Page 4 of Little Did You Know

"Now." One syllable, stripped of his usual warmth. He yanked the SUV's door open with enough force to rock the frame. I'd never seen him treat his precious Escalade so roughly. "Get in."

My bare feet rooted to the pavement. In twenty years, he'd never cut me off, never used that tone—like he was more afraid of standing still than of whatever we were running from.

Sliding in, the leather seat was cold against my bare legs. I twisted around to watch our house shrink in the distance as he surged forward, smoke billowing against the dark sky. Anthony's knuckles were white on the steering wheel, his eyes constantly checking the rearview mirror.

"What about Emmett?" My palm left a sooty print on the window. My mind raced through a hundred scenarios, each worse than the last. "We can't just leave him?—"

"Emmett gave the order."

Three words that rewrote my entire world. Emmett, who'd barely spoken ten sentences to me in the past month, had planned for this. The same brother who'd forgotten my last two birthdays had an evacuation strategy ready.

But why?

Anthony's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror for a split second—long enough to see the apology there—before the privacy window hummed upward. The barrier sealed with a soft click, trapping me with my questions and the smell of everything I'd lost. In the condensation on the window, my sooty fingerprints began to run, like the tears I couldn't let myself cry.

Anthony took each turn like we were being chased, the SUV's tires squealing against asphalt. My shoulder slammed into the door as we swerved onto the highway, the burning house shrinking in the side mirror until it was just another orange glow in a city of lights. Strange—I should have felt something watching my home burn, but all I could focus on was the way Anthony's eyes had kept darting to the rearview mirror, checking for something more threatening than flames.

The SUV's tires shrieked against asphalt as Anthony took another corner at double the speed limit. Red lights meant nothing to him now—he blew through three, leaving a chorus of angry horns in our wake.

The airport parking garage swallowed us, our tires squealing against concrete as Anthony took the spiral ramp at twice the posted speed.

I was out of the car before Anthony could reach my door, my bare feet meeting cold concrete. The pink and gray fabric of my nightshirt fluttered around my knees.

Anthony placed his hand around my arm above my elbow and dragged me quickly toward the elevators. "Anthony, I don't have any shoes."

He stopped abruptly, jerking me around to face him. "Olivia, your shoes are toast." His tone was harsh, harsher than he'd ever been with me. His grip tightened around my arm. "Don't worry about shoes or anything else." He paused briefly. "Under no circumstance are you to leave this airport by any means other than a plane. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," I whimpered. He began walking, deciding to skip the elevator and take the stairs.

"You can get shoes once you're safely in Florida. Nicholas Pearson will be there to meet you. Emmett said he would call him and explain what happened."

"Nick?" My face twisted with confusion. I hadn't seen Nick in nearly nine years; it was the summer when everything had fallen apart, the one that still haunted my dreams. I'd never blamed Nick for running away; I'd wished I'd had the same option many times, but I was only twelve at the time.

"Yes, Nick. Make sure you're on the plane, Olivia."

My fingernails dug half-moons into my palms, and the fluorescent airport lights seemed to pulse brighter with each shallow breath. The crowd's chatter morphed into white noise, pressing against my ears.

The airport doors parted with a whoosh that sounded like a gasp for air. Anthony's hand on my elbow guided me past a blur of early-morning travelers—business suits and rolling luggage forming a tide that parted around us, then closed again. The collective stares of strangers prickled against my skin.

A plastic airport chair caught me more than I chose to sit in it. The airport spun in fragments: a child's red backpack, the squeak of wheels on tile, a voice announcing Gate 23. My hands trembled so badly I had to sit on them, and each breath caught like fabric on a nail. Time stretched and snapped like a rubber band.

Anthony knelt, his face level with mine. "I'm sorry, Olivia." The harsh airport fluorescents carved deep shadows beneath his eyes, aging him decades in moments. When had his hair gone so gray? When had those worry lines become permanent fixtures? The man who'd practically raised me was dissolving before my eyes, replaced by someone weighted down with secrets he wasn't sharing. "I wish I could tell you something. Explain all this to you, but I don't know what's going on either. Don't worry, and call Emmett once you're safely in Florida." He stood and left, disappearing into a crowd of people.

The last few years had been anything but ordinary, but this blew everything else out of the water. I had no idea what was happening, but I couldn't help but think Emmett was in trouble.

Emmett's face flashed in my mind—not the brother who'd raised me after our parents died, but the stranger he'd become. The ghost who'd drift through our house every few months, leaving nothing but a trail of freshly laundered clothes and mumbled goodbyes.

Last month, he'd dropped a South Florida University acceptance letter on my desk. "You can't stay here forever," he'd said, already turning away.

I looked around the airport for anything suspicious, but I had no idea what I was looking for. Because it was so early in the morning, the corridors were jammed with travelers hustling around from one point to another, looking for their destination. Perhaps I was overreacting. Maybe Emmett didn't want me to deal with the fire's after-effects.

My body was still shaking from all the adrenaline coursing through my blood. I looked down at my bare feet.

My toes curled against the cold airport tile, trying to make myself smaller. My fingers twisted the hem of my nightshirt, pulling it lower over my knees.

A group of teenagers huddled near the gate with their designer luggage. Their whispers carried across the terminal: 'Did she, like, sleepwalk here?' followed by poorly concealed laughter. I wrapped my arms tight around me, wishing the molded plastic seat would swallow me whole.

My eyes widened as it sank in that I had nothing. Not only did I have no clothes, but I had no purse, no wallet, no identification, and no airline tickets.

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