Page 52 of Marked

“I’m not used to having someone here to help me. It’s not bad. The cans were a little heavy.” She opens the first bag and starts taking out the vegetables. “I wasn’t sure whatyou liked, so I grabbed some apples and strawberries, and there’re some chips in that bag over there.”

I stop her before she starts putting things away.

“Don’t bother unpacking them. We have to leave. I have somewhere else we can stay.”

Her brow furrows with confusion. “You said everything is fine.”

“It is for now, but Agent Laurens knows Artie failed last night.”

“Already?” She puts the cans of black beans back on the counter and presses her hip against it.

“Yes.”

“How?”

I bring her Artie’s phone and wait while she scrolls through the texts Laurens sent. Her jaw tenses as she reads and when she brings her eyes back to mine, there’s a mixture of anger and fear in them.

“You think Mom told her?” She hands me back the phone.

“She’s the only one who knew you had talked to Laurens and that you were starting to get your memory back,” I point out, hoping to ease her to the horrible conclusion.

“Well, maybe she wanted to check with her about the case. Maybe she wanted to see if she was going to be following up on the lead with the new name.” She makes excuses for her mother, and I can’t even blame her. If my mother was alive, if I had family that shared such horrors with me, I would want them protected.

But it’s all formed pretty neatly in my mind. Though eyes looking from the outside tend to see more clearly than those within the trauma.

“You think Mom had something to do with it?” She slams the phone onto the counter. “You think she did something to cause us to be kidnapped? My sister killed right in front of me?” Her voice rises with each question.

“I don’t know what her involvement is, but there are thingsthat don’t make sense. After your father passed away, she was given a lot of money, Harley. Half a million dollars.”

“She said Dad had an insurance policy; it was probably that.” She’s grasping at straws.

“No. It wasn’t. Neither of them had life insurance policies. There’s no record of one. There are only random deposits that add up to half a million dollars. And it covered almost all of the medical bills, plus the credit card bills that were maxed from paying doctors after your dad lost his job.”

“I’m not listening to this.” She covers her ears and closes her eyes. “Mom was there. She was taken, too. And then she…she had to make the worst decision. They weren’t going to let us go. She had to make the decision, or they were just going to keep hurting us.”

I pull her hands away from her ears easily and wait until she settles her eyes on mine. Her face is flushed with anger, and her eyes wild with fear.

“Who is ‘they?’ Vince and Artie?” I ask.

“No. I mean, I remember them, but there was someone else. There was a third guy, and he was the one who did it.”

“Did what?” I’m pushing her now, but her frustration seems to be clearing up the cobwebs in her memory.

“He hurt us. Me and Quinn. And then he said time was up.” Tears fill her eyes, glistening before rolling down her cheeks. “He pulled out his gun. He always had it tucked into his waistband in the back, like he was some gangster on TV.”

I wipe away her tears. “Then what, baby? What happened then?”

“He put the gun to my head, then Quinn’s, told my mom she had to choose. If she wouldn’t, they’d just keep going on like they were. That they’d start using our…” she cuts off, a sob cracking through her. “They would start raping our assholes next.”

Artie died too easily. Dustin didn’t get enough paybackbefore he went, too, but Vincent? Fuck, am I going to make that fucker pay.

“He said, they’d bring in more guys and sell us like whores. And she’d have to watch. She had to choose, they said.”

“Okay.” I try to pull her in for a hug. Her breathing is getting erratic, her heartbeat throbs in the vein on her neck.

“They made her.”

“Harley, take a breath.”

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