Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 51832 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51832 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
“He’s one of them,” Kurt replies, “one of the men after a treasure big enough to please their boss. He saw me as that prize. He would have told them I was alive, and then they would have come for me and Ana. And probably you. Kasey—”
“Is dead,” I state flatly. “You are not. We need to know who these people are. Debating Kasey’s personality and decisions gets us nowhere.”
“And yet it does,” he counters. “The jobs I was forced to take, just kept coming, right along with the threats against you, Ana. I couldn’t find the head of the snake to cut it off. These people—they have no name that I’ve ever discovered—are well funded and well hidden.”
“You have connections in the government,” Luke reminds him. “Why not get help?”
“You think I didn’t try? One phone call and my phone pinged with a photo of Ana and a promise there was a man with a gun on her. That’s when I told Kasey it was time to disappear, to stage our deaths, to bury my money, so there was nothing for them to come for. That way all you represented to them was a badge and trouble.”
I’m about to challenge him to prove any of this, preferably all of this, and actually, why the heck was Kasey present and accounted for when he was not if his story is true? Luke reads my mind and chimes in with that exact point. “Kasey didn’t disappear when you did.”
“He was supposed to,” he replies. “When the time came, he double-crossed me. He no-showed to our exit zone. He left me no choice but to leave him behind and penniless.”
“Why didn’t he tell these people you were alive?” I challenge.
“I was involved because of him. Kasey would have been told to find me or die. And finding me wasn’t going to pay the bills.” His gaze latches onto mine. “I know you, Ana. Had I told you any of this, you would have worn this problem like an obligation your badge created. You would have tried to fix what cannot be fixed.”
“Of course, it can be fixed,” I snap. “Everything can be fixed.”
“And therefore, you were obligated to make her suffer,” Luke interjects, replying directly to Kurt. “Because she suffered, Kurt. She hurt. She literally heaved her guts out at the funeral.”
He flicks Luke a look filled with condemnation. “She can handle it. She’s tough.”
Don’t put Baby in a corner. Well, don’t even think about putting me in a corner. Luke isn’t having it. “What she can handle and what she should have to handle are two different things.”
I reach out and catch Luke’s arm, silently letting him know how much his presence means to me but also that I’ve got this. All of this is, after all, the price I pay for being blind and stupid until now, but no more. The idea that Kurt knows me, really knows me, and I clearly don’t know him, is not just pathetic. It’s potentially deadly when it involves a man who can spot weakness a mile away.
And as Kurt once told me—know how you are perceived and use it against your enemy.
I was dumb and stupid so he sees me as dumb and stupid.
I file that away in my mental information box.
At some point, even if it’s not this moment, I’ll use that against him.
And I’ll use it against him as painfully as he used it against me.
Chapter Three
Ana
The emotional football Luke and I have played for days works against Kurt. I don’t even like games. I’m done playing them with Luke. I’m not playing them with him. What I desire is the elusive thing called happiness, that I haven’t known in the two years I’ve been apart from Luke. Now that he’s back in my life, I don’t intend to let either one of us die. That means I need answers, and it’s answers I seek from Kurt now. I decide it’s time to approach him not as my ex-stepfather because he is no one I will ever call family again, but rather as a witness.
Unfortunately, that means playing mental games. When it’s put that way, perhaps, I like games more than I thought I did.
Now is the time for me to not only back him into a corner of his own making but to hold him there. That just happens to translate into me calling his bullshit and cornering him, to tell the truth. “Kasey was alive when you supposedly died,” I remind him. “Surely, they, whoever they are, used me as leverage against him. That downgrades your story to a big, fat lie. You disappeared to protect yourself, not me.”
“Leverage only works, honey, if the person cares about what’s being leveraged. I’m not going to sugarcoat this, because that’s not what you want from me or anybody. Kasey only cared about Kasey.”