Page 80 of The Secrets She Keeps

Toward him.

Gunnar just scooped her close and held her. He had her back. He wasn’t ever going to let her go again.

“Gunnar, I’m okay.” Her arms were around him. But she was moving gingerly. They’d hurt her. She had a black eye. He could see it forming. “You have to go find her. You have to go get her back. You have to.”

“We won’t ever stop looking,” he told her against her hair, holding her close gingerly. Careful not to hold her too tightly, no matter how much he wanted to.

“Gun, we need to ask her some questions,” Daniel said behind him. “Time…matters.”

Gunnar knew he was right. Heather was still missing. But the hardest thing he had ever done was step away. So he could just look at Powell as she told them everything she knew about the men who still had Heather.

Gunnar was going to get Heather back now if it was the last thing he ever did.

And he was going to make those bastards pay for every mark on Heather and every mark on Powell. No matter how he had to make that happen. He wasn’t waiting for Daniel to catch up now. Daniel’s screw-up had almost cost him who mattered most.

57

She’d hiddenfor what had to be almost two hours. To make sure they were gone. They’d searched for her, but they couldn’t find her. She’d gotten lucky, and she knew it.

She could hear them arguing about whether she had burned alive or not. Assholes were so stupid. If they’d not been idiots they might have found her.

Heather had watched them drive away. Then she’d started walking. And just kept walking. And walking.

Now, she just kept walking. Heather knew where she was now. She wasn’t that far from help. Ten or eleven blocks, maybe. From the TSP. It was right up this road, through the industrial park. Ten or eleven blocks, that was all.

The thought of going to the TSP, even forhelp,made her feel sick. So sick.

She just couldn’t do it.

Not the TSP now.

She wanted her sisters. She wanted to be with Bonnie and Marcia and Joy and Hope so much. So much right now. Heather’s injured fingers clenched around the hard drive. She had to get it to the right people. The right people would be able touse it somehow. She’d taken it from Scarface. Not like he could use it now, anyway.

But the right people could use it.

Far better than she could.

It wasn’t her war, after all. Not hers. She was just cannon fodder, really. Disposable. Like the redshirts in a Star Trek episode.

Just there to stand between the ones in charge and the real threats. So they didn’t have to get blood on their hands—their blood or anyone else’s.

Interchangeable.

Gunnar. It needed to be Gunnar. He…he wanted the OPJ ring destroyed so much. She trusted that, trustedhim. If there was anyone from the TSP she trusted now, it was Gunnar. Gunnar and Miguel. And maybe Murdoch, a little.

But Murdoch was…with the governor. On the governor’s side. On McKellen’s.

She probably shouldn’t trust Murdoch even a little, really.

Her arm was probably broken. Her ribs—she had broken ribs. Where those assholes had kicked her and where she’d fallen from the tree at the end. But she could do this. Heather could do this. Her head hurt most of all. That asshole old guy had punched her, and it hurt. Maybe she hadn’t just hidden for a while there—she might have passed out for some of it.

She could get back to her babies. More than anything, her arms ached to hold her babies. And then, her sisters’ babies were next. Even Meggie and Maris and Crispin. She would hug them all. From her sweet baby girl all the way up to Bonnie, Marcia, and Norm.

Heather wanted her family so much.

The TSP was just ten blocks away—and the hospital. That would only be thirteen blocks away. Heather was going to dothis. Going to get there. Someone would be there, someone who could help her.

Maybe…maybe it would be Samia working the ER. Or little Cashie. It was time for them to be there. But with her in trouble, maybe no one of her family would be there. Maybe they’d be in Hughes Heights. Waiting. Just waiting for her too.

---