Page 59 of How Much for the Whole Night?

ChapterThirty-One

Ethan

I only stopped once,for enough coffee to keep me going, and when I hit the Tennessee border I felt lighter. Thirty miles outside Ellery I noticed the SUV a few cars back. I changed lanes a few times, took an off-ramp, went back onto the main road straight away, saw the SUV following still, then pulled over into a gas station and waited. The rush to get out of the city and to Josh had been a madness, and it hit me that what I was doing was a million times wrong.

What if I led people to Josh and Ben?

What if I’d fucked up everything with my recklessness?

A car pulled up beside me, a big black SUV with tinted windows, blocking me from the sight from anyone driving past. I couldn’t see in, but they could see me, and I even glanced at my chest to see if there was a red dot indicating someone had a gun on me. In that single moment I was torn between shoving the car in reverse and trying to outrun whoever was next to me—unlikely given I was in an old clapped out car, and their SUV was probably a typical bad-guy pimped up version. Instead, I sat very still, making sure my hands were on the wheel where anyone looking in could see them. My cell vibrated, and I was torn between reaching for it and staying where I was. If the driver was tailing me for nefarious reasons, then moving my hand could be a death sentence, if he was Sanctuary then I needed to answer the damn call. There again, it could be a perfectly ordinary person out for a drive and nothing at all to do with anything.

So why stop right next to me in an otherwise empty forecourt?

The cell stopped, but immediately started again.

I took my hand from the wheel—they could shoot me if they wanted, not much I could do about it now because getting to my gun would be way slower than if they already had a weapon pointed at me. Then I picked up the cell and connected the call.

“Fucks sake, get in the car, Cap” a familiar voice instructed.

I smiled because that sure sounded a lot like Ryder. I hadn’t seen him since I’d fake-killed him. I pocketed my phone, got out of my car, head down, and clambered into the SUV. Ryder grinned at me as I leaned over and side-hugged him.

“Fuck it’s good to see you alive, Ry.”

“Likewise.”

“How’s being dead?” I asked.

He made this dramatic face and rubbed his chest. “Sore.”

I was immediately contrite. The face-off in the warehouse had been close; the impact of a very real bullet would have done more than bruise Ryder, and could have caused a lot of damage.

“Did it break anything?”

“Cracked ribs, dislocated arm, nothing I can’t handle,” Ryder said with another grin. Fuck, I’d missed people smiling at me instead of trying to threaten me. “Buckle up, Cap.”

We drove in silence for a short distance, and I sunk into the seat feeling safe and settled.

Ryder cleared his throat. “Go on then, ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

He snorted a laugh. “About Josh of course.”

I shot Ryder a sharp glance. “What about Josh?”

“No, you’re supposed to say, how is Josh?”

“How is Josh,” I parroted.

“Pining dramatically,” Ryder teased, and I fake-punched his arm, then regretted it when he winced. “He’s doing okay,” Ryder continued, less teasing and more serious. “We have the children with us, the ones from the trucks.”

“Mine? The ones in the truck I was dealing with? What about the truck that Danvers was working—”

“All good, twenty-one kids accounted for.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, aware that the thought of what had happened with the othershipmentwas playing in my head like a horror story on loop. It didn’t stop any of the other trafficking that had happened before, but if we could save as many as we could, then that was at least something I could hold onto.

“Ben asks after you,” Ryder said, indicating off the highway and onto a side road. “He’s a good kid.”

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