Page 16 of Liam James
I swallowed. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Not really.” His voice was rough. “Didn’t want to miss anything.”
I didn’t ask if “anything” meant my brother finding us or me walking out the door before Liam figured out what last night meant to me—if it meant anything at all.
Because I didn’t know the answer myself.
Liam
Jenny was quiet over breakfast. Poppy chattered about the pancakes she wanted at the next diner, about how she dreamed we were driving in a monster truck through the desert, about everything except the thing she was too smart not to know:
That her father wasn’t going to stop.
I didn’t say it out loud, but the clock in my head was ticking faster now.
Forest had texted me twice while Jenny was in the shower. One message was coordinates. The other just said:
He’s ahead of us.
I didn’t tell her. Not yet.
Because Jenny deserved at least one morning where she didn’t have to look over her shoulder.
But I could feel it coming.
The storm.
And this time, he was going to hit us head-on.
Forest
The cabin was empty by the time we swept it.
No Jarod. Nothing but the photos on that wall, watching us from every angle.
Fraiser stood with his hands on his hips, scanning the mess on the table. “He knew we were coming.”
“Yep,” I said.
“And he’s already moving.”
“Yep.”
I stared at the map spread across the table, at the dots and red lines marked across highways and back roads.
One of them led straight toward the interstate.
Toward Liam.
Toward Jenny and Poppy.
“Call him,” I told Fraiser.
“On it.”
Jenny
We were twenty miles down the highway when Liam’s phone buzzed.
