Page 13 of Traces Of You
“Me,” he said. He put his thumb and finger under her chin like he had when they were younger. When he wanted her attention on him. So that she could absorb the words he was saying. “You can trust me.”
When he released her chin, she nodded. She was drained, emotionally and physically.
Not just from the six days she’d spent driving from Florida, staying in hotels, buying supplies, lying low and checking the news for updates.
Today was the day and she had to get out. She knew it.
All hell could break loose soon enough.
But one hour wouldn’t make a difference. The call would be done later this afternoon.
Ford walked around to the passenger side, opened the door, and folded his long frame into her tiny sedan.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Start with where you’re going and why.”
“Canada,” she said. “I have dual citizenship and a Canadian passport. Once I’m there, I’m safe. He can’t come after me. He can’t leave the country.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Oliver. That’s all you’re getting now. I don’t want you to look him up. I want nothing to trigger any notice of me in the system. He knows people in law enforcement. I’ve got until this afternoon before I’m alerted as missing.”
“You know this exactly?” he asked. “So someone is aware of what you’re doing, and if someone is, that means they can tell. They can let it be known to whoever is after you.”
She gulped. She had that fear, but they assured her it would not happen.
“I should be safe,” she said. “They do this a lot.”
“Who does what?” he asked.
His questions were calm and methodical. She was positive he was memorizing every detail she said like he always had in the past.
It came as no shock to see his career.
He was a protector at a young age. He could read a room and control a crowd.
He could tell when someone was hurt, sick, upset, or hiding something.
She’d never been able to hide much from him.
It’s probably why she was sitting here on his family’s property confessing.
Would she say it all?
No. No way.
Just like those that helped her didn’t know it all either.
They didn’t want it. It was better for everyone that way.
“You know what happened to me as a child,” she said. She still couldn’t bring herself to talk about the abuse at the hands of her mother and her mother’s boyfriends.
Never sexual. Her mother drew the line at that.
But she’d been a punching bag from her mother’s drunken and high rages.
The losers her mother hooked up with liked to join the party.
