Page 11 of Pay the Price

We were standing on a large concrete platform, a series of walkways running every which way, the bright lights — like the ones that illuminated a football stadium at night — shining down on us from above.

Up a steep hill, the woods towered around the complex.

Then the timing mechanism of the dam kicked in, shutting off the flow of water downstream.

Quiet. A quiet so loud after the deafening rush of water that I felt like all the noise in the universe had been sucked out of it.

Footsteps sounded from the shadows beyond the lights. Otis raised his gun.

“It’s us,” Wolf said, stepping into the light with Jace. They walked slowly toward us, like I was a wild animal on the verge of fleeing, which wasn’t too far from the truth. “Rafe says the place is clear.”

A few weeks ago I’d felt like they were my harbor in the storm.

Now I knew they were the storm.

They hadn’t held me prisoner, but they were every bit as dangerous as the men who had, and I knew from the way they looked at me that they’d found my phone.

They knew I knew about Blake.

I crossed my arms over my chest, waiting for Jace to say something snide, waiting for Wolf to make excuses for what they’d done.

But they just stared down at me, a river of knowledge moving between us in the moments before Jace finally spoke.

“You’re alive. Good. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Chapter 8

Daisy

Istood under the hot spray of the shower until it turned cold, making a mental note to install the biggest hot water heater I could find when I tackled the house’s mechanical upgrades.

The thought stopped me cold. How could I work on the house with the Beasts now that I knew they’d killed Blake?

The answer was simple: I couldn’t.

I grabbed a towel and sighed as I pressed my face to the fluffy cotton. I would never take simple pleasures for granted again.

I dried off and used the blow-dryer on my hair, something I rarely did, because after ten days (turned out, that was how long I’d been missing), I just wanted to be warm and dry.

The hum of it together with the sound was a kind of white noise that allowed me to push the events of the past few hours to the back of my mind. There was a lot to unpack — about my kidnapping and my dad, about my betrayal of Blake by the three men who’d killed my brother — and I was more than happy to set it aside.

I didn’t know much about the rescue itself, only that the Beasts had gotten a tip, and the Kings — along with some guynamed Rafe and a couple of his men — had agreed to help get me out.

Right now, it was all I had the bandwidth to know.

I finished my hair and walked to my room, then pulled on my favorite lavender tracksuit and a thick pair of socks.

I felt almost human, and I sat on the edge of my bed and considered my options.

First, what I wanted to do. That was easy, I wanted to lay down in my bed, pull the covers up to my chin, and sleep for a year.

Then, what I had to do: leave.

Because if I slept in my bed, if I acted like it was okay for me to be in the same house with Blake’s killers, it would be too easy to stay. And there was no way I could do that.

I was past the point of delusion. It had been okay when I didn’t have proof, when I’d been trying to figure out if the Beasts had really killed Blake.

But now I knew. Staying wasn’t an option for any reasonable person, and I was still reasonable enough to count myself as one.

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