Page 37 of Stolen Rebel

I stop dead, about three quarters of the way down the stairs. The front door is in view, fresh air lies just beyond with an open driveway, no cover, and nowhere to hide. The gardens and orchard out the back would be smarter. Is this another test? Aren’t they all?

I’m not normally one for eavesdropping, so I keep going, pretending that my blood didn’t just run cold at his words, pretending that he might be talking about someone else⁠—

“I need to know every single thread of the life she built while she was pretending to be Erin.”

Pretending. The word lands like a knife to my chest. My fingers tighten on the banister. My lies are supposed to protect both of us, but if he starts pulling at threads, everything unravels.

I miss a step, panic clawing at my throat as short, ragged breaths saw in and out of my chest. Shit. He’s hunting. He’s not guessing, or raging, or torturing the information out of me, he’s actively hunting. I clearly let our previous relationship cloud my mind because it turns out that Liam Mahoney wasn’t waiting for me to crack, he was already fucking digging.

What does he know already? Has he talked to my boss? My friends? Boring is good, right? Boring means my cover hasn’t failed me.

But Liam wants him to keep searching for the truth.

He can never know.

The walls close in on me. Stars blur the edges of my vision as I grip the banister with sweaty palms so I don’t go on my arse.

I need my phone. I need to tell Brian where I am. I don’t keep it on me. Not here, not with Liam. If he decides to search me—I’m fucking done for.

I need to go back upstairs and send him a message telling him who has me and where I am. I need him to come and break me out. I thought I could handle this, but I can’t. Blood will be spilled. There’s no avoiding it now.

Visions of a lifeless body on the ground flicker in my mind. Two men standing over him. My gasp. One of them slowly turning their head, their eyes burning into me. The memory sends every hair on my arms standing on end.

The killer’s face is one I’ll remember till the day I die.

I stumble as I turn to go back upstairs, but once the adrenaline hits my veins, I take them two at a time. By the time I reach my bedroom, I know waiting Liam out is no longer an option. He won’t stop until he gets the truth—and the truth could get us both killed.

My heart stops dead in my chest when I reach the top of the stairs because Sorcha’s bent over, scratching Titan’s ear, and what looks suspiciously like my burner phone is clenched in the dog’s mouth.

Of course Titan found it. She’s been poking around in my room. She has a thing for dirty socks and likes to chew on my guddies, but to my knowledge, she’s never been in the bathroom. Which means I could have got sloppy and dropped it. One mistake, that’s all it takes. I’m unraveling from the inside out. I’m not cut out to be a fucking spy.

“What’ve you got there, girl, hmm?”

Fuck.

Sorcha pats Titan’s jowls and plucks the phone out from between her teeth. “Give it up.”

The dog growls.

Sorcha sighs then clicks her fingers. “Drop it.”

The dog does exactly what she’s told and drops the phone onto the floor.

The step under my foot creaks as Sorcha picks it up, and her head snaps, eyes meeting mine. She takes in my stricken face, and I swear to God, she can hear my heart beating from a few feet away because she looks at the object in her hand, looks at me again, and her features fall.

“Oh, Erin.” She shakes her head. “No.”

My whole body starts shaking, my eyes filling with tears because of all the things that could happen right now, this one’s pretty fucking bad. I was so busy worrying about the battery life on my phone that I didn’t think about what might happen if someone else found it first.

What the fuck am I going to say to her? How do I get her onside without having her betray the Mahoneys? Is it even possible?

Shit. This is bad, so fucking bad.

“P-p-please don’t tell him.” My voice is shaky, barely above a whisper. “You don’t understand. If he knows I have that—” I swallow hard. “This isn’t just about me.”

Her eyes narrow. It’s slight but I’ll take it. She’s listening.

“I wasn’t just… living a life.” My fingers curl into my palms. “I was placed there.”