Page 139 of Say You'll Stay

My door flies open while I leap from Tom’s car and scan the neighborhood for them. The front door to my house is wide open, swinging. There are no other cars in my driveway, so they have to be in a neighbor’s driveway.

“Where are they?” Tom asks, looking around us. Half of the cars are here, and nothing stands out.

I notice two reverse lights and the purr of an engine a few houses down. A silver car hurriedly backs out of the driveway, and I spot the asshole. Vivian remains standing in the driveway where the car was.

“Allie!”

Ted sees me, and freezes in the middle of the road. He needs to get past me in order to get out of the neighborhood.

“Ted,” I warn him with a stern look and shake my head.

He revs the engine with a vicious grin on his face. His lips move, but I don’t know what he’s saying.

I notice Allie in the front passenger seat with blood coming from her nose, and her hand pressed to her forehead. With my finger pointed at him, I warn him again. “Don’t you dare, Ted.”

He dares.

Ted speeds by and around me in the street. I reach for Allie’s handle, screaming when it slips through my fingers. “Fuck!”

Another car speeds out of a second driveway, and it looks like a standard Vandenburg vehicle. I don’t care what she does. I run for Tom’s car and speed down the street after them just as Joel’s cruiser rounds the corner toward my house. Good, he can stop Vivian.

In the rear-view mirror, Tom takes my place in the street, but Vivian doesn’t hesitate.

She speeds right into Tom.

Chapter55

Allie

I have a bruise forming just above my brow where Ted hit my head against the top of the car. He had grabbed me by the back of the neck to shove me inside, and when I tried to push away, I only ended up getting hurt.

And I guess Vivian is the type to point a gun at the sky and shoot the clouds just to maintain order.

Jadon, bless his heart, didn’t get scared. He tried unbuckling himself to get to me. When Vivian threatened to point her weapon at him, and did so through the window, Jadon settled back in his seat with his eyes on me.

I let Ted force me inside the car, realizing Lucas was listening. I’m hopeless with my phone and I thought when Vivian confiscated it, I saw the screen light up and knew no matter how far we got, Lucas was listening.

He had to notice.

We haven’t lived here long enough to know which neighbors are home, and I don’t know if they would risk Vivian’s trigger finger.

Maybe they’ll call the police.

Ted slams my door, and of course when I try to open it, the inside handle is gone and the window locked.

“Mommy?”

“Hush, Jadon, okay? Daddy’s going to get here.” Oh, I hope so because my bravery is struggling.

“Mommy.”

Oh, my head. My vision is blurring already. There’s definitely going to be a bruise.

“Get to the damn boat, Theodore, and get rid of her,” Vivian says through gritted teeth. “If he’s not going to take care of his mistakes, you and I will. The tickets are in the glove compartment with your new names and passports.”

What boat? When did we get involved in something on a boat?

Ted climbs into the car, slamming his own door. I noticed the rental sticker on the lower corner of the windshield when I sat down. If anyone ends up searching for us, they won’t know what the car looks like.

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