Page 11 of Run Away With Me

Other side of my bra.

Cash.

$250.

No.

And the ATM did nothing for a few long seconds, longer than it had taken the other four times. So a thousand dollars in cash was the limit for the card?

That wasn’t enough … That wasn’t going to get us all the way to Florida. I smacked my hand on the screen and waited, fingers still twitching, until it displayed a new message telling me to contact my card provider.

The machine hummed for a second, then went back to the holding screen. It had swallowed the card.

Shit.

I rubbed my hands together, trying to get blood flowing into them again, and turned to head to the Mustang.

I hadn’t noticed the man coming up behind me.

I hadn’t noticed anything that was going on when I’d been withdrawing the cash, too focused on what I was doing, and it took me until that moment to realize how epically stupid that had been.

He was probably in his mid-twenties, with a scruffy beard and dirty hair that hung around his ears. He was wearing a hoodie and jeans, like me. Nondescript. Blending in. And he was leaning against the wall a few feet to my right, out of sight of the security cameras.

Clever.

Unlike me.

‘Yeah, I’m gonna need you to give me the cash,’ he drawled.

The laugh burst out of me. Not humor, but incredulity, maybe. AnI can’t believe thisemotion making itself known. I’d finally gotten out of Seattle and now this asshole wanted all my money?

Seriously?

I should have been scared – I should have been fuckingterrified– but instead my blood boiled with an unfamiliar fury.

His eyebrows drew together. ‘I’m not fucking joking.’

‘I didn’t think you were,’ I said slowly. I was already full of adrenaline, and I’d normally give him the money and deal with the consequences later, but we needed this money. My sickly nerves were overlaid with a new energy, anangryenergy. I was stalling for time, trying to figure out how to get away, and he knew it.

‘Look, just give me the money, sweetheart.’

It was thesweetheartthat changed everything.

I wasn’t hissweetheart. I wasn’t anyone’s goddamn sweetheart. And I was sick of gross men calling me that.

‘I could scream,’ I said, forcing nonchalance I didn’t feel into my voice. Still, I was sure it shook a little.

His expression morphed from shock to amusement way too quickly. ‘I bet I can stab you faster than you can scream. You really want a knife in the gut instead of a couple hundred bucks?’

So he had a knife, and he didn’t know how much money was currently hidden on me, which meant he couldn’t have been watching me for long. I glanced over my shoulder, and when I looked back, he was even closer. I could smell the sharp, sour stench of his clothes, the sweat that was baked into the fabric.

‘I can also run faster than you, sweetheart. Give me the fucking money.’

Years ago, during a self-defense class that had been scheduled during our usual gym period, me and a group of other eighth-graders had been told, if we ever got mugged, to throw our wallet or phone as far as we could and run in the other direction. Most of the time that was what the muggers wanted – something of value – and they didn’t care much about the person they stole it from. A bundle of cash was harder to throw a distance than a wallet or phone, though. But if I threw a handful of bills up in the air, he’d have to scrabble to pick them all up, and I could run …

He pulled a flip knife out of the waistband of his jeans.

‘Okay!’ I said quickly, really, really not prepared to find out what it felt like to get stabbed. I could handle pain, but that was …oh God, a pain I really didn’t want to experience. ‘Okay. Just let me –’

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