Page 94 of Second Chance

“Oh myGod.” Gianna cackles. “You didn’t! In front of all of Pa’s tools!”

“Shut up.” Tony’s glad it’s dark, and she can’t see how red he’s going. God knows what she’ll read in his face if he starts thinking about thesecondtime Daniel came to the shop when they did have sex on the premises.

“So, do I need to bleach the entire shop?” Gianna asks lightly.

Tony did bleach parts of the shop afterward, suddenly paranoid Pa or Kyle would find suspicious stains on the floor. It was one of his more ridiculous moments. It’s a goddamn auto shop. There are so many motor oil stains that cleaning up was probably more suspicious than doing nothing.

“Please stop talking.”

Mercifully, they reach Germantown, and Tony pulls into the Continuum’s parking lot. He throws the car into park a little too suddenly, so the brakes squeak in protest for a long minute after he turns off the ignition. He locks the car and raps on the hood in apology before heading for the door. Oil time is coming up again whenever things calm down.

After she gets out of the car, he holds his arms open for Gianna.

She walks straight into his hold. He buries his face in the top of her head. She smells like shampoo and baby powder. Her arms snake around him to squeeze him tight.

He takes a deep, steadying breath. “All right. Are we ready to do this?”

Chapter Fourteen

Tony’s Toyota is the only car in the Continuum’s empty lot. Sean hasn’t come back, then. That’s a relief; one person at least will be spared whatever is about to happen.

“Daniel?” Tony asks the closed back door.

No response. Maybe Daniel’s asleep. Maybe something else happened in the meantime. Maybe Tony should have saved his heart-to-heart with Gianna for after they got Daniel to safety and driven faster.

He takes a steadying breath and gets to work on the bike lock with the bolt cutters.

“Shoulda gone to the shop,” he mutters to Gianna. “Gotten a damn angle grinder or something.”

“Guess you’re gonna have to start keeping power tools in Rhinebeck.” She looks over her shoulder anxiously, monitoring the road. “Hurry up, will you?”

“This isn’t exactly easy.” It comes out as more of a grunt than a sentence. Tony winces as the lock gives under his hands. “Got it.”

The door opens minutely, forcing them to shove until the gap is wide enough to pass through.

Tables and chairs piled up haphazardly right behind it shift away, likely Lily’s idea of a barricade. Given Daniel was right up by the door before, it isn’t all that effective.

“Daniel?” Tony calls into the space.

Colder inside than outside, the musty air smells of mildew and stale beer. No wonder Daniel hated watching movies here.

From a distance, Tony hears a voice.

He and Gianna wrestle the chairs and tables aside to get through. The furniture legs scrape loudly against the linoleum floors. One of the stacks of chairs wobbles dangerously when Gianna pushes it. For a moment, Tony’s half convinced it will crash to the floor and alert every last resident of Germantown what’s going on in here.

Gianna manages to steady it.

Their breathing is loud in the room.

“Come on.” Tony turns on his phone’s flashlight and searches for other doors. The bullet hole in the wall Daniel mentioned taunts Tony, right above the emergency light.

“Tony?” a voice calls from the far side of the room.

They sprint through a door and into a hallway to the main entrance. More emergency lighting dimly illuminates the space, pointing the way out.

They find Daniel waiting for them in the doorway leading to the bathrooms. His hair is a mess, flat on the sides and piled up at the top of his head in a tangle. He’s pale, washed out, with deep circles under his eyes. His chinos have a rip at the knee—the second pair he’s lost to violent crime this year, and he hates clothes shopping—and his shirt is crinkled and sweat-stained.

He’s the best thing Tony’s ever seen.

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