Chapter 12: Tell the Wainwright Boy Goodbye

I read the message, then closed my hand around the phone.

"Who is it?" Bram asked from the bed.

His voice was level. His eyes were not.

"A friend. He warns me about Corvin Stalworth."

"The man from the bar."

"Yes."

"What does Stalworth want with you?"

I had a choice there, and I took the half of the truth I could afford.

"He owned me once," I said. "He kept me locked in a room and sent me out to work.

"I ran, and he's been looking for me since."

Bram sat up slowly.

His face tightened, settling on a stillness that frightened me more than shouting.

"He put his hands on you."

"Yes."

"The back." His eyes moved to the dress I'd taken off, lying in a heap on the floor.

"You flinched in the stairwell when I touched it," he said. "Your back's clean, but you flinch as if it isn't."

"You noticed that?"

"I notice everything about you."

I should have found it frightening. I found it a relief.

"Then he's a dead man," said Bram.

"No."

"Calla."

"No. Not like that. He has thirty men and a warehouse full of guns.

"If you go to war with him, your family goes with you." I put my hand on his chest. "Give me time. I'll find the way to end him."

"You'll find it."

"We'll find it," I said, and I felt him breathe out.

He pulled me against him and we lay quietly, and for the first time I thought it might be survivable.

My phone buzzed at eight.

It was a text from Pru's partner at the ambulance station, a man I'd met once.

*Is Pru with you? She never came back from the 6 a.m. call.*

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