Page 4 of Forbidden Bond

“We’ll leave the keys in this one,” she said, “can you make it disappear?”

Something she’d never have said in front of her father before. She wouldn’t name Ford or Jagg, Strat’s boys, but once upon a time, they’d run the city’s most successful chop shop.

“Scamp?”

“I know,” she said, sighing at the trepidation in his tone. “Everyone is capable in the right circumstance.”

He had to be listening. Please listen. Hear her. Asking him to disappear the car would betray laws had been broken. Suspicion would swing Strat’s way if the superintendent’s car was abandoned in his parking lot. She would not let her friend take the fall for her father’s transgressions.

“Or the wrong one.”

Yes! Strat’s muttered words gave relief, though she couldn’t show it and reveal they were passing messages.

Her father gestured at the side door, gun against him, aimed in her direction. She managed to open the side door. The gun stayed on her, even as her father came around the hood. Weapon in one hand, phone in the other.

“What does that mean?” her father asked.

“Means I have nothing left to lose,” she said, walking closer to the building after getting out.

Something she’d said to Strat when she and Conn were apart in the past.

“I value it,” Strat said, adamant. Light went on above. His light. “You need me with you.”

The window opened and there he was. Discerning his expression through the dim light and distance wasn’t easy. Disapproval came in his tone, no concealing that.

“Not on this. Drop them.” He did and they landed right at her feet. “I’m sorry, Strat. I love you.”

Her father cut off the phone so abruptly, she wasn’t sure the final words were heard. Ronald backed up, more brazen with the angle of the gun.

“Pick them up.”

Turning her back, she braced for a kill shot as she crouched and fumbled to find them. As she stood, he ripped them from her hand and grabbed her arm.

“Dad—”

“Good. This is exactly what we need.”

What she needed wasn’t considered. At least she got to say goodbye to her friend. Whatever happened now, she doubted she’d see him again. Her father was off the rails and if he was adamant Lachlan couldn’t know, she wouldn’t be allowed to speak to him.

How the hell had they ended up in this insanity?

TWO

THEY DROVE FOR what felt like a million years. Her pleas for Conn fell on deaf ears. At some point, after the sun had risen in the sky, she gave up begging for his life. If he hadn’t been found by then, he’d be gone. Her love. Her future. How would she go on? What was left without him?

No radio. No news. No music. The cuffs at her back made it difficult to get comfortable. The enveloping grief didn’t subside and trickled out until her exhausted body surrendered to sleep.

Life, what they could’ve been, meaning and purpose, all had been stolen. What happened to her next didn’t matter. She was done fighting. If she hadn’t been so determined to liberate the truth, maybe people wouldn’t have lost their lives. People like her grandfather… like Conn.

Her first thought when she opened her eyes? Connel McDade.

From then on, she’d wake lonely. Wake without him struck by the painful truth he would never sleep at her side again.

They’d stopped.

Light outside hurt her sensitive eyes. She hadn’t figured out what was happening until her father opened her side door and dragged her out of the vehicle into a room.

A crappy out-of-state motel.

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