Page 75 of Escape Girl

“Cole, let’s take a break,” Hill tried again, and I had to give him credit. He at least had enough sense to know when a temporary withdrawal was called for.

Taggert did not. “What’s it going to cost me for this to go away?”

Good thing I’d done extensive research on the current value of SideDoor and Taggert’s net worth.

This is going to hurt.I smiled at him. Sweetly.

*

Bella and Ileft the building an hour later and walked in silence for several city blocks before she burst into tears and pulled me into a huge bear hug. “Oh my God. Oh my God,” she whispered.

I squeezed her back, as hard as I could. She was mostly excited that TowerWizard was back in her possession and its future in her control. But the millions of dollars in damages coming straight into her bank account was nothing to sneeze at either.

In my opinion, Taggert had gotten off pretty easy. But I would watch him, and if he stepped out of line again, I’d circle back.

For now, though, I had a lot of other important things to do. I was going to take Bella out for a celebratory lunch where we’d call Max and Tess to describe every last expression on Taggert’s miserable face. Next, we’d call the four other clients to let them know about the settlement dollars coming their way. Then, I was going to an appointment with Dr. Rivera before meeting a Realtor to look at some loft office space.

And tonight?

I was picking Bobby up from work and we were going home.

Epilogue

Nine Months Later

Everything—and I meaneverything—was bright pink.

Thousands of women and men wearing everything from pink sneakers to fedoras gathered near Soldier Field waiting for this year’s Chicago leg of the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for Breast Cancer to begin.

“Nervous?” Jo asked me, stretching her hamstrings. Jamie put his hands on her shoulders to steady her while she stretched, his wedding band glinting in the sun. In matching yoga pants, Sloan and Heather bickered while braiding pink extensions into each other’s hair.

“Nope!” Sixty miles in three days was a lot, but we’d been training for months. I felt ready. “As long as I don’t get blisters, I’ll be fine.”

Bobby bounded up wearing a pink feather boa and puffy tutu. “If you get blisters, I’ll fix them.” He patted the pink fanny pack around his waist. “I have everything in here. Everything! Call my cell at any point. I’ll be at every major mile marker, cheering you on.”

“You guys are going to have the best cheering squad of everyone here,” Tess called, fiddling with a playlist that she planned to blast along the route from the windows of Bobby’s car. She was wearing knee-high pink boots and shorts that said “For Tits & Giggles” on the butt. Max was gathering water bottles and making sure everyone had the right size of our team’s T-shirt.

The shirt was pink, naturally, with “Team Tru” displayed in silver sparkly letters.

“Don’t forget that we need to be at the event breakfast early tomorrow,” Andie called, jabbing into her phone. “We need to accept the first-year fundraising award.” Of course Jo had seen to it that we’d raised the most money of any new team doing the walk.

I pulled Bobby aside. “Are you sure you don’t want to walk with me anymore?” I whined. Bobby had been my training partner, and we’d covered the entire city of Chicago, laughing and kissing, during our walks over the summer. The best summer of my life.

But early this morning, much to my annoyed shock, he’d dropped a bomb on me. “I think I’ll switch to the cheering section instead of being a walker.”

Now, he put his arm around me and cuddled me to his side. “I’m sure.”

“But why? Are you OK?” It was so uncharacteristic of Bobby to cancel on anything, let alone something so important to me, that I was positive he was quietly hiding some sort of injury.

“I’m fine, Em.” He looked up at something over my head and smiled. “I just think, for this one event, that you should walk next to someone else.”

What in the world was he talking about? I whirled around and my jaw dropped to the ground.

My father, the famous Sven Saturn, stood there in a full-body pink Adidas warm-up suit, adorned with the Team Tru logo. “Surprise,” he said.

“Dad!” I exclaimed. “Oh my God.”

He and I had been working on stuff. That’s how I’d categorize the last several months of our relationship. I’d finally told him about everything that had gone on after the wedding. But our conversations hadn’t exactly been easy. I’d inherited my stuntedgrief processing honestly, and though we tried, we still stumbled over emotional topics.

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