Page 52 of Girl Anonymous

“There are more participants playing this game than we realized. Think like Benoit. We’ll eliminate them all.”

“Benoit died.”

“We will survive. We will conquer. They will all die, and we will own our world.”

CHAPTER 24

Dante grabbed a pillow off the bed and handed it to Maarja, who looked at it and him in alarm. Shrugging out of his jacket, he tossed it around her shoulders and pushed her ahead of him toward the front door.

They were escaping.

She fought, distracted from her thought of some kind of absurd, primitive, life-changing marriage ceremony to the here and now. “You can’t let them take my house!”

“What? Why?” He glanced around.

She did, too.

It was small and old, dated in its plaster walls and high ceilings and all the accoutrements that marked it as a late 1930s construction. But—“This is my house. My home. The first place that is mine. You can’t let them burn it, or bomb it, or whatever you think they’re going to do.”

He urged her onto the front porch.

She set her heels and turned to him.

He had his phone out, talking to somebody. “Protect the Gothic house. If anything happens to it, I’ll hold you responsible. Yes. Untouched. Make it so.”

She thought about objecting to the idea that one person in Dante’s organization would now extend their dark wings overher home, but…she loved this place where her heart beat in warmth and safety, this home where she relaxed in wooly socks and listened to the storms off the Pacific, where her past was just that, the past, and cast no shadows.

He held his phone. “Walk to the sidewalk. Take a right. Step into the shadows of the trees. Stay there.” He directed her every movement.

She did. Hit the concrete and headed right. What kind of dumbass wouldn’t? He had the whole thing figured out, andshefigured he wasn’t going to marry her and kill her in the same night. If he wanted to off her, he’d have done it a long time ago.

Behind her, Nate jumped the limo’s hood—that man was scary athletic—and slid into the driver’s seat. The motor purred and the vehicle smoothed forward.

Where the shadows deepened, she stopped. Dante caught her from behind. She didn’t startle; she knew it was him. “Give me your phone,” he instructed.

She fumbled it out of her pocket and placed it in his palm.

He took the pillow out of her arms and handed it and the phone off to…someone who lurked there. A woman, dressed like her in a pink T-shirt and shorts.

So creepy.

And a man, dressed like Dante in his suit, white shirt, and loosened tie.

The female handed over a blue hoodie.

Dante whipped his jacket off Maarja’s shoulders and tossed it over her shoulders. The male shrugged out of his jean bomber jacket, gave it to Dante, and took his phone.

To the casual eye, the impersonators resembled Dante and Maarja. They stepped forward into the light cast by the streetlamp.

Nate stopped the limo, hurried around, and opened the back passenger door.

From the porch across the street, Mr. Cummings called, “Nice ride, Maarja!”

The female gave a wave of acknowledgment. Flinging the pillow into the car, she leaned in and was swallowed by luxury. The male followed, Nate closed the door, returned to the driver’s seat, and the car sped away.

“Perfect,” Dante breathed, and shoved Maarja farther off the walk into the darkness. He helped her into the hoodie, pulled on the jacket, removed his tie, and stuck it into his pocket. He rumpled his hair into a frenzied mess, pulled something from the jacket pocket—lipstick?—and with his finger smeared some around his mouth, then around hers. This was, she realized, an elaborate charade to fool…them. Him. Her. Whoever had started this.

From farther up the road, another car, a black sedan, started its motor and cruised after the limo.

---