Page 127 of Live for Me

“Memphis.”

The calm, commanding tone had my eyes locked on him that time.

“Listen to my voice, sugar. You’re going to be fine. I’ll be there every step of the way. The place should be empty right now. We’re going to look for anything that might lead us deeper into this side of the organization, and then we’re going to fucking burn it down. We’re going to leave the worst parts of your memories right there in the ashes.”

I still didn’t have any words available to respond to him. I imagined he was trying to stay quiet to wait and give me a chance to say anything at all, but there was just nothing.

In the middle of the panic, there was still a tiny voice in the back of my mind reminding me that this was Utah. This was Colt. If Ireallydidn’t want to do whatever this was, I could tell him that and it’d be the end of my part in this trip.

Utah.

The unwavering calm presence to balance my never-ending chaos.

Colt.

The unshakable stability to pause the thoughts that raced through my mind in every direction every second of every day.

The quiet power to hold me together while everything else fell apart.

I couldn’t put words together for him just then, but I was at least able to move myself to the middle seat so I could squish my body against his.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

utah

Memphis hadn’t said a word since I told her what we were doing.

I decided to just consider myself lucky that, rather than attempting to jump out of the truck while it was still moving, she’d opted to move closer to me for the rest of the drive.

For someone who had never seen the house from the outside in the daylight to know what it looked like, something inside Memphis’ body told her very clearly when we were close. The GPS didn’t work in this part of the mountains, and I was following a set of written directions that Indy hoped would keep us from getting lost. When the truck’s odometer ticked off the thirteenth mile from our last turn, where I was supposed to start watching for a very hidden driveway, Memphis tensed up so hard that I was a little concerned she’d stopped breathing. Her brain might not have held onto every detail of this place, but her body remembered it for her; sensed it, tried to remind her that this was the kind of place from which she was supposed to run.

I almost drove right by the overgrown driveway.

It really wasn’t simply overgrown once I looked at it a little closer, though. Someone had very intentionally positioned, broken, and directed the trees and shrubs to grow toward that dirt path.

“How do we know there’s no one here?” Memphis whispered.

A question I probably should have asked.

The only explanation I could offer was, “Indy said it would be empty.” He was the one responsible for the research that kept me safe. I didn’t bother to question it much anymore. When we first started, I was hesitant about blindly placing my safety in the hands of a computer kid who typically wasn’t physically seeing what I was seeing. But the more time we spent working together, the more Indy proved he could actually see more than I did. Being on the behind-the-screen side of this job gave these nerds the chance to think way more objectively than the team member who was standing directly in front of the danger.

I put my hand on Memphis’ thigh while I turned the truck onto that dirt path, and both of her hands immediately landed on top of mine to squeeze it. That path turned into a tiny, barely visible trail the further we followed its back and forth winding up the side of a mountain. Nearly nineteen miles and a noticeable altitude change later, I was looking through the windshield at a house that could have been pulled right out of a Stephen King nightmare. But it was even worse than a Stephen King nightmare because this house was a real life nightmare for Memphis.

I put the truck in park and waited for her to make any move at all that might tell me what to do next. I wanted her to face it. I wanted her to march right up to this mansion of a rundown cabin and own every bit of what she’d survived to make it back out. I wanted her to use that as a building block toward accepting that she was a force capable of doing fucking anything that needed done.

But I couldn’tmakeher do any of that.

I could sit here and guide her in that direction, but she needed to be the one to get out of this truck.

“Take your time,” I whispered and squeezed the very cold, clammy hand that was still clinging to mine. I wasn’t going to rush her, but I wondered if she could hear the thunder that rumbled in the distance or if there was a nonstop stream of panicked white noise taking up all the space between her ears in that moment.

“It’s—” she started to say and paused. “It’s just a—house.”

“Just a house, sugar,” I confirmed.

I had no doubt that this building managed to exist in her mind as a living, breathing monster that was somehow capable of sprouting legs to chase her through her unconscious moments. Seeing it for the first time from this perspective and all these years later asjust a housewas a good enough start in the right direction for me.

When she finally moved, she let go of my hand and just barely shifted back into the other seat to put her hand on the door handle. Then she froze again, and I had to wait quietly for another several minutes. I had to scramble to get out and catch up to her when she decided she was going for it though. She jumped out of that truck band-aid style. Ripped it right the fuck off before she could even think twice about it. I caught up to her when she stopped right at the first step of the six that would take her up to the front door.

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