“Nate.” She sniffs and stops walking, avoiding my face. “Please don’t be mad.”

But it’s too late, I already am. We stop by the door to our hotel room. It’s hard to stay calm under the stress of our current existence.

“What now?” I grunt.

“There’s something you should know before we. . .before we go to the bank.”

Fuck, no. More complications? This chick is like a f*cking infection. She spreads inside you, fast, then before you know it. . .boom, you’re dead.

“Spill it.”

Her eyes are hard on the floor. We don’t have time for this shit.

“Prescott.”

She just sniffs. Fuck!

“Prescott, are you broke?”

She doesn’t answer, just shakes her head, fat tears dropping from her lower eyelashes.

Fuck me.

“Prescott!” My voice notches up. An impending storm passes through her eyes. My peace is collapsing. How can this girl ruin yet make everything better at the very same time? I knew the little witch was a fraud, but my dick dragged me into her mess.

And now an entirely different organ is keeping me from smashing my fist into her face.

She conned me. Fucking set me up. She can’t pay me, can’t help me, and I’m about to run away penniless, with not a dime to my name. I have about five hundred bucks in my bank account, and I need to withdraw them before my parole officer realizes I favored a crusade against drug lords to sitting pretty in my crumbling house, playing nice.

“How much money have you got?” I pin her to the wall by the neck. Not erotically. Not longingly. But not too painfully either. My eyes play her a horror film that’ll become her reality if she doesn’t comply, and she quickly settles back into her role as a captive and a victim, pinching her lips together. I squeeze harder. “How much? In all of your bank accounts. Altogether. What’s your funds situation? You better not f*cking lie to me.”

“About two grand,” she whimpers, looking scared beyond belief. And I hate it. And I hate her. My skin is burning with anger. “Probably, like, two grand.”

I pick up her backpack from the floor with one hand and clasp her arm with the other, leading her back to the elevators in a bruising grip.

“We’re withdrawing everything we have right now.”

“Why?” she questions. “I can take it out whenever I want. The police aren’t after me.”

“Yet,” I snap. “We don’t know what Godfrey has in store for us.”

Ten minutes later, we cancelled our room reservation, got a full refund and are walking into Bank of America. We take out her money, almost $2,500. I do the same. I end up having $780.

With the money in my pocket—Prescott doesn’t argue or asks any questions as she hands over every penny she has—we drive north, looking for a hideaway. We can’t stay where we withdrew money. It’s too risky.

We wander into a small motel in Martinez an hour later, and the reason it appeals to us is because no one speaks English here and there’s no way we’ll get ratted out. It looks a lot like our Los Angeles hotel, only not under the haze and charm of doing this together, Bonnie and Clyde style. I haven’t spoken to her since I found out she’s almost as poor as I am.

Locking the door to another dingy shithole behind us, I give her a warning: “Stay here. Don’t move. Don’t f*cking breathe. I’m getting in the shower. Watch the window and holler if you see anything fishy.”

The minute the cold water hits my skin, I hear a screech. Ignore it. She probably sat on the crumbling bed. Better yet, she probably opened the door and took off again. This time I won’t be chasing her. It’s her funeral if she wants to keep wandering alone when kingpins put a bounty on her head.

Another screech.

I’m suddenly aware that Prescott may have company outside. Company she hasn’t invited.

Pulling my jeans over my wet thighs in a hurry, I jump out and kick the door open. A horror scene plays before my eyes.

There’s the guy who drove the RAM earlier today sitting on top of Pea. She’s pinned under him against the dirty mattress, and he’s throwing punches at her. She dodges some of them, clawing into his eyes with her nail-less fingers, screaming and kicking. She’s hurting him. He’s yelling, twisting his head violently, trying to escape her fingers. My storm is blinding him with her strength. A ruthless bitch. My ruthless bitch.

Then I notice a huge, pink and fresh bruise on her left cheek, and a little blood trickling from her nose.

My nostrils flare and my jaw tightens. I blink my eyes open, and it’s like I’m watching everything through a first-person shooter video game and I’m about to die. The edges of my vision are splattered with red and everything darkens. In a few seconds, I won’t be able to see anything at all.

He hurt Pea, and he’s going to pay.

I jump onto his back and peel him off of her, dragging him by his neck and throwing him against the wall. He’s not going to die. He’s going to live.

Too bad for him.

Pinning him until his body molds with the exposed bricks, I signal her with my index finger to come closer behind my back. Her figure appears next to me in no time. My fingers sink into the flesh of his neck, cutting off his air.

“What’s your name?” I ask the young guy. He looks to be in his early twenties, fat, thuggish and ugly. There’s a red handprint of her small palm across his cheek.