Page 67 of Sweet Poison

"No one will know?” Kelly mocked. “She's still so flushed she looks like a fucking lobster. Anyone with half a brain will take one look at her and know she’s been getting royally fucked when she should have been watching their kids."

"Their kids are all busy having a great time. No harm has come to any of them as a result of me getting, as you so charmingly put it, royally fucked." I ran a hand through my hair. "I have no regrets."

Kelly came closer. “Just give us one juicy detail to keep us going. Where did you do it?"

“Against the window.”

“The one with the mountain range view?”

I nodded.

"Ooh, niiiiiceee," she approved.

“Yeah, it was nice. Very nice.”

Chapter 39

Cole

Anya’s nightmares hadn’t stopped, despite the fact I’d allowed her to sleep in my bed till now. If anything, it even seemed to be getting worse. Last night, I soothed her with warm milk and waited by her bedside until she fell asleep, but in the end, it had still happened.

Even though we had been living quite normally, both of us could never let our guard down when we were out of the house. Perhaps the stress of it was adding to Anya’s nightmares.

It made me sad because I had no idea how to fix it. I couldn’t fight Paganini on my own terms yet. I was not ready for that and I wanted to take him by surprise. For the time being, I had no choice but to continue our life in this way. I also felt certain she was concealing something from me, which made me feel helpless. Maybe it was some sort of ‘girl thing’ and she couldn’t talk to me about it. If only she could have maintained some sort of relationship with her mother.

The good news, though, was Montana was coming over, and Anya had come to like her. Who knew? Maybe she could talk to Montana.

I had decided on a simple meal of steak, baked potatoes, and caprese salad for us. For dessert, Anya wanted to bake cupcakes for Montana so I lifted her up on a stool and let her get on with making the batter.

The phone rang and seeing it was from Leila, I headed into the living room. There, I could still keep my eyes on Anya and lower my voice enough to not be heard.

"Hello, Leila.”

"Hi, I have a few updates for you."

"Go ahead," I repeated, hoping that this wasn’t the call I was dreading, either informing me we had to run again, or that we had to start preparing to do so.

"You remember the cars and the two guys that Tom spotted outside the filling station?"

"Yeah," I replied. "What about them?"

"Well, Tom’s had a tail put on them, and they seem to just be moving with purpose. By their movement, I would guess that there are other teams we don’t know about that are fanning out across the country. They stop at certain towns, towns with good elementary schools, and they ask questions. They are impressively relentless, fast, and effective. As soon as they’re finished with one town they move on to the next. They don’t stop."

I glanced at Anya. She was breaking eggs into her batter. "What questions are they asking?”

"What I would ask; if anyone has appeared in town, a single dad and his daughter?"

"Ah," I nodded.

"Somehow they seem to think you wouldn’t go too far.”

“Airport surveillance,” I said shortly. “They knew I didn’t fly.”

"Right," she replied.

"Anyway, at the speed they’re going, they’re not far away from you. They could be as near as weeks away from you."

I had done one thing right. I didn’t go for what an ordinary person would consider a good school. I had chosen something that was perfect for me and Anya, but that would not be the case for most people. Those investigators were not weeks away from Bison Ridge. I’d give them one year at the very least, and that was more time than I needed to put my plan into action.

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