Page 31 of Take Her

If only doing so wasn’t guaranteed to kill me.

Sable gave me a disbelieving look. “Well, she’s your typical twenty-something-year-old,” she said, then started swiping through screens. “I mean, she has a public Instagram account. Tracing the rest of her life shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I reached over and grabbed her phone to see for myself. I found myself confronted with photographs taken of cream-colored paper—pages from books—stained by streaks of highlighters over declarations of love, occasionally outlined by tiny red hearts. “This...is hers?”

“Yep,” Sable said definitively. “Let me back up a bit—how old is this girl?”

“Twenty-three,” I muttered, and added, “Don’t look at me like that,” without looking up.

Sable took a few bites of her lunch while I scrolled. Lia’s feed of quotes and quips from books was like being in a Hallmark store on Valentine’s Day. At least she was smart enough to not have her face in any of the photos—but what the fuck was the rest of this shit?

“Not real prime FBI material there—unless it’s the world’s best cover? Maybe she highlights things in code,” Sable said, leaning over to snatch her phone back, after dabbing at her face with a napkin. “I hope you know this means we’re married now. I never let anyone else touch Margaret.”

“If you get that desperate for health insurance, let me know, I know a guy who knows a guy,” I said, in the most mobster accent I could manage, and she laughed.

“Seriously, Rhaim,” she said, shaking her phone between us. “You want me to go the full nine yards on this girl? I almost feel bad for her already. And what’ll you do if I find something?”

Lia clearly believed in love—and a lot of people had done dumbass shit for love before, me included. “That’ll be for me to decide.”

Sable pocketed her phone and then looked at me with pursed lips. “I don’t know how to say this without making it sound weird—but I like you living. So don’t fuck this up, please.”

I snorted, and stood, dropping enough cash on the table to cover everything for both of us. “I’ll try not to.”

14

LIA

“This one won’t fly,” I complained.

Caleb gave me a lopsided grin. “Technically, none of them will,” he said, and took the paper from my hands to flatten out so that I could try again.

He had so much more patience than I did. It was annoying.

—Sarah, from One of a Thousand Wishes by A. R. McGeorge

How could he be so dismissive of me?

It’d taken me a bit to figure out how to cancel Rhaim’s upcoming meeting on his calendar, but once I had it asked me if I wanted to send updates out. I’d done so, and hopefully that meant Rhaim’s business associates wouldn’t barge into his office to find me pacing.

And snooping.

Going through literally all of his stuff.

I was a veteran snooper, because I found it easier to understand people by association with their belongings than I did talking to them.

People could lie about their upbringing, but front row Beyonce ticket stubs pinned on a corkboard could not.

So I methodically went through everything in Rhaim’s office, trying to intuit more than the little I knew about the actual man.

He was good—to me—in the past, at least.

He was strong. There were framed certificates on his wall from assorted business associations, one for Adding Value to the Community.

And he was loyal—because he still had up pictures of his dead wife.

Which, perhaps I should’ve felt a little awkward crawling to him in front of, but I didn’t know at the time, and she wasn’t here now, was she?

She’d gone and left him all alone and he needed someone.