he’ll take the dog and the ridiculously heavy chain. I find him standing in front of an ATM, punching numbers into it.