Chapter 9: Leander Counts the Exits

Leander's POV

The Tisdale men searched every drawer in the lake house and found no ring box.

They left at sundown with their order folded back in a briefcase and nothing to show for it.

Marin fell asleep on the sofa with her boots on, one hand still closed around the brass key.

I covered her with a blanket and stood in the dark looking at her for a while.

Six years ago Gregory Ashcroft asked me to come to his study and shut the door.

He wrote one sentence on a card, sealed it in an envelope, and made me read it in front of him.

If anything happens to her, drive her out before you let anyone near her.

I had asked who her was. He said, "My daughter. Whichever way the paper reads."

I thought he was an old man afraid of kidnappers. I took the job and the card and the monthly phone call.

I never took it for what it was until the night Marin stood on that stage.

Now she lay in front of me, and she was not the girl I had driven to school events for years.

She was faster and quieter. She saw the three men at the gas station before I did.

She had taken Sheldon down with a turn of her wrist, and she had never once looked at me for help.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Fake Daughter Is the Real Legend from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.