Joshua wasn't my assistant.
It wasn't my birthday.
Which meant something very ugly was just about to happen.
The feeling of a stone crushed my heart as I dashed off a quick text telling Antoine to say nothing, then shoved my phone in my pocket. Before I could hurry back into the store, a hand touched my arm. I whipped around with a muffled cry in my throat to find Mark standing there. Concern darkened his features.
“Stell?”
“The bank,” I croaked. “I need to get to the bank right now.”
My hands trembled long after we left the bank. Long after I shoved the $20,456 dollars that constituted everything in my old business and my life into the inside pocket of my jacket. Long after we turned out of the parking lot and I sank lower in my seat to plead quietly, “Please take me back to Adventura.”
Then I rolled down the window when we crossed a bridge and I chucked my phone into it.
Mark asked no questions while we rushed down the winding canyon highway. The farther civilization fell away behind us, the better. My mind moved too fast to be productive. Unable to do anything, I let the thoughts run amok for a while.
Paper trail, I thought. No more phones. Nothing but email now. Could I call the feds back, tell them what happened? No. What would they do?
Besides, I didn't have a phone now. Maybe that had been a bit too rash. What about Grandma?
By the time we made it back to Adventura, the mess that had become my brain had already populated a to-do list. I lacked only post-it notes to make it all very clear. Without a single word of explanation, I jumped out of the Zombie Mobile. Before I sped-walked to the cabin, I skidded to a stop and whirled around.
“Call me Stella now, not Stella Marie? Never Marie.”
Mark blinked, halfway out of the truck. He shrugged.
“Sure.”
“Have you received any phone calls, text messages, or emails from someone unknown? A Joshua?”
He glanced at his phone. “No.”
Relief made me momentarily weak. “Good. If an unknown number calls, don't answer. Don't answer any text messages or emails. Okay?”
He nodded.
I spun around and jogged back to my cabin with the silent promise that I'd explain everything . . . eventually. Once there, I shut myself inside, grabbed my computer, and flung it open.
While it booted up, I let out a long breath and forced myself out of panic. Out of fear. Before anything else could be done, I had to write these emails. They would dictate what I needed to do next. I pulled up Tatum's email, clicked on the new message icon, and started to write.
Two hours later, my brain felt fried.
Forcing a positive, normal tone while writing to my clients, except for Mark, whom I hadn't seen any sign of since the store, had been harder than I expected. Some of them emailed right back and proved my hunch right. Joshua had been innocuous, maybe strange when he spoke with them. Enough for them to want to call me to ask me about him but without saying anything identifiably wrong.
He'd been fishing for information on me, clearly. Perhaps he had gotten my number from one of them. But how had he gotten their information?
He was playing a game. Always a game.
He wanted me to know something was wrong. He might even know already that I'd seen something I shouldn’t. Did he realize I'd turned him in? He had to be suspicious that I was hiding from him, at least. I wasn't on a retreat, and now I'd never return. By now, he probably even knew I'd sold my lease to someone else and moved out. Of course, he could think I was tired of his constant chase and I wanted away from him.
Which would only make him chase harder.
So I shut down everything else.
My old accounting company I'd started after college then stopped growing to work at corporate. The bank accounts. The social media accounts. I wiped out every trace to my company, changed every password I'd ever known. Registered a random PO Box in Texas and routed all my mail there. With tears in my throat, I emailed my clients that I had to take care of a family emergency that would be a while. I referred them to a trusted friend and said goodbye.
These were my first accounting clients from six years ago. Before I'd been lured into a big firm with exciting opportunities and bigger pay. These were the salt-of-the-earth people that I held onto because they were good.
That lump sat in my throat all day.
The hours raced by while I typed away on my computer, peeling sticky notes off the wall as I accomplished each task. 2:00. 3:00. 5:00. When darkness fell and a whistling wind began to pick up, the lump in my throat grew. I shut my laptop on an email that confirmed the bank accounts would close in 72 hours. Heat prickled at the back of my eyes as I stood, unable to dismiss the ugly truth.
My old life was gone.
I had no job, no clients, and no hope of getting one in the future.
What few friends—more like acquaintances—that I'd held onto over the years might not even notice that I'd gone off the radar. Not for a while, or until something big happened. Then they'd remember that they'd forgotten me, which was fine.
Frustrated, I let the tears finally fall. I'd held onto them long enough—for at least three weeks, since the day I first figured out that the companies Joshua had me applying for a government program for wasn't real.
Sniffling, I grabbed a sweater and yanked it on.
Stupid Joshua.
Stupid men.
Stupid corporate greed.
Dadgummit, but I needed those pain relievers and those tampons.
A knock came at my door. It was so tentative at first, I almost didn't hear it. But the door groaned open slightly, and that's
