Page 101 of Running to You

“You think I should have just abandoned those women?”

“Yes.”

“Would you have done that?”

“It’s different.”

“Why, because you’re a man and I’m a woman?”

“No. Because…” Because Eliza was vulnerable. And the thought of her putting herself in danger made him physically ill.

There was a protracted silence. Her voice was calm when she spoke again. “I did what I did. Do you want to hear about it or not?”

His hands were aching from squeezing the steering wheel so hard. Noticing his elevated speed, he eased his foot off the gas and set the cruise control. He took a breath and grounded himself in the surroundings. Still dark out there, nothing but trees on both sides of the highway now that they were well past Manchester. They passed a sign for a town called Nutfield. Sounded like a peaceful place. He doubted anything dangerous ever happened in Nutfield.

A glance her way told him she was waiting for him to answer her question.

Fine. She was here. She’d survived—so far. “Sorry. You’re right. Go on.”

“Jed only used paper records. Whenever the office was empty—which wasn’t often—I scanned them and uploaded them to a private server. It took months to get them all.”

“I thought you said Jed monitored your online activity.”

“He did. But he trusted me with our bullion storefront. I told him I needed a safe space for financials and opened an encrypted account. I gave him the password and put a bunch of business-related stuff in there. I figured he’d glance at it a few times to be sure, but then he’d leave it be. After a few weeks, I just…changed the password. When he never asked me about it, I started putting the documents there. All the files, the applications, the financial records, and the medical records—which showed the births, of course.”

“The babies were delivered on-site?”

“Jed’s a physician. My friend Nicole is an RN, so she assisted. They were lucky there were no complications with the babies or the mothers. I got all those records uploaded and then backed them up onto a different cloud server—one of those automatic backup systems that stores your files in case your computer crashes.”

“Oh. Smart.”

He caught her quick smile.

“That’s what the email address and password are for.”

“The ones we found in your shirt? I’m glad you remembered.”

“Me too. Then I put the boring business stuff back in that folder, in case Jed looked. He’d find nothing that hinted I was working against him.”

“Diabolical.”

“I needed to tread carefully. Not only was he getting the worship of all these women, which I think he felt he deserved, but he’d amassed millions—much of that because of what I’d done with the bullion business. He had every reason in the world to make sure I never told anybody what was going on. He didn’t suspect anything, at first.”

It was those two words that had his blood pressure rising again. At first.

“Then he started seeing me with Nicole and the other women. He asked me about it, acting as if he was worried about me. I told him I was just curious, like I was impressed with his results. But I’ve never been much of an actor. That’s when he had Gil and Elliot start watching me, my security.” She air-quoted that word. “Jed suggested I eat dinner with him and Lola every night, even asked me to cook a few nights a week at their place. He wanted to keep an eye on me. I didn’t have the nerve to refuse. Gil would stand in the corner and stare, arms crossed, a glower on his face. Jed could make nice all he wanted, but Gil made sure I knew I wasn't safe.”

That explained a few of her memories—and reminded him of that first breakfast together. “Food was scarce?”

“We were all given an allotment.”

“Not enough, obviously.”

“It was fine until Gil decided to help himself to my stores. I had the feeling if I reported him…”

She didn’t finish the statement, but Sam got the gist.

“Were Gil and Elliot the ones who caught up with you Friday night?” Sam pressed. “Who gave you those bruises?”