Page 53 of Never Quiet

At the end of March, Amanda spent a couple of weeks in Boulder to help her grandmother with several events at the gallery.

Every morning, she went for a run because it was something she started with Davis years before and it helped her feel closer to him. She hadn’t talked to him in almost two months, not even a text message.

She understood because the people who worked with Hayden often went off the grid. That it was happening right before her eighteenth birthday made his absence harder somehow.

She was close to a lot of changes and needed to talk it out with someone who wouldn’t try to influence her one way or another. Hayden was wonderful about letting her know Davis was alright but it wasn’t the same as being able to talk to him.

She was jogging back when she passed a parked SUV about a half block from the gallery. Frowning, she didn’t slow.

Inside the lobby, she kept going to the third floor. The window there was specially tinted and faced the street.

A tiny chill crept up her back but she shoved it sharply away.

She unstrapped her phone from her arm. Using the zoom feature, she focused on the two men in the SUV. Taking a picture, she put her phone back in the strap.

They were the men who’d been hired to protect her parents when she was sent to Florida the first time. During video calls, she’d seen them several times.

It had been awhile but there was no doubt in her mind.

Part of her wanted to talk to Noel, to find out what the fuck was happening. Another part of her knew that her aunt was going to great lengths to keep her in the dark.

She was trying like hell to give Amanda a normal life.

Suddenly, she very much wanted to cry. It seemed the monsters who once haunted her still lingered. She’d learned a lot more about Noel and Rick’s time shaking down the person who placed her bounty than they’d ever want her to know.

Twisting her hands together, she wondered what all of it would mean for her future. Thinking about college seemed rather silly. Her research, her desire to change the environment, felt superfluous to what was going on behind the scenes of her life.

She slid down the wall to her butt and released the stress, frustration, and general confusion that had plagued her off and on for years in a flood of tears.

She was tired.

It had never really gone away. The fix hadn’t been permanent. She knew Noel was trying to protect her and she loved her for that.

It didn’t change the fact that Amanda was no longer a child. She hadn’t been in a long time. She was running all over the city without a care in the world while armed security tailed her and no one had said a word about it.

Amanda was going through each day as if she really had choices, as if she had a normal future, and she didn’t. Meanwhile, she was endangering every person she loved.

She knew that now.

Getting up, she went to shower and change. Plastering a smile on her face, she went through the motions.

In her mind, she started making a plan. There was no way to maintain the pretense forever. Either Noel would spend the rest of her life fighting the people after Amanda or the bad guys would eventually get her.

Either way, it put people she loved at risk. That was one thing she wasn’t going to tolerate.

Not ever.

* * *

In June, two days after her eighteenth birthday that she’d asked everyone not to make a big deal over, Amanda ran into the main yard of her house and staggered to a stop.

An unfamiliar SUV turned in at the top of their driveway and idled there.

On the porch, Terrance was on his feet, his hand on his gun. “Amanda, get inside.” She ran across the yard and up the steps. Terrance didn’t take his eyes off the vehicle. “Tell Jan to take Heather upstairs.”

Racing inside, she got Jan and her little sister to the second floor. “Jan, call Dad. Tell him someone is at the top of the driveway and to get to Mom right now.”

Amanda ran back downstairs and took her dad’s hunting rifle from the rack above the back door. Making sure it was loaded, she returned to the front porch.

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