Page 113 of Hide From Me

I could hear Xander in the back yell ouch and could only imagine what had just transpired between them.

“Shut up, X.”

“Cas? What did X do?”

His voice seemed strained, like he was clenching his teeth.

“He opened his big mouth and offered to fuck you for treats. Now, tell me about what they drugged you with?”

The paper. Maybe that would be a better use of my energy.

“I don’t know, Cas. But I found a letter from my mom. When I went back to get my music box. She said that there is some kind of trust that only a female heir can claim or something?”

He swore, and I could hear Zeiden saying something.

“A trust isn’t public. Without knowing who the lawyer was… shit. We missed this.”

Missed this?

“Missed what? You didn’t know.”

The door clicked.

“I gotta go.” I hung up right as the door cracked open and I shoved the phone in the crack of the couch without a better option with as slow as I moved. At this point, it just felt like I was swimming against the tide.

“Who were you talking to, Granddaughter?”

I plastered on the most shit-eating grin I could muster.

“No one, Grandpa. I was just talking to Mom and my little ol’ self. She’s disappointed in you.”

FORTY-TWO

cas

She’d hung up,but it didn’t matter. We were almost there. They’d had a good start on us, but Xander thought of speed limits as guidelines more than actual limits.

I said it didn’t matter but fuck if I wasn’t sitting at the edge of my seat like that was going to make this damn SUV go any faster.

“I can see the house from here. It’s set back aways from the road, which tells me there’s probably a gate,” Zeid said.

I nodded.

“If we crash through the gate, they’ll have cameras and shit. Probably there are guards and that would give them plenty of time to do whatever they needed to up at the house,” I said.

X slowed the closer we got. We were minutes away from her. I didn’t need some crazy shit like this to happen. I already knew what she was to me. The idea that I could lose her? Fuck. I couldn’t control this, and that made this feel impossible. I couldn’t come up with anything logical. I was good under pressure until now.

“According to the blueprints that I could pull up, the fencing runs along the house, but it doesn’t actually enclose the place. This place isn’t meant to be a compound.”

My fingers gripped the corner of one of the seats, making the faux leather creak under my grip.

“Fine. Where do we pull over? I’m not losing her.”

She’d called me for seconds, but she didn’t give me any sign that I wasn’t what she wanted. I wouldn’t lose her to some old dude dangling money in front of her. She didn’t need it. We had plenty, and I would make sure she never needed anything ever; that was if I ever let her out of my sight again. I’d been a fucking fool for letting her leave.

She didn’t have to know that I’d been seconds away from abandoning duty to hunt her ass down. Seeing her head to Gran’s? I let it give me a false sense of safety. In this world? Nothing was ever safe, and I knew that.

“Hey, princess. Snap out of it or you stay in the car and wait for us to come back with your little toy.”