Page 218 of At the Edge of Surrender

The agony that she’d sustained.

Theo was right. We should just end him. Wipe out that possibility.

“Morgan said…” She blinked as she processed through the memory. “I…I thought she meant it hypothetically.”

“The question is, did you mean it when you said yes?” My question hovered in the dense air.

She shifted, fear darting her attention left and right before she turned her fierce gaze back to us. “Yes.”

“Then we need to go, and we go now,” I told her.

She hesitated for one more beat, glancing back and forth again, before she came running our way. We hurried her to the SUV and ushered her into the back seat, the blacked-out windows obscuring that she was there. We already had a car seat ready, and she fumbled to get her son buckled while I jumped into the driver’s seat and turned over the ignition.

It roared, and Theo jumped into the back with them, sitting guard as I slowly pulled from our hiding place. I took it cool and casual as we bounced along the side road as if we were just another person going about their day.

While two fragile lives were getting ready to change.

Gravity pulled in the cab of the Suburban. Confusion and hope. Dread and fear.

“Is this really happening?” Sophia whispered into the disorder.

“It’s real,” Theo rumbled, and I could hear the frenzy he was holding back. The violence that pulsed through his veins as he watched for things to go south.

“What happens now?” she asked, disbelief in her voice.

“We take you to a safehouse where you’ll stay for a few months until you’re ready to move on to your new lives,” I explained.

“Out in the open? He’ll hunt for us. He won’t stop until he finds us.”

“He won’t be able to. You’ll have a completely new identity.”

“How? Are you…part of the witness protection program or something?”

Theo sent me a knowing glance through the rearview mirror, and I mumbled, “Something like that.”

Not at all except for the fact that we would do everything it took to conceal them. To keep them safe.

The longest time passed as I took a few turns through Eugene, covering our tracks in a maze of turns that led us farther out of the city. Then I took to a desolate two-lane road that would lead us to where we’d left the actual truck we’d be driving back to Moonlit Ridge.

The thick forest grew up close to the edge of the road as we traveled farther and farther from the nightmares that they’d lived.

“How do you make sure he can never find us?” she finally asked.

I didn’t have time to answer before we were suddenly rammed in the back.

A scream tore through at the impact, Sophia’s fear blistering like a shockwave through the cab.

“Shit,” I grunted. The Suburban lurched forward, and my hands jerked at the wheel as I struggled to keep from skidding out of control.

Theo’s attention flew behind him out the back window.

“Tundra.” He gritted it as he pulled the gun from the holster hidden under his shirt.

Fuck.

“He’ll kill us,” she wheezed, gripping onto Theo’s leg where he sat beside her in the back.

“He won’t have the chance,” Theo promised.

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