Another morning of no coffee scent.

And, as I sit up in bed, my reflexes jerky with surprise, no Silas.

“What?” I gasp, covered in chenille, the burgundy cloth like cold skin against my body. I leap to my feet in a panic, confused and disoriented, trying to reconcile a lack of Silas and a lack of a bed with my half-awake state.

I turn and find a strange man staring at me.

He takes one step, then a second, eyes wide with curiosity, lips parting to speak.

I scream.

He lets me.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” the man says, his voice accented. Something Eastern European, the kind of voice actors in old Dracula movies used to have. It doesn’t calm me.

At all.

“SILAS!” I scream. “DUFF!”

“My name is Romeo Czaky and I work for Drew Foster.”

I stop screaming.

“Romeo?” I squeak. “Your name is Romeo?”

Dark eyes with lashes so plentiful, he looks like he’s wearing eyeliner, probe mine, the eye roll well practiced.

“Yes, Romeo.” The R rolls slightly, enough to sound silky, like a cat’s purr. “It is a common name.”

“You’re–you’re from the agency?”

“I am.”

“Where’s Duff?”

“He had to step out.”

“And Silas?”

“I do not know. I am only scheduled to relieve Duff.” He says the name like the U is pronounced “ew.”

My pulse is beating so hard, it feels like I’m shaking the wall I lean against. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

“I have been here for the last four hours, Ms. Borokov.” Unlike Americans, he says the V like an F. “If I wanted to harm you, I had my chance.”

The calm way he delivers such chilling words has a hypnotic effect on me. He’s right. He could have killed me in my sleep. He didn’t.

Therefore, I trust him.

Strange thought pattern in a functional life, I know.

Dysfunction is all I know. When you live in a dysfunctional system, the dysfunctional is functional.

“Okay. But why am I asleep on the couch?”

“Ah. Duff said you were waiting up for Gentian.”

“He never came here?”

“No.”

“Maybe he’s next door.”

“Ah, no. I can confirm that he is not.”

I frown. “Where is he?”

“I do not know.”

“But you know he’s not next door?”

“I’ve been instructed to give you that information.”

Oh, please. Here we go again.

“What other information can you give me?”

“What do you want to know?”

“All of the information you’re not supposed to give me.”

A sneaky smile appears, only there for a second. Romeo sets his mouth to a firm, tight line. “You know I cannot do that.”

“No. I don’t.”

Surprise flickers in eyes the color of hot chocolate. “You don’t?”

“I know you refuse to tell me. Not that you’re unable to.”

He’s underestimated me. He’s realizing it right now, in real time. My advantage is slim and narrowing by the second. Not an enemy, not an ally, Romeo is just another guy in a suit with defensive training and better electronics than most of the bad guys. He probably served in some country’s military forces, like Drew and Silas, and now he’s doing private security for people like me.

He’s seen and not heard.

Like I’m supposed to be.

“I am only following orders, Ms. Borokov,” he says apologetically, but the glint in his eye betrays him. This is a game.

I turn away, impolite and impatient. When he’s on my detail, Duff humors me, never giving more than he is allowed, but he always respects me. This guy is a whole different world. For the first time since I’ve lived under constant surveillance, I’m uncomfortable with my guard. Not worried he’ll do anything improper–I wouldn’t stay in the room with him if I had an inkling of that.

But I don’t like being treated like my demand for information is cute.

I grab my phone and check messages. Three death threats, one rape threat involving shoving dynamite up me and lighting it on fire while I’m tied up, two spam texts for refinancing student loans and two personal texts.

Be back when I can. S

and

Jane, I know this is weird, but can you meet me somewhere today to talk?

That text is from Mandy.

The room spins.

Who’s next? Is Jenna going to tag along? With Tara dead and the news in a tizzy over me, I can’t even pause long enough to absorb it all. The trip to the flower shop was a breath of fresh air. Literally. And now Silas is gone, I’ve got a condescending ass for a guard, and Mandy wants to see me?

Sure, I type back, anger making me rebellious. When? Where?

Not in a bar bathroom, she writes back.

I gasp at her brutal honesty, the dark humor too soon, too coarse. My focus shifts and I’m back in that copper-filled ladies’ room, Tara’s blood draining out of her, my shoes soaking, my horror rolling out in real-time seconds as I watch someone I once cared for dying before me.

Three dots on the screen, and then one word.

Sorry.

That’s a first. Mandy, Tara, and Jenna never apologized to Lindsay. Never said a word to me after the attack nearly five years ago. Never acknowledged my existence after Lindsay went away.

Never.

And now Mandy’s apologizing for a distasteful joke? How about apologizing for ruining Lindsay’s life–and now mine–with her lies all those years back?

For what? I type back. Poking her is stupid.

I don’t care.

Can we talk? In person? she writes. Please?

For Mandy to cough up a please means whatever is going on is bad. Really, really bad.

Only in public, I say back.

Outdoors? she replies. At the big park by the beach?

Our town is small enough to have only one major park near a beach. I know exactly where she’s talking about. It’s perfect, all open space, no corners or closed doors.

Yes, I answer.

In an hour? she asks.

I look at the clock. I slept in later than I expected. It’s just past ten. No wonder Silas isn’t–

Oh. That’s right.

He never came home last night.

Jane? the text says.

Noon, I say.

And then I turn off my cell and go take a shower.

It’s a quick one, my skin still smarting from the tiny scabs that are starting the healing process. A fast, hot shower helps, and once I’m dressed and go to make some coffee, I find myself pleasantly surprised by a guard shift change.

Silas is sitting in a folding chair at my dining table, admiring my unicorn.

“Where have you been?” I ask, coldly contained as I make a full pot of coffee. I might be angry at him, but I would never deprive the man of caffeine.

“Working.”

“All night?”

“Since when did you start playing twenty questions?”

“Since you didn’t come home.”

“Home? Is this my home?”

“No.” I’m flustered and spill coffee grounds all over the floor. “It’s mine. And I–” My breath catches in my throat as if it’s snagged on a loose nail, a jutting splinter, a sharp branch on a crooked tree. The path to Silas is riddled with obstacles. One of the biggest is that I don’t know where I stand.

Client?

Lover?

Friend with benefits?

“You what?” His voice drops to a hush as he steps forward, the shadow he casts like a dark warning, a twin self with sinister motives. Willing myself to stay put, I wait until he closes the gap between us, hands at his side, eyes tired but watching me with a growing hunger.

“I don’t know what this is,” I admit, too tired to try to play games.

“This?”

“Us.”

“Us?”

He’s taller than me, chin tipped down, and as his breathing picks up I can feel the barest edge of his hot breath as it reaches me, so diluted, it has no meaning. Nothing he says, in his words or with his body, tells me what I want to know.

Need to know.

Can’t bear not to know.

“Yes, us,” I reply, chin jutting up. “What are we?”

“Human.”

“Silas.”

His head tilts, just enough to show me how much emotion he’s masking under the calm exterior. “What do you want us to be?”

“Whatever it is, I want clarity.”

“How do you define clarity?”

“It sure doesn’t involve conversations like this.”

“You’re defining it by what it isn’t, Jane. But I’m asking you to tell me what it is.”

My chest is ready to explode. The crosswinds inside me are too swift, too strong, too hard to fight. “Are we together?” I reach up and finger the necklace he left for me. Not missing a beat, his eyes catch the movement, widening.

One finger touches my cheekbone, sliding down the plane of bone, looping the necklace chain. “As a couple?” His voice makes me shiver.

His touch makes me wet, an ache rising within me that I’ve never felt before.

“Yes,” I tell him, ask him, beg him. I would do anything for him, right here in this endless moment where anticipation turns me into someone I don’t know. Someone who wants him with every fiber of my being. Someone who can’t help but move millimeter by millimeter until that hot, intense breath is warming my nose, until the world is nothing but his lips, his tongue, his hands.

On me.

“You,” he says, blowing lightly on my closed eyes as his wall of heat comes closer, “tell me. Are we a couple? I know my answer. What’s yours?”

I use my mouth to respond. But not with words.

The kiss isn’t polite. Raw and filled with long hours of wondering, it’s the kind of kiss you don’t expect because you can’t control it. It takes over completely, dominating the space between us, turning the absence of touch into an abomination. I bite his lower lip and he sucks in mine, the flick of his tongue a preview of softer, lower flesh he plans to minister to. In the holy sanctuary of our bodies pressed together, we sing.

The melody requires rhythm, Silas’s hips pushing against my belly, his body seared against mine by the time I break the kiss to breathe. Nothing else matters. Not coffee, not his absence, not the layered mess of my identity. We’re bonded by this and only this, his hands pulling my shirt up, mine reaching for his belt buckle and finding his thick bulge.

Bzzzzz.

Our phones vibrate in unison, unrelenting and demanding.

He groans. It’s a sound of resignation. I step back and let him deal with the war inside him. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose.

He frowns at his phone as he reads. I grab my phone and see a message from Lindsay about getting together, then all the earlier messages from Mandy. I look at the clock. In twenty minutes or so, I need to get going.

“Silas–”

I know my phone is being monitored by many layers of government intelligence, so by the time Silas is done with his work text, he already knows.

“Hmm?” he asks, eyes going unfocused, coming in for a kiss.

“Mandy texted me and wants to–”

“No.”

I didn’t ask permission. It’s clear Silas isn’t offering support, either. His body goes rigid, hands in fists.

“You sound like Drew.”

“Good. Lindsay’s alive because of Drew.” His face is a shade of red I associate with arousal–or anger.

“Mandy wants to meet me in a park. A public place. It’s not like Tara. We’ll be outside the entire time, completely in view.” What a shift. From nearly having sex on the living room floor to arguing about my turncoat friends.

“A sniper could take you or her down,” he points out.

“A sniper could have killed me a long, long time ago, Silas.”

“Just because they haven’t doesn’t mean they won’t.” He crosses his arms over his chest, taking a deep breath, making himself bigger.

I open my mouth to reply, but then his words hit me so hard, I feel sucker punched. “But–”

“My team will surround you.”

“Fine!” I can choke that out because it’s easy. Processing is hard.

Reacting is so, so simple.

In fact, it’s so basic, I can’t control it.

“Why do you want to meet with her at all? These women handed Lindsay–and you–over to those bastards. Ruined Lindsay. Went to the media and destroyed her reputation. Why would you want to let them into your life, even a crack? Look at what happened to Tara, damn it. That cannot–will not–happen to you!” Silas’s whole body is one thick mountain of tension, all his muscles on high alert, arms still crossed, eyes dark. I can see him imagining the worst, the pain of future possibilities reflected back at me, but he’s haunted by something else.

“I’m looking for information,” I say through clenched teeth, my hands sweaty and pressed against my hips. I’ve never wanted to kiss and slap someone at the very same time. He’s making it impossible for me to remain rational. All my anger turns into a deadly beat that takes over my body until I need to scream or come.

Or maybe both.

“That’s my job,” he says as he grabs my shoulders, hard, and pulls me into a kiss that’s meant to tame me, to shut me up. As his tongue fights mine for primacy, I realize this isn’t a kiss that says anything more than that. Civility is long gone, and all that is left is lust.

Lust it is, then.

On tiptoes, I reach around his shoulders and slide my hands up under his shirt, pulling it over his head with a full-body rush that makes me so ready for him.

“Hey, hey,” he laughs, grabbing my wrists gently and stopping me. “Trust me, I appreciate the sentiment, but I can’t.” He pulls me into his arms and kisses me like a man who doesn’t know the meaning of the word can’t. “I don’t have time.” Regret infuses his words. “I’ll have to take a raincheck.”

I groan, my blood filled with lust to the point of exploding my body into a million tiny pieces of need. “Seriously? You started it by kissing me!” I grab his hips and pull him against me, rubbing up, feeling his thick erection through his clothes. “What about a quickie?”

“You’re killing me,” he says in a deep, throttled voice. “But I don’t have time.”

“I thought guys liked quickies?” I rub against him again, wondering where on earth this version of me came from? I don’t do things like this.

Then again, I’ve never had the opportunity.

“I do indeed like quickies.”

“Then prove it.”

“Jane,” he growls.

“I’ve been baaaad,” I whisper, looking up at Silas through my eyelashes, pretending to be coquettish and coy.

It stops him in his tracks, his reaction unnerving. I’ve never seen Silas’s face look so wolfish. So predatory.

So dominant.

“You’re determined to go, aren’t you?” His question comes out of the blue, like someone poured crushed ice up and down the length of our half-clothed bodies.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want you to see her.”

“I–I know.” His abrupt change is throwing me off, my body’s signals so confused.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“You have to promise me you will cancel.”

No, I want to say. No, I need to tell him. No. All my nos I haven’t been allowed to assert come crashing into the back of my teeth, scraping along the scalloped edges of the tongue that presses against the pearly curves of my bite.

No.

“Okay,” I say instead, buckling under, wanting to please him. “I’ll cancel,” I lie. I hate the lie. Hate it.

Yet I need it, too.

His chest lowers, sinking with relief. My fingers brush against the light hair on his chest. “Good.” Silas gives me a perfunctory kiss on the forehead. “Glad you see reason.”

Reason? As long as I do what I’m told, I’m reasonable? As long as I agree with him, I’m rational? There can be no other opinion?

As he stands, I see reason, all right.

A big old reason why I’m going to make sure I damn well do see Mandy.

As Silas showers, a plan takes shape.

Quickly, I compose myself, pulling my clothes into place, finger-combing my hair. As far as I know, Silas is my only detail. When he’s in charge of me, he’s it, unless we have a standing driver.

That means this is my chance.

I grab my phone, then pause. If I have it, Silas can track me. I look at the clock. 11:10 a.m.

I could take an Uber, but they’d find me. Fast.

I can’t walk there in time, and the bus or train is unsafe.

My eyes are drawn to my beautiful centerpiece, the unicorn’s glitter-covered eyelids telling me the answer.

A girl named Lily.

* * *

“Jane! I told you the unicorn–”

I round the counter’s edge and pull her gently behind the small door that separates the back rooms of the business from the customer-facing section.

“What’s wrong?” she gasps.

“Do you have a delivery van?” I’m breathing hard from running. Once Silas realizes I’ve disappeared, he’ll find me quickly. I don’t have much time.

“Yes.”

“Can I ask for a huge favor?”

“Sure. Anything. What?”

“Can you drive me to the park? The one by the beach?”

“That place? Why?”

“I need to meet a friend.” My chest aches from the unexpected sprint and air is trying to get in my lungs. It feels like I’m breathing through cotton candy.

“What about your bodyguard? Or, like, an Uber? Why can’t you–ohhhh.” Her face registers complete shock, then her eyes narrow, canny and sharp. “You don’t want your bodyguard with you, do you?”

“No.”

“I understand. He was kind of an ass–”

“I don’t have time, Lily. Can you please drive me? Or can I borrow the van?”

“God, no! My mom would kill me if I lent out a business-registered truck!”

“Then can you take me?”

“Depends. Why? You’re not doing anything illegal, are you?”

I give her a nasty look.

“Don’t judge me! I just need to make sure. Mom says if we use the truck for personal trips, it can pierce the corporate veil or something. Mom is a rule follower. She asks permission.”

“Then you’ll need to ask forgiveness if something goes wrong,” I tell her.

“You don’t know my mother at all,” Lily mutters, but she peels herself away from me, goes to the front of the store and flips the sign to Closed.

“Twenty minutes. I can give you twenty,” she says as we sprint out the back door to an alleyway. A green van the color of grass, wrapped in photo images of colorful flowers, greets us. I get in the passenger’s seat and instantly feel like I’ve had the best night’s sleep on top of drinking three shots of espresso.

I snap the door shut and so does Lily. “Wow!” I gasp.

She grins, her smile lighting up her face. Normally, she looks like me, but not now. I’ve never, ever been that relaxed, so happy and sure.

“It’s great, isn’t it? Like rolling around town in your own little rain forest.” Lily starts the van and peels out of the alley. She pauses at the end before making a hard right.

“I assume you’re doing this to meet a hot guy,” she shouts as we barrel down the street.

“No. I’m doing it to avoid a hot guy, actually,” I explain.

The van slows down slightly, then speeds back up. “You mean, some guy is in hot pursuit? We’re in danger?” she squeaks.

“No, nothing like that. I would never ask you to put your life in danger for me, Lily. Never. I just need to get away from my guards and meet an old friend.”

“Why don’t you want them there?”

“They don’t want me there. Overprotective. It’s tiring being told what to do and where to go all the time. Sometimes I want my freedom, you know?”

“Oh, yes. I still live at home with my parents. I work in their store. My little brothers are still at home. A freshman and a senior. I get told what to do all the time.”

My silence makes her words fade out.

“Oh, damn, Jane! You mean you’re controlled by your security guys? 24/7?”

I nod.

“That’s just wrong!”

“It’s for a good reason.”

“Which is?”

“To keep me alive. Someone tried to blow up my car and shot at me just this week.”

“Are you sure escaping from your own guards is such a good idea?”

“I just need an hour. Ninety minutes, tops.”

“Why?”

“Because he told me no.”

“Who?”

“My, uh...”

“The hot guy?”

“Yeah,” I sigh.

“You’re dating some hot dude who tells you when you can see your friends?”

Weird way to put it, but... “Yes.”

“Oh, man. Now I get it. Screw him.”

I blush.

She laughs.

We drive.

Within three minutes, my nose feels like I’m a bee sipping nectar and we’re at the spot in the park, right on the edge of an enormous sea of grass leading down to the beach. Crabgrass edges the “lawn,” if you can call it that, and kids are playing Frisbee. Mandy’s a nervous mess of legs and folded arms, looking up at every car that pulls into the parking lot.

When I climb out of the green florist’s van, she gives me a squinting look of revulsion.

Ah, Mandy. Never change.

“Thanks, Lily,” I say sincerely, moving fast. “Go back to the store. I’ll be fine getting home.”

“How?”

“My hot guy will find me. I won’t have a choice.”

“But I gave you a head start, didn’t I?” She puts her closed fist out for me to bump.

“Yes,” I say, bumping back.

“Sisterhood!” she calls out as I jog away.

“Is that an undercover van? FBI? CIA?” Mandy asks.

“I can’t answer that question,” I tell her.

“Young agent,” Mandy replies, eyebrows up. “I guess they recruit right out of college.”

“Are we going to stand here and talk about my driver, or are you going to explain why you wanted to meet? The last time one of you reached out to me, I ended up on the cover of every tabloid, wearing her blood.”

“Jesus, Jane. Have some compassion for the dead.”

“I’ll do that when you show a shred of it for the living.”

The skin around her neck begins to redden. “I knew you’d throw that in my face. It was only a matter of time.”

“Five years. Five years, and you let Lindsay, and then me, be tortured. Long time,” I spit back.

“Is this how you talked to Tara when she reached out to you? Because I’d slit my wrists, too, to get you to shut up about it.”

“Don’t even joke.” I look furtively around us. “You have no idea what I had to do to get here. So this better be worth it.”

“I don’t know if it’s worth it to you, but it is to me. I’m trying to survive.” Her eyes dart everywhere, assessing. “We’re terrified.”

“We?”

“Jenna. Our families. Tara’s family. We know there’s footage proving someone else killed her and not you, but maybe you made him do it.”

“You think I have that kind of power?”

“The media make it seem like you do.” Her casual shrug makes me want to strangle her.

“You’re not that stupid, Mandy. You know it’s not true. And besides, get to the point. Fast. When my guards find out I ditched them, they’ll come roaring up.”

“You came here with no guards? Are you crazy?” Eye bulging, she gives up all pretense of being calm and cool.

“I’m motivated.”

“I assumed you’d have a detail! I only picked this place because it seemed safer. I figured your guys would protect us! That’s the whole point!”

I shrug. “Sorry. We’ll have to take our chances. Make it quick.”

Squinting in frustration, she looks at me with disgust. “You evaded your own bodyguards. I always thought you were the smart one in our group. What a stupid, stupid thing to do. They’re killing us all. One by one. Why would you–”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Planting her hands on her hips in defiance, a very pissed-off Mandy says caustically, “You were the goal. Not Lindsay.”

All the muscles around my lungs stop working. Mandy stares at me, her features full and sharp, as if I’m seeing her through an increasingly focused lens.

“What?”

“You, Jane. Didn’t Tara tell you?” Her affect is nasty. She knows her words hurt me.

That’s the point of saying them.

I rifle through memory, as if those few minutes I spent talking to Tara at the bar were a stack of photographs and I need to search to find the right one.

“Blaine wanted you. Alone. We were supposed to leave Drew and Lindsay and you there. But you were so damn stubborn.” Fear makes her blink rapidly, her eyes darting everywhere as I watch her. “You wouldn’t listen. So we took you with us.” Her face tightens, almost crumpling with tears.

Almost.

“If you’d stayed, it would have been easier. We didn’t know how bad it would get,” she adds.

“If I’d stayed? If I’d stayed at the house because Blaine wanted me there? You mean when they raped and tortured Lindsay?” I can’t keep my voice from rising. “Do you hear yourself, Mandy? You’re saying I should have stayed behind so they could do the same damage to me!”

“I’m not saying that,” she says emphatically, shaking her head. “But Blaine was so, so pissed at us. It made everything harder when we had to lie.”

Matter-of-fact tones don’t blunt her words. They worsen the impact, in fact.

A distant alarm starts in my body, ringing a slow, ominous bell that tolls for me. Silas’s warnings aren’t just about shitlords and crazies, or political operatives ten levels deep.

Mandy is a literal threat.

To me.

Blasé about what she did five years ago, talking to me now as if I were the cause of her pain, Mandy is the epitome of every soulless part of this network that controls me.

She’s sad that I didn’t fall into a trap Blaine set for me five years ago. Sad because my actions made her life harder.

“What do you want from me, Mandy?” I ask, the words rolling out of me, slow and ponderous.

“Protection. You’re so lucky,” she whines. “You have a security detail. We told the investigators everything after Stellan, John, and Blaine died, and they gave us nothing. Left us hanging. And look at Tara. I don’t want to die like that! So gruesome. So gross. No–I need a bodyguard. I deserve one. I want what you have.”

I want what you have.

Tires peel behind us, the long, high shriek of rubber on asphalt insistent and violent. I close my eyes and count the seconds. One, two, three...

“JANE!” Rough hands grab my arms, the sudden shock of Silas’s violent yank combining with Mandy’s words to make me rattle in my skin. Pulling me away from Mandy, Silas practically drags me a hundred feet from her, hissing in my ear.

“Don’t you ever, ever do that again. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” He’s shaking me, his hands on my biceps now, brutal and reactive. As I open my eyes and look over his shoulder, I see Duff in the driver’s seat of yet another nondescript black SUV, mirrored shades and all.

Mandy looks Silas up and down, evaluating him like he’s going through an employee performance review. A family walks between us, the mom pushing a stroller, a preschooler behind her with an outstretched hand holding a bottle of bubbles. The sun makes the gentle waves in the distant ocean seem whiter, foamier, more opaque and less clear. Seagulls caw in the distance as I struggle to bring myself back to my angry–

My what?

Boyfriend?

Lover?

Bodyguard?

We never did settle that detail, did we?

“I am here because I get to have a choice,” I say slowly, the words unrehearsed and halting as Silas stops shaking me. Mandy gives me a raised-eyebrow look, moving slightly to the left, her hand rising like a visor to her eyebrows as she watches us.

Silas tries to pull me closer to the parking lot. Scanning the horizon, he lasers in on me. “Your ‘choice’ is going to get you killed. Not to mention get me fired. I’ve never lost a client before.”

“I’m your first?”

“Yes.”

“Then good. We’re even. You’re my first, too. Just in a different way.”

His eyes go hooded and the full intensity of every part of him comes right at me through pupils that constrict, like a fist being pulled back before a blow.

“I came out of the shower singing. Singing. Son of a bitch! It took me longer than it ever should have to realize what you’d done. Once I figured it out, I chased you here.” He’s furious.

In the distance, a stoplight clicks over, engines revving, cars moving. The baby in the stroller starts to fuss, the dad of the family busy spreading a quilt on the ground with the preschooler, who runs underneath the sudden swell of the blanket as a gust of wind blows it high.

Their giggles contrast sharply with Silas’s words.

“Jane? Is this going to take forever?” Mandy calls out, her finger tapping her phone in the universal gesture for I am more important than you.

“Ignore her,” he orders me. I’m happy to obey. “And listen to me. I’ve kept you out of more restrictive settings. I’m the only reason you’re not rotting in a room at the Island. Or worse,” he rasps, his anger coming out of him via osmosis, his grip on my arms a sting I can’t shake.

“Prison is prison, even if the guard is nice,” I shoot back, licking my lips.

Anxiety makes me hear everything acutely. A dripping water fountain becomes water on a drum. A child’s laugh becomes mocking cackles in my ear. The ocean’s waves in the distance are like a train engine, the Doppler effect in full gear.

Except that’s not a train.

The mom with the stroller starts screaming, every second turned into a sliver as I look at Silas, whose eyes widen, his arms wrapping around me as he bends slightly at the waist, then shoves us to the right, a hard lunge that sets our entwined bodies airborne. Confusion makes me fight him, writhing to escape, not knowing why he would shove and hurt me like this.

The impact as we fall makes my shoulder crack, a black spinning tire running over the tip of my loose shoe, gasoline exhaust coating us in unbreathable smoke. The heat of the big truck’s engine sears me. Revving hard, the truck moves with tremendous speed as I watch it from my crooked point of view, my temple on the grass, my shoulder screaming obscenities through my blood.

With a sickening thud, the truck’s grill hits Mandy’s body dead on, driving it back into the thick palm tree at the edge of the parking lot.

Rag doll, I think. She looks like a red rag doll.

Except rag dolls don’t have their intestines fall out as a truck shifts into reverse and backs away, peeling into the parking lot, slamming into a row of motorcycles that topple like dominoes. Rag dolls don’t fall, limbs twisting like pipe cleaners.

Rag dolls don’t bleed waterfalls.

And the truck–it’s red with a white bumper sticker and a grill full of Mandy’s intestines–gets away.

Just like I got away from Silas.