Prologue
Penn
One minute after I lost her…
“Lisa!” I roared into my empty bedroom. My phone shook wildly in my hands as I watched in horror on the tiny five-inch cell phone as she hit the floor, blood pouring from her neck. Unable to tear my eyes away from the screen, I paced like a caged animal. “You motherfucker!” I screamed, rage and agony extinguishing any humanity I had left. “I will fucking destroy you!”
They couldn’t hear me—not with her headphones still connected to the phone. But they didn’t have to hear me for the judgment to be cast.
My heart stopped as she suddenly coughed, gurgling blood.
“Oh God,” I choked out, dropping to my knees as though it could bring me closer to her. I couldn’t fathom how much pain she had to be in. I wasn’t the one covered in stab wounds, yet the pain radiating inside me felt like I was being burned at the stake. “It’s okay, baby. I’m right here. It’s going to be fine.” Lies. “You just hang on.” My voice cracked. “Just…a few more minutes.”
She was on her side the way she so often slept. It looked like I could slip into the space in front of her and sleep for all of eternity. Her limp arm would have rested on my chest, her leg angled up over my hip, her chest flush with my torso. And we could have slid into oblivion together.
I would have gone. Willingly. If for no other reason than just to go with her.
My desperate mind swirled, failing for what had to be the millionth time to figure out how to crawl through the phone and carry her to safety.
But rational thought? It tore me limb from limb.
I was vaguely aware of the two men digging through her belongings and flipping the room in search of God only knew what, but the adrenaline ravaging my system tunneled my vision and left me unable to focus on anything other than her.
I couldn’t stop blinking.
As if each millisecond of darkness would erase the last twenty-nine minutes.
As if I could rewind time, start over, and magically change the present.
As if I could actually save her.
Suddenly, the door to her hotel room flung open and two police officers—with guns raised, triggers poised—charged inside.
My whole defeated body came alive, hope surging through my veins, launching me to my feet as the sound of gunfire rang through the speaker on my phone.
The darker blond of the two men dropped immediately.
The one in the grungy T-shirt stormed toward the officers, triggering another round of bullets.
A victorious war cry tore from my throat as he collapsed to his knees and swayed from side to side for a moment before the knife fell from his hand. Then he keeled over on top of it.
“Yes!” I screamed, the sweetest relief slamming into me. “Oh thank you, God.” I breathed as my head became dizzy.
That was it.
It was finally fucking over.
The cops rushed in and secured both of the dead men before dropping to their knees beside her. I watched, my lungs burning for oxygen, bile clawing its way up my throat, as they checked for a pulse.
Hope thundered in my ears, but the shake of their heads as they huddled around her told the saddest story of all.
For twenty-nine minutes, from over a thousand miles away, my heart had beat in that room with her.
And as he spoke into the radio on his shoulder, telling the dispatcher that she was gone, my heart died in that room with her as well.
“Nooooo!” I bellowed, my face vibrating as my soul tried to tear free of my body.
She couldn’t be gone. They had to be wrong. They had to be wrong.
I gripped that phone so tight that the corner of the glass cut into my fingers, and chanted, “No. No. No.”
I desperately needed the screen on my phone to go dark and finally disconnect the nightmare.
I needed her to call me back and laugh at me for being too protective and overreacting.
I needed to stop looking at her lying on that hotel floor, blood—God, so much blood—pooling all around her.
But I knew, down to the marrow in what felt like my rotting bones, if I severed that connection, I’d never see her again.
On weak legs, I stumbled back, found the edge of our bed, and sank down.
I continued to stare.
I continued to blink.
And I continued to pray for a miracle that I knew would never come.
As the seconds passed, my body became numb yet I was simultaneously in more pain than I thought a human could survive.
And as the adrenaline ebbed and reality sank in, I wasn’t sure I wanted to survive at all.
Chapter One
Cora
Four years later…
“Shit!” I cried as I threw the covers back and sprang from the bed.
The most obnoxious drone was coming from the alarm clock across the room. I knew better than to keep it on either of the mismatched nightstands next to my bed. The snooze button was my only addiction. But it seemed I’d finally mastered the fine art of sleeping through the alarm.
“Shit,” I repeated when I tripped over my accounting textbook. I vaguely remembered the thud of it falling over the side of the bed as I’d dozed off while studying.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I couldn’t afford to make that mistake again. What if—
No. No what-ifs. I lived in today. Not in the past. Not in the future. Today.
Lifting the mattress off the floor, I used my toe to shove the book underneath, careful to make sure it was deep enough that the lump it caused was unnoticeable.
After that, I snatched my new turquoise silk robe off the old rocking chair that served double duty as my “clean” laundry hamper and shrugged it on. I shouldn’t have bought that robe; it cost a small fortune even if it had come from the discount store. But I hated sleeping in anything more than a tank top and panties. With as many midnight “emergencies” as I dealt with, including those where I’d forgotten what I was wearing and run out of my apartment practically naked, I decided that it was time to invest in something that at least covered my ass.
Dragging my long blond hair up into a ponytail, I hurried to my bedroom door. It took two hands to force open the stubborn deadbolt and then slide the chain free. Making a mental note to get some WD-40 on that, I added it to the priority section of my to-do list, which was roughly long enough to wrap around the Earth—twice.
My bare feet padded against the short hallway’s distressed hardwood. It wasn’t the purposeful type of distressed meant to make that tiny apartment appear charming and rustic, but rather the kind that said it had been at least three decades since anyone had treated that flooring with anything other than contempt. But there was only so much a bottle of wood oil could do. And in the twelve years I’d lived there, I’d tried pretty much everything.
Holding my robe closed with one hand, I knocked on the door to the girls’ room. They hated sharing such a small space, but after listening to the constant bickering and arguing over the last six weeks, I was sure I hated it more. In a two-bedroom, eight-hundred-square-foot apartment, our potential sleeping arrangements were limited.
“Girls, get up! I overslept. You’re gonna be late for school.”
Silence. Where the hell had that been at two in the morning, when they were still up fighting over a curling iron?
“River. Savannah. Up. Now! If you miss the bus, I can’t take you this morning.” I rapped my knuckles louder on their door, but at thirteen and sixteen years old, they could have slept through me crashing into their room on a wrecking ball Miley Cyrus style. “Girls! Come on. I don’t have time for this. Get up and get dressed.” I gave the tarnished knob a loud rattle only for it to turn in my hand.
My skin crawled and panic slammed into me as the door creaked open.
No lock. No deadbolt. No chain.
Nothing to protect those two innocent children from the monsters who lurked around us.
My heart clawed its way into my throat as I flew into the room. The sight of River’s dark hair splayed across her pillow, her pink cheek barely showing from beneath her polka dot comforter, momentarily quelled my fears.
However, the twin mattress on the floor beside hers was heartbreakingly empty.
“Where is she!” I shouted, snatching the blanket off River. She’d been wrapped up like a burrito and went tumbling to the floor.
“Jesus, Cora,” she complained, rubbing the sleep from her big, brown eyes.
I squatted in front of her and squeezed her cheeks with one hand. Forcing her to look at me, I slowly repeated, “Where…is…she?”
Her eyes cut to Savannah’s bed before flashing wide with a similar terror that was spiraling inside me. “I…I don’t know.”
“Did anyone come in?”
She shook her head.
“Are you sure?”
Sounding more like a child than she had in years, she squeaked, “Positive. Do you think maybe he…”
She didn’t have to say it. I was way ahead of her with that nightmare.
I sucked in what I hoped would be a calming breath and attempted to focus on the most logical explanation.
But we didn’t live a logical life. The horrifying and extraordinary were far more common than the ordinary.
Savannah had been living with me for six weeks, but this wasn’t the first time she’d snuck out. And, God, I prayed she’d only snuck out.
“It’s going to be okay,” I assured River with a lie.
Her long, black lashes fluttered as she nodded. “She’s probably just hanging out on the first floor.”
Great. Now, she was reassuring me.
I patted her cheek and rose to my feet. “You get dressed. I’ll go find her. Pack both of your lunches. ’Kay?”
“Yeah,” she whispered instead of the usual argument.
After a brief stop to grab the building keys from the fireproof safe in my closet, I was out the front door. The cold concrete scraped my feet as I marched down the stairs. I’d only made it to the second floor when one of the new girls whose name I’d yet to memorize tried to stop me.
“Cora!”
“Not now,” I clipped.
She leaned over the metal railing as I jogged down. “Water’s pouring from the ceiling in my room.”
I winced. That building was falling apart as it was; we didn’t need a flood to speed the process.
“Call Hugo!” I replied, never slowing.
“He’s busy fixing Kerri’s air conditioner.”
“Forget her air conditioner. Unless Hugo is holding up this building with his bare hands, flooding takes precedence over everything else.”
“Right,” she scoffed and then disappeared.
In my haste when I reached the ground floor, I took the corner too tight and the railing bit into my side. Even with my new tan thanks to a spring heat wave, it’d leave one hell of a mark. But pain was nothing new for me. Unfortunately, neither were bruises.
“Cora!” Brittany called as I stormed past her open apartment door.
“Not now!” I replied.
She jogged to keep up with me. “Ava’s not home yet.”
My eyes were anchored to the apartment at the end of the hall as I said, “That rich Hispanic guy took her on an overnight.”
“What!” she shrieked. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Uh, because aforementioned rich Hispanic guy took you on an overnight a few weeks ago and didn’t ask for you again when he emailed Marcos last night.”
“That fucking bitch!”
I glanced over my shoulder and found her stock-still in the middle of the breezeway, her lips pursed tight.
Outstanding.
“We’ll talk about this later,” I said, slamming my fists on the door to apartment 108. The smell of weed wafting from the crack at the bottom gave me a twinge of hope. “Chrissy, open up.” I fumbled with my ring of keys, searching for the right one.
Angela strutted out of her apartment next door and leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb. She was still fully dressed in a barely there skirt and a crop top from a night of work.
“Everything okay, Cora?” she asked.
I pounded on Chrissy’s door again but aimed my question at Angela. “You seen Savannah?”
“No, but I just got home a few minutes ago.” Her plump, red lips split into a glowing smile. “I was crazy busy last night.”
She was seeking approval. Something I usually gave her freely no matter how nauseated it made me. I just didn’t have it in me to give it to her while I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown.
After finally locating the right key, I unlocked the door and charged inside. Well, almost charged inside. The door caught on the chain lock, causing me to face-plant into the wood.
“Son of a…” I exclaimed, lifting my hand to my face. Blood was dripping from my nose. Without thinking, I wiped it on the sleeve…of my brand-new robe.
Fan-fucking-tastic!
Bleeding and now pissed off more than ever, I yelled through the crack, “Chrissy! Open this goddamn door!”
Her splotchy face filled the narrow space. “For fuck’s sake, can’t a girl get some peace and… Oh, hey, Cora,” she purred condescendingly, revealing two rows of yellowed teeth as she smiled.
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