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But my fears don’t have to get too far. Because there she is, standing in the doorway.
“She is,” Finley answers. She’s forced a smile on her lips, and I can tell she’s trying to make me feel good.
It’s working. She looks like a fucking angel, swallowed up in a gray wool camisole, tired-eyed, a small cut on her forehead, but alive, and my heart pinches in my chest.
I swallow hard, not anticipating the relief that burns the backs of my eyes at the sight of her.
Finley comes and sits down on the opposite side of me. She says quickly, “This is Tasha and Sid. Tasha and I went to school together. She’s the one who patched you up.”
“And you’re welcome, by the way,” Tasha replies. “Take this. For the pain.”
She hands me a glass of water and two pills.
“No, thank you,” I say.
I have questions. I want to know where we are. How we got here. And, most importantly, can we trust them?
But my brain is foggy, my eyes are heavy again, and the sweet relief of knowing that Finley is alive, and Finley is okay, and Finley is safe, at least for the moment, is like a shot of hemlock. All the energy I built up for the sole purpose of protecting Finley leaves me in an instant, and I’m woozy from it.
As if she can read me, Finley takes my large hand in both of hers and squeezes it. “We’re okay,” she reassures me. Then she takes the pills from her friend’s hand and holds them out for me in offering again. “Take them. Please.”
Her wish is my command. I knock the pills back this time.
It doesn’t take long this time for the room to swallow me whole.
18
FINLEY
Archer flickers like a candle. And then his eyes fall closed, and he’s out again.
My heart is tight in my chest with worry. But I don’t want him to be in pain.
“Will he be okay?” I ask.
“It’ll hurt a bit more than a beesting,” Tasha says, “but lucky him, he didn’t hit anything major. He’ll be alright.”
When I exhale, my breath shudders. I’m surprised by how close I am to crying.
Tasha reaches over and squeezes my hand. “C’mon,” she says. “Let’s leave the boys here and step out for a second.”
I hug my arms and follow her out. I take one last glance at Archer, asleep in bed. His shirt is gone, and he’s got a thick bandage wrapped diagonally across his chest. It’s red at his shoulder where he’s bled through the gauze.
Getting him here was a trial. Between my panic and the cops and the thought of Jacobi on our heels, only one place felt safe.
Tasha. My friend from school and, now, a medical student.
I’d been to her family’s house only once before—my first semester, when they’d invited me to Thanksgiving. It was a relief not to have to spend another holiday confined in the Rossi estate, thwarting Raphael’s advances.
And now, this is where my feet led me in my time of need. To her. Graciously, when I pulled up to her house past midnight with a bleeding man in the passenger seat of my car, Tasha didn’t waste time asking questions. She and her boyfriend, Sid, helped get Archer out and upstairs, where she managed to remove the bullet from his shoulder, clean the wound, and stitch him up.
I’ve been spared her questions so far, but now, when she leads me downstairs, I know it’s time to start explaining myself.
Tasha and Sid live in a lodge on Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks. The town is small, the lake crystal clear, and the trees are bursts of reds and yellows this time of year. Not that I was taking in the scenery, flying twenty miles over the speed limit down dark roads littered with deer crossing signs.
The house is what you’d expect out of a hunting lodge—taxidermied animals, stone in the décor, hanging Native American rugs, loud clocks, and wooden floors that creek on nearly every step.
Tasha takes me into the kitchen, and I sit at her round table.
