Chapter Twenty-Seven

Eli

“Relax, Nina,” I commanded her, massaging her shoulders tenderly as I spoke. “You’re with me. Nothing is going to happen to you.”

Nina swallowed and nodded. Her eyes still sparkled up at me, even in the darkness, and her hair was wild from our kissing. “What are we going to do?” she asked, using a tiny, lost-girl voice. “He knows exactly where we are, Eli. You know that.”

“Then we move,” I whispered to her. I scooped a finger beneath her chin and tilted her gaze, forcing her to keep her eyes on mine. “He’s coming for us because he’s scared and he’s desperate, Nina. Not because he’s strong. Not because we’re weak. He’s coming for us because he’s scared. We took out three fucking Freaks in one night. He’s terrified.”

Nina pressed her lips together and nodded, letting my words sink in. “Where are we going to go? Where can we go that he won’t find us? There’s nowhere—”

“He’s a tiny man, bright eyes,” I promised her. “When I was young, I felt the same way you do right now.”

“Scared?” Nina asked. “Scared that Dad knew everywhere you could possibly hide?”

“Kind of,” I agreed. “I thought that Jon-Pierre Gusteau was all-powerful and all-knowing. I thought he controlled my life whether I wanted him to or not.” I sauntered over to my closet and opened the door, reaching the highest shelf and pulling down a black box. “Being thrown onto the streets and landing on my feet proved the opposite to me: I was the one who was all-powerful. I was the one who controlled my life, no matter what he thought about that.” I opened the black box and pulled out a gleaming metal handgun. I lifted my shirt and slid the weapon into the side of my jeans, as if this was the most casual gesture in the world. “You control your life, too, Nina.” Her dazed eyes broke away from the gun and fastened back on me.

She swallowed and nodded. “I think the files might have actually uploaded to the Cloud,” she confessed in a hopeful whisper. “I wasn’t paying attention, but I thought that I heard a little ding when we were making out.”

“Then let’s get out of here,” I whispered back to her, like the ability to be free was a secret that only we could share. I wrapped my hand around hers and laced our fingers together. “Let’s get the hell out of here, Nina. We can go anywhere, and your fucking father will never know. We can take him down.”

Nina hesitated, but the longer she gazed into my eyes, the bolder her tentative smile became.

“Let’s go,” she said. “All my clothes are in that U-Haul outside of Masters Heights, but—I guess we can leave them.”

“No. We’ll go to Masters Heights,” I answered, even though it was an incredible risk. I was never going to run from JP again. “We’ll go.”

We were already moving toward the door when Nina dug her heels into the floor. “No,” she whispered. “We can’t. Fuck the clothes. We’ll go to a motel with a washing machine. It’s fine.” Her eyes shone bright with fear, and she sunk her teeth into her lower lip. “Please, Eli.” She was fucking terrified of the man.

My heart softened at the sight, and I couldn’t say no to her. “Okay,” I whispered back. My hand brushed against her cheek. “We’ll go. I know this city like no one you ever knew before.”

As Nina and I clambered down the top stairwell, Bethel’s head poked out of her door and she whispered, even though it was obvious no one here was asleep. “What in the name of Aunt Tabitha’s ashes is going on out here? Eli, is that you?”

There was the sound of something spilling over, and then Margot’s door popped open, too. “I’m all right,” she assured us, stumbling out into the hall in a surprisingly elaborate red-and-black negligee. Even in the darkness, we all realized her state of undress, and Margot scrambled to cover herself. “My video chat with Henry ran late, and I slipped into something more comfortable.” She sniffed. “Of course, that’s all over now, isn’t it? What’s going on? Eli?”

I drew myself up to a great height, invigorated by the sense that these women needed my help. I grasped Bethel’s shoulder and directed her eyes back to me.

“Bethel, do you have enough cab fare to make it to Bran’s Pass tonight? Never mind, I’ll cover it. I’m going to call them now. Could you stay with your daughter there?” Claire was a licensed realtor operating in Hinton, but she lived in the suburbs. It would be the perfect place for a target like Bethel to hide. JP was ruthless. He could easily discover that I’d inherited this bar from Teddy, and it wouldn’t be a leap of the imagination to assume that I inherited Bethel as a surrogate mother, too. She was so weak, in her sweet, dumpy, arthritic body. She’d be that jackal’s first choice.

“Why do I have to leave?” Bethel asked, tearfully. She wrapped her wrinkled hands around my knuckles and whispered, “You finally got yourself into that trouble you were looking for, Eli.”

“Sure did,” I confessed. “Margot? Did you and your sister ever get over that spat about the bed and breakfast?”

“No!” Margot pouted. “Are you kidding? I paid off the property tax on that old piece of junk, and she completely abandoned the project! I’m never going to—”

“Well, you’re going to have to. I’m sure she’d love to see you.” I gripped Margot’s shoulders and propelled her gently but forcefully down the second flight of stairs. Nina and Bethel crept along behind us in the dark, Nina guiding Bethel by the hand. I only paused to make a call to request two Speed-E-Cabs, then helped both of the women with their coats. I shrugged on my own wool-lined corduroy and unlatched the back door. It blew inward with a brutal gust, and I looped my arms around both women, leading them out into the pitch blackness of the street.

Snow was falling, but the only way I could tell was by the little frozen tingles on my face. There was no light to reflect off the snowflakes.

I glanced over my shoulder to the back door, where I could still see Nina waiting, the door hanging open and the snow falling like slow-motion rain between us. She had her fists bunched up at her chest from either cold or terror or both. I gestured for her to close that door. I didn’t want anyone to even catch a glimpse. JP had to have men watching the building. Watching her.

Two headlights pricked the horizon and came slowly closer to the bar. Nina closed the back door, and I could breathe a little easier.

“You’d better be careful, baby,” Bethel said to me. She knocked affectionately against my side. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You don’t have to know. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“I can’t believe I’m out here, dressed like this, going to see my damn sister,” Margot muttered to herself in direct contrast with Bethel’s sweetness. “Tonight has been ruined, Eli! Ruined!”

“I know,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder. Nina’s silhouette still lingered in the back door window. Good.

As the headlights glared down on us, it was hard to tell the color of the vehicle.

Then the passenger’s side window rolled down, and my heart ratcheted into high gear. I drew my arms tighter around Bethel and Margot, preparing to shield them if I had to.

“Hey,” a voice hollered to us. As the car came to a stop beside us, its color became clear: yellow. “Is one of you three named, uh, Bethel?”

“I’m Bethel,” she answered him, shuffling forward. I opened the door for her and helped her inside.

“What the hell is going on out here tonight, huh?” the driver asked, genially. “Who turned out the lights?”

I almost still didn’t trust him, but I could see that his badge was mounted on the backseat to verify he was an official cab driver. I paid the man in advance and closed the door, waving goodbye to Bethel through the window. The next Speed-E-Cab came and took Margot, and I hurried back into the bar, blowing into my cupped hands and scanning for Nina’s face.

I found her lingering by the garage door, peering through its little window. Her hands were still bound up at her chest. It must’ve been terror, not the cold. “Where’s your bike?” she hissed over to me, scowling and then scanning the window again.

“Still in the shop. I wanted to get Margot and Bethel out of here first. He’s not going to try to hurt you.” I pulled out my cell phone to call for another cab, but my signal was too low. Dark clouds gathered over us and the snowfall must’ve been disrupting the signal. Damn it! I jammed my phone back into my pocket and paced in front of the back door.

Nina hesitated, and her wide eyes blinked up at me with fear in them. “What? What happened?”

“Service is out. I can’t get my phone to come back up.”

Outside, there was the bright sound of tinkling glass. Nina gasped and scurried over to where I stood, crowding herself against my chest. I slanted a look out the window. A trashcan had fallen open in the alley. The wind? Or could it be something else?

“We can’t stay here,” I said with absolute certainty. “I could hold off several men, but if all the Freaks converged here, there would be no way.” My eyebrows bent with sorrow as I gazed down at innocent Nina. I didn’t want her to have to see those sons of bitches overcome me. She’d be scarred for life. It would be smarter to move. It was harder to hit a moving target, and JP’s army would never be able to concentrate on top of us.

If it was a steady stream of Freaks, I could take the whole army out tonight, but JP was too smart to do that.

“What are we supposed to do?” Nina squeaked tearfully. “Just walk? On the street?”

I opened the back door and nodded to her. Snow blew behind the bar and against the garage door, thick enough now to be visible even without light. Nina plucked one of my jackets from the back of the bar and draped it over her shoulders, then crowded up against me again. Without even looking at her, I could feel her fear. I could feel it in the hugeness of her eyes, in the way she huddled against my shoulder.

“Don’t be scared,” I told her, my voice heavy and intense because this was important. I took her hand in mine and wove our fingers together. My eyes found hers and held tight. She looked like the night we first made love. Her eyes were bright, her hair was a mess, and she was wearing my riding jacket again. “I won’t let go of you, Nina. I promise.”

Nina offered up a watery, uncertain smile. “They’re going to be looking for us, aren’t they?” she said, even though she knew the goddamn answer. “The Freaks will be looking for us, Eli.” She had my hand in a death grip. “I know we took out three of them, but there are so many more than three, aren’t there?”

“Yeah, and it’s fucking dark out there,” I reminded her grimly. I had to be real. “No streetlights.”

She pressed her lips together and blinked up at me expectantly. I nodded down to her. I got her into this mess. If it weren’t for me, she’d be sitting in her cozy Paper Treasure right now, blissfully tallying wrong numbers. I got her into this mess, and I would get her out of it.

“Let’s run. I’ve got you.” I pulled her out into the shadows and the thickly falling snow.

Darkmont sprawled before us like something part wilderness and part maze. It was almost impossible to tell the streets from the alleys, and it would be so easy to lose the way. But my sense of direction was unaltered. These streets had been my home, my playground. JP couldn’t use them against me. He was only going to confuse his own damn self.

I pulled Nina through the twisting streets, vaulting over fences and shimmying between narrow dumpsters to throw off anyone who might be trying to predict our pattern from above. I would cast my eyes overhead and see shadows moving in the windows.

“Stay close,” I breathed down to Nina. Our hands never came undone.

“I couldn’t be any closer.”

In the distance, a fire escape rattled with the weight of someone coming down. Then, a dumpster lid thudded loudly. Someone must have jumped from the fire escape to the dumpster.

I craned my neck to look over my shoulder, and that was when I saw them.

The silhouettes at our back.

The only thing between us and those three shadows was a block of falling snow.

I couldn’t tell Nina…