had to get somewhere that these guys couldn’t find her and think. Once she’d had time to do that, then maybe she’d call her dad.
Kayleigh finally hit the paved road with the back end of the Charger fishtailing as she did. She was thankful for the time of night and lack of traffic, and she raced toward her house. The men behind her knew where Bobby lived, which meant they had her address, but they didn’t know who she was, yet. She just had to make sure she lost them on the way and got the hell in and out as quickly as possible. Kayleigh lived in Baton Rouge her entire life, so she knew the streets like the back of her hand. She spent the next half an hour making sharp turns and racing through residential districts, down back alleys, and changing direction every few minutes until she no longer heard the loud rumble of the bikes behind her.
It took her another hour to get to her own street. Once there, she drove by the house twice, making sure there was no sign of the bikes, and all looked quiet in and around the house. The only light on shone from her bedroom from the lamp she’d turned on before Bobby left. She went around the block and left her car parked on the street that ran behind her house. She didn’t look at the front end when she got out; she didn’t want to see what the man’s body she’d hit had left there.
She left the car but took her keys and purse and jogged the block back to the house she had shared with Bobby for the past four years. She didn’t bother unlocking the front door, but instead slipped through the back gate and through the door to the garage that they almost always left unlocked.
She made her way through the dark, not taking out her phone, or turning on any lights, listening as she moved slowly, making sure there were no sounds in the house. When she made it to the bedroom, she went to the closet and took down the locked box where Bobby insisted on keeping what he called their emergency stash of cash. He kept one key on his keychain, but Kayleigh had watched him hide the other one in his dresser drawer one night when he thought she was asleep. She’d never looked inside the box, and suddenly she was beginning to realize, naïve was exactly what she’d been. She took the box over where the light was still shining and set it on top of Bobby’s dresser. Sliding open his top drawer, she tossed out his neatly rolled socks until she saw it, a small, single gold key, taped to the back corner of the drawer. Kayleigh pulled it out and because she was still shaking so hard, she had to fumble with it several times to get it into the lock. Once she finally had it there, she turned it to the right and heard it click. Taking a deep breath, she opened the lid, and gasped.
The first thing she saw was a 9mm handgun and a box of ammo. The next thing her brain tried to process were the two neatly stacked and bound piles of one-hundred-dollar bills. What the hell had Bobby gotten himself into?
The sound of motorcycles suddenly penetrated the quiet that surrounded her. She felt like she was going to be sick and told herself how stupid it had been to come back there. But she couldn’t run if she didn’t have money for essentials at least. She scooped one pile of the cash out of the box, and then deciding what the hell, she took the other one as well. She grabbed a tote bag hanging on the wall and shoved the money into it, then remembering how close she’d just come to getting shot, she grabbed the gun and ammo, and shoved them in the bag as well. Kayleigh knew how to shoot; her father made sure that she learned everything about guns as soon as she was old enough. She didn’t have any idea if she could shoot a human being, but the bikes were so close by then that she didn’t have time to ponder that. She hooked the bag over her shoulder and ran out of the room and back down the hallway, and then out the door she’d came in through.
Instead of going back out through the front gates,