“One problem at a time,” Max told him. “The first problem we need solved is getting you three out of town. I’m calling a taxi.” He whipped out his cellphone and wandered away, leaving no time for them to argue about it.
The three of them practically swarmed me the second Max had walked away. “Why are you letting him do this?” Dana asked.
“His pride is gonna get you killed,” Daggett added.
“No,” I replied with a slow headshake. “If it’s just the three of us, we’ll have a better chance of not being found. Three people on the run is a lot easier than six.”
“How will you live, though?”
“Max owns a store, and he can get someone to take over for as long as we’re gone. It’ll be an income for us. Support. I can do more freelancing as well. We’ll be alright.”
Priscilla’s gaze locked onto me. “You actually believe that.”
I had to. I had to believe we’d make it out of this alive.
I rubbed my freezing cold fingers against the top of my jeans and then stood. They were all still seated, still looking up at me when I said, “Why don’t you guys go find your rooms and relax before you leave?”
It wasn’t like me to walk away from a conversation without really hashing it out, but I was afraid if I continued to sit there with them that they’d talk me into letting them stay. They may not have realized it, but Max and I were doing them a favor by forcing them out.
After I walked away, I expected to run right into Max, but he was nowhere in sight. I went upstairs to the room that we had reserved for the two of us, and that’s where I found him. The glass doors leading to the room’s balcony were wide open and he stood out there with no coat on, his hands gripping the ledge as he solemnly stared out into the black void of the winter night.
“Max?” I called out.
He must have been lost in thought because it took him a second before he turned around to look at me. Once he saw me approaching, he said, “I got a hold of the taxi. The roads are icy on their end, so it might take up to an hour.”
“It’d make me feel better if they got here sooner.”
“A lot of things would make me feel better right about now,” he said with a heavy sigh.
I joined him on the balcony and leaned against the ledge. The wood from the balcony was layered with ice and snow, and my skin burned when my elbow brushed against it. “Are you all right?” I asked. “Whatever happened back there seemed to really shake you up.”
His hands were still gripping the ledge, and because of the freezing snow between his fingertips, his skin turned bright pink. I put my hand over his in an effort to heat up his flesh. “What happened?” I asked.
Max licked his bottom lip and closed his eyes. “Seeing Molly was…fucked up. It made me feel rotten in my core, you know?”
“I only saw her for two seconds and I know how you feel.”
“I’m not sure you do. I carried all this guilt for everything that went down between Molly and me in the past. I’m not exactly the type to hyper-focus on who I dump or if it was the right time or whatever, but…after we found her body in the trunk, and we learned about all that shit with Owen and what he did to her, I kept thinking it was a miserable ending to her life. It felt like a waste that someone that young and headstrong was snuffed out, and there was no family left to give a shit. She just stopped existing while the rest of us continued on.”
“It’s not like you’re to blame for any of that.”
“No, I know that, but it doesn’t stop it from feeling fucked up. Especially now, because the twisted shit that happened to her is happening again, and I’m gonna have to kill her.”
A cold chill ran right through me. His encounter must have been nothing short of a nightmare.
Max twisted his body away from the ledge and faced me. His face was somber but focused. “I don’t want to scare you, but I can’t keep you in the dark about this. She knows you’re the one that put Owen down.”
My heart dropped. One of my worst fears came true.
“I don’t know how she figured it out, but she did,” Max said. “I tried to tell her it was me who did it but, for whatever reason, she didn’t buy it. Cora, she…she’s looking to hurt you.”
His insistence on killing her made more sense.
“I guess it’s a good thing we’re sending everyone away,” I said. I was doing my best to joke around, but my voice was trembling.
Max placed both of his hands on my shoulders and held me in place. Despite the flushed nature of his skin, his touch felt several degrees higher than mine. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he declared. “I don’t care how many people she has on her side or how many mental tricks she has over us, I won’t let her so much as touch a damn strand of hair from your head.”
He couldn’t promise that. No one could.
I wrapped my fingers around one of his hands on my shoulder and leaned my cheek down against it. “I know,” I whispered. I had no doubt Max would risk his life for me, but I wondered if that would be enough. As Daggett said, we were outnumbered. We were outmatched.
“Cora, I mean it.”
