Page 3 of Atonement

I reached for my phone, but he held it easily out of my reach. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Conrad will wonder where I was all night. I’m surprised he hasn’t come storming down here himself.”

“He did,” Shawn replied.

My stomach dropped to my feet.“What the fuck? Why didn’t he come talk to me?”

“I told him you weren’t in.” He nodded at my hand. “I didn’t want a repeat of that.”

“Fuck.” I slammed my hand against my forehead, barely noticing the spasm it set off in my broken bones. The elevator door opened, and I blew into the garage towards Shawn’s car. “You shouldn’t have done that, Shawn. He would have gone looking at the last place he knew I was.”

“He didn’t know—”

“He always fucking knows!” Shawn stopped walking abruptly as I whirled on him, my voice echoing through the nearly empty parking garage. A few pigeons fluttered toward the exit, startled, then settled on a ledge. “There was never a chance that he wouldn’t know where I went, Shawn. Maybe he lost me for a few hours, but he would have figured it out.”

“But you weren’t there, Meyer.”

“Someone else was!” I turned on my heel and ran to the car.

“Shit,” Shawn muttered as the realization dawned on him, and then his footsteps matched mine as he ran and jumped into his car. We peeled out of the garage into traffic, narrowly missing a pedestrian crossing in front of the garage entrance. “I told her to keep the door locked.”

“That’s not going to matter to him.” I picked up my phone from where Shawn had dropped it into the cup holder and dialed Joshua, but ended the call before the first ring was complete. I still didn’t know if I could trust him. “He knows she’s there. And when he figures out she’s alone…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

Shawn blew through a yellow light just as it flipped to red, weaving in and out of traffic as fast as he could. “We should have called the police.”

“It wouldn’t matter.”

His mouth set into a thin line. “She said the same thing.” Cursing as we were forced to roll to a stop in a line of traffic, he slumped against the seat and turned to me. “You seem worried.”

I pressed my hand into my thigh, letting the pain distract me from everything else. “I don’t want to have to clean up a body.”

“Dick,” he muttered, and we sped forward once more.

He dropped his car with the building valet and instructed them to keep it running, and then we were up the elevator and sprinting down the hallway to his unit. Even from several feet away we could see the door was wide open.

“Fuck!” Shawn burst into the condo while I stood in the doorway. It looked like he’d blown out the lock with a pressure gun, like from that fucking movie. There was a frozen dinner lying upside down on the counter; melted sauce leaked out from underneath the plastic tray and dripped to the floor. The blankets we’d laid in all morning were back on the floor, and I walked over to touch them though I knew they’d be cold. I thought I could still smell her.

Shawn was going room to room, calling Madeline’s name, but there was no one to answer.

“There’s no point,” I said as he ran for the door, phone in his hand. Who could he call? There was nothing we could do.

“I’m calling the police,” he snapped. “I don’t care what you have to say.”

I was across the room in an instant, knocking the phone out of his hand and sending it flying across the floor.

“What the fuck?”

“He’ll ruin you, too.” My fingers pinched the bridge of my nose. “You don’t understand. This is bigger than you or me. It always has been.”

“You’re going to give her up, just like that?” I started as Shawn grabbed my arm, forgetting for a second that he was my best friend and not my father. Unlike Madeline, he didn’t notice my flinch. Or maybe he just ignored it. “Breaking her heart is one thing. Letting Conrad toy with her is another.”

I wrenched my arm out of his grip, but he stepped forward to crowd me. I forced myself to hold my ground. “He won’t kill her. He’s got bigger plans.”

“Oh, so that’s better? Torture? Rape?”

I slapped him across the face. He spit at me, the disgust and contempt clear on his face. And then I didn’t care about my hand, I was on him, taking him to the ground and hitting him as hard as I could before my arm gave out again. He shoved me off him and pinned my wrists to the floor.

“Why the fuck are you angry at me?”

“You left her here!”

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