Page 57 of Live for Me

“Seatbelt,” I said when I dropped back down behind the wheel. “Which way are they coming from, Indy?”

“When you leave, go West,” Indy said in my ear.

Tennessee hightailed it to his own truck as soon as we were moving. He didn’t make it very far. A police Charger parked right behind his back bumper as we left that parking lot.

“One problem down,” I said. “Taking you out, Indy. We’ve both got our phones.”

Memphis didn’t even wait until I had the radio all the way out of my ear before she had her phone in her hand to call Indy herself.

“I don’t feel like I know enough about U.S. Marshalls to be able to tell you where to start,” she said into her phone. “Aside from looking into missing children from Tennessee, that is. It’s hard to imagine that we’d be looking at the Marshalls who are actually assigned to those investigations.”

“Maybe,” I interrupted. “Or maybe they’re like the cops with a god complex too. Can’t get caught if everyone looking at it from the outside thinks they’re doing their part to end trafficking from the inside. People tell them anything and everything assuming they’re the good guys in the situation.”

“That’s disgusting,” Memphis said quietly with the most heartbreaking look I’d ever seen in those green eyes.

She wasn’t wrong. It was absolutely disgusting.

But so were people.

She spent a good portion of the drive back to Indiana on the phone with Indy, discussing what the Marshalls Service really did, while she tapped away on her computer.

This probably wasn’t the time to remind her that if things had gotten out of my control in that diner, she would’ve had no way out because she gave up learning to drive so fucking quickly. But it was all I could think about.

Very light knocking at my door woke me up the next morning. Or maybe it was still in the middle of the night. It was still dark, and I was usually the first one awake inside this house.

The half-naked siren and her visibly pierced nipples waiting on the other side of that door had me wondering if this was really happening or if I was dreaming.

“What’s wrong, angel?”

“I want to go to Nevada today,” Memphis said and walked right by me into my room. “Well, nottoNevada. I want tofindNevada today. Some weird stroke of luck has her in southern Indiana. At least, I think so. I have this fucking awful feeling that having quick access to a nurse would just be a good idea. And if they’re all going to take forever to decide to jump ship to our side, we should start on her as soon as we can.”

“This couldn’t wait until the sun came up?”

She looked behind her toward my window.

“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t realize?—”

“Have you not actually been to sleep yet, Memphis?”

“Uh, no. Unfortunately, computer people don’t spend much timecomputeringin the dark web world during the day. We don’t differentiate between day and night well because we don’t really have outside lives. The sunlight hours don’t matter so much. Being able to see things happen in real time requires just staying awake for it.”

“Did you find something?”

“No,” she said quickly. “Maybe? I don’t actually know yet. I guess time will tell.”

“Well, we can go wherever you want today, but you might want to sleep a little first.”

She nodded her head and walked back toward me. I stepped off to the side of the door to let her back through, but she stopped right beside me instead.

“It was nice of you to try to teach me to drive,” she whispered. “I still don’t want to learn to do it, but I know why you’re trying to get me to do these things. I think we just see the world in very different ways.”

The way my own heartbeat about deafened me when I felt those little fingers slide into my hand.

“And I think maybe the way you see it comes with a much better perspective than the one I have. I don’t know how to change that, but I’ll try not to freak out if you keep finding ways to help me with it.”

I twisted my hand until I was able to grab hers firmly and I used it to pull her the rest of the way to me, until those piercings were against my stomach. I put my other hand under her chin to force her to look up at me.

“Why can’t you do this when you can see me, angel?”

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