Page 102 of Don't Let Go

Ultimately, however, they dropped their objections. The fact they’d dropped them at all told me I had one or more of them following me.

Oddly, I was okay with that result. They needed to watch my back the way I needed to watch theirs. I’d probably have okayed them following me anyway. The trip had brought me almost full circle, I suppose. Only instead of Colorado, I was in Washington state.

I’d arranged to pick up a rental car, setting up a false id and taking care of the payment all electronically. All I had to do was use my phone to access the car and the keys were in it. I pulled out of the airport rental place and followed the flow of traffic.

Seatac was a busy damn airport. It had been so weird sitting on a plane. Weirder still to read a book rather than open my laptop. I’d been tempted, but I was almost positive Locke was four seats behind me. I could afford to relax. So I took advantage of the time and the space to read.

Being outside in the open air, even with my hair pulled into two long braids, green-lensed sunglasses, tie-dye shirt tucked into an ankle length Bohemian skirt and looking as far away from my old self as possible, was still almost violently weird.

I was used to walls being around me, shielding me from prying eyes. Having someone, even a flight attendant, make small talk was alien. Now behind the wheel of a car, driving south on I-5, I was wrestling with so much green in the trees, and even more people around me as I moved with the flow of traffic.

My phone worked as GPS and I followed the directions. The shakiness that I’d fought on the flight came back, and I struggled to keep it suppressed. This was whatfreedomwas like. Freedom I’d lost a long time ago.

The same freedom I’d nearly had ripped away from me all over again. While I didn’t have any long-term plansset, I did have them. Those terrified me almost as much as all this openness.

Maybe I should have had one of the guys come with me. No sooner did that thought take purchase than I dismissed it. No, I had to do this on my own. I didn’t mind them watching over me, but from a distance.

If I merely traded the cage I’d built for myself to one constructed by them for safety, then it wasn’t freedom. As I crossed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the rain gave way to watery sunshine and I grinned.

This was all insane. The last five years had been insane. The years before it had been crazy. Somewhere, the idealistic kid I’d been in college and my early twenties had become this jaded woman in her thirties.

I was okay with that. Because this jaded woman had survived. It didn’t take long before I pulled up a long and winding road and passed several other homes built into the hill and all the way down to the water. The house I was heading for was all by itself at the top.

There were gates over the drive. I had a device to mirror the signal that opened them and it took it all of thirty-eight seconds to find the right frequency. The gates opened and I drove right up to the front and parked.

No doubt he had cameras. He would know I was here. Maybe he’d answer.

Maybe he wouldn’t.

But I was getting out of the car and I was knocking on his door. Shoving the door open, I climbed out. The breeze carried the promise of water in it—whether it was the rain I’d just driven away from or the water below, I had no idea.

Standing in front of the door, I debated whether to ring or knock, then I turned to the camera pointed right at me. Tugging my glasses off, I stared up at it.

“Hello, Boxer. I think you owe me a conversation. Don’t you?”

There was no immediate response. I waited, leaning back against the wall next to his door.

“I’ve got time,” I said. “But you might not want to make me wait too long.”

Another arduous five minutes passed achingly slow, but I just leaned there, staring at the camera. The air around me was fresh. I was outside, getting to enjoy it. I wasn’t locked away in my house in one of the prettiest parts of the world and never leaving it.

I wasn’t dying in some cell, wishing the pain would go away. I wasn’t hiding from life in the back of an eighteen-wheeler as the three men who’d never let me go fought to give me back my peace and my freedom.

A lock finally tumbled, then another. The door opened slowly, just a crack and a guy peered out at me. Yeah, that wasn’t working for me. I shoved the door hard. It caught him off guard and he stumbled back, then the door hit him in the face.

Boxer was maybe five foot nine? Five foot eight? It was hard to tell. He wasn’t much taller than me. A little overweight, his cheeks were ruddy, his hair was dark and his eyes terrified.

Yeah, I got that.

The stained shirt and the hint of Cheetos dust on his fingers was also painfully familiar. Boxer had locked himself away in this house and lived through the screen on his computer.

“Do you know who I am?”

“I—” Boxer stuttered, then raked a hand through his hair not seeming to realize he spread the Cheetos dust to it. “You’re—Patch.”

His gulp was almost comical. I stared at him for a long time, saying nothing. I wasn’t even sure what I expected to feel when I got here. Anger? Resentment? Betrayal?

Sure, they were all there, but Boxer was younger than me. Maybe five or six years younger. Not that it excused him.

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