Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
“We found your father.”
She doesn’t move. Total stillness, like a pretty creature in sight of a predator. “How?” she asks.
And it hits me.
All at once, like a kick to the chest.
She’s not surprised.
There’s no shock in her eyes.
Only fear and concern, which means—
She knew he was still in town.
I stare at her, trying to get a read on this situation, and feel at a complete loss. It doesn’t make sense. I’m positive she didn’t know where he was when she first came in—she was mad enough at the time to have turned him over without much prompting— and she hasn’t had any contact with the outside world since she’s been here. There’s no way she should know anything about her father’s location.
Unless I’m missing something.
“Gallo’s people spotted him.” I step closer, one hand pressed against the work table to steady myself. “You knew, didn’t you?”
Her mouth shuts. Her lips press into a line. I can tell she’s struggling with something. Fucking Hellie—I know her now, know her better than I ever expected I would.
And I can tell she’s trying to come up with a story.
“I can’t say.” Her voice is tiny. Like she’s embarrassed.
I close my eyes and take a steadying breath before opening them again. Another connection clicks into place. A stray problem I’d almost forgotten about. “The email.”
She touches her hair, and I know it’s true. That’s her little tell, her nervous gesture. Even though she shakes her head, I can see right through her.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
What a shitty fucking liar.
And suddenly, I can’t imagine this girl played me. It slips into focus, everything that happened on that day. Hellie can’t lie to me, she’s terrible at it, which means all that other stuff about having feelings for me, all of that was true.
There’s no way she could’ve faked it.
Con man father or not, that isn’t Hellie.
But she does know something now, something she’s been keeping from me. I steady my heart and move closer, aware that I have to be careful. She may be a bad liar, but there’s still something happening here.
“Ren told me you said something about an email. I asked you about it that day, but I was too angry to follow up, and he never mentioned it again. But you checked your email, didn’t you?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“When you were in my room, you used my desktop, didn’t you? I leave it logged in all the time because it tracks my stock portfolio and it needs a dedicated connection to keep everything up to date. You used that, didn’t you?”
“Please don’t make me say anything. Please, Erick.”
“What did you see in your email, Hellie?”
“I can’t tell you.” She jumps to her feet and stalks away. I let her go. There’s no sense in rushing this. “You’ll kill him.”
I let out a long breath. God, this makes so much sense, and I hate myself for not seeing it sooner. “That’s what this is about?” I ask, keeping my tone soft, trying to find a way to put her at ease.
“I know I should hate my dad, okay? I get it, I should despise him for doing what he did and leaving me here to fend for myself. But he’s still my dad, and even if I want to write him off, I just can’t. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t want to be like him. So I can’t tell you, because I know what you’ll do if you find him, and I can’t be a part of that. I just can’t.”
It all makes sense. Her father reached out to her. That’s why she mentioned email—she thought Ren might’ve faked that too as part of his little plan. But when she realized he hadn’t, she kept her mouth shut.
Because her dad’s in town and she’s protecting him.
“Tell me where he is.” I advance on her.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“Tell me what he said.”
“I can’t. And I won’t.”
“I’ll check my computer. I’ll hire an IT specialist to dig the email out of memory. You know I can do it.”
“Maybe, but that was a week ago, so I doubt it.” She looks at me, hands spread. “Please, don’t make me a part of killing my own father.”
I hold her with my stare, looming over her. Relief fights with anger. She tried to escape, she kept this information about her father’s secret—but she wasn’t manipulating me the whole time.
Some part of me softens, and a strange kind of hope blossoms.
If she wanted to escape because she was trying to protect her dad somehow—
Then what she said that day was true.
It really wasn’t about me.
“We’ll talk more later,” I say, walking to the door, afraid that if I stay then this feeling will wither and die, and I don’t want that. I need to hold on to it for now. “Keep working.”