Page 52 of Walking Red Flag

Which, inevitably, wasn’t that hard.

When he squeezed me back, it was to cause my breath to seize inside my chest.

Only when he let up did I say, “Does anyone else know that you’re here yet?”

“Shasha was here when I got here. Got pissy that I didn’t tell him that I was coming,” he said. “You want to talk about it?”

He knew.

Which, honestly, didn’t surprise me.

I mean, if Shasha was here when he got here, then Shasha would’ve shared.

There were no secrets in my family.

At least, not the ones that didn’t come as happy surprises when certain people came home…

“Not really,” I admitted.

I mean, what was there to tell?

I’d seen my rapist in prison.

He’d been sitting behind me, likely fully aware of me, the entire time.

Meanwhile, I’d been happy and content where I was, thinking that my rapist was in prison, far, far away.

“When did he move?” I asked. “I thought he was in Tennessee?”

“He was,” Dima said. “But he was moved a couple of months ago due to overcrowding issues in the prison back home.”

Before we’d moved to Texas, we’d lived in Tennessee.

When our sister, Maven, had been kidnapped from Gatlinburg on a family vacation, we’d settled there in hopes that one day she might come back.

Except, she never came back.

It was two decades later that an app that Maven’s best friend had created made a match with Maven’s missing person’s poster. From there, we’d moved to Dallas, wanting to be closer to her and her family.

We’d left Tennessee behind.

I, for one, had been more than happy to do that thanks to all the horrible memories that Lyle had given me.

I’d thought I was safe and happy here.

I was wrong.

“Shasha and I are kicking ourselves for not telling you,” Dima said. “He wants to know if you want to have dinner with the family tonight.”

I was already shaking my head, my mind skipping to a different place that I wanted to be.

“I need to go see my…I need to go see Cutter,” I confided.

“Cutter the motorcycle club friend?” Dima asked. “I’ve heard about him, too.”

I smiled. “I want to let him know that I’m okay.”

“Do you mind if I tag along?” he asked carefully.

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