With a nod, Apollo juts his chin at me, gesturing for me to drive. I slide behind the wheel and gun it. We bolt out into the predawn. My heart pounds, waiting for sirens or gunfire—there’s neither.
Once more, I drive at random, watching the mirrors obsessively for possible tails.
“I expected them to find us,” Apollo says, “but that was quick.”
“I called my mom from the burner while you were sleeping,” I tell him, “but we were on the phone less than two minutes and Mom’s end is encrypted, so I don’t see how it could have been that.”
He shrugs. “I don’t see that being how they found us either,” he answers, “But you never know. I was under the impression that in order to get a location from a phone call, you had to be tracking the specific device, and I also do not think you can reverse triangulate, like determine the location of who is on the other end. But I don’t know these things for certain.” His eyes flick to me, and he smiles. “I am glad we got the amount of time together that we did, at least.”
I reach out and touch his knee. “I’m glad too. For…quite a few reasons.” I smirk at him.
A pause, his eyes fixed on me. “I am going to buy you a ring the moment I have access to my funds.”
I shake my head. “Really, I’m not worried about that.” I fumble for him, and his hand tangles in mine. “Apollo, listen to me. I love you—I love you more than I can even make sense of. You proposing to me like you did, naked together, having just made each other feel incredible? It was perfect.”
“I just…I had to make you mine. I had to show you, somehow, that I am utterly yours, forever. Making you my wife is…” he sighs, trailing off, shaking his head. “Something I should have done already. I am a fool for allowing my fear of my past to keep me from making the utmost of my present.”
“I wouldn’t change a thing, Apollo. Nothing about us is traditional. I’m not a normal girl, you’re not a normal guy, and our relationship sure as hell is anything but normal.” I let go to downshift and make a left turn, then bring the gear back up to second and then third, and then take his hand back. “If you buy me a ring, I’ll wear it. I don’t care if it’s a billion carats or cubic zirconium, Apollo, I really don’t. I’d get matching tattoos with you on our ring fingers, if you wanted. I just want to be your wife. I want to be able to love you forever. I want to watch all the women in a crowd drool and swoon over you and know that you’remine. Rings, weddings, none of that matters. Just you, me, my family, and the vows.”
He just stares at me, swallowing hard. “This is the third time you’ve saved me, you know.”
I blink at the unexpected shift in topic. “Third? I’m not following your math at all, babe.”
He rubs my knuckle with a thumb. “After I kidnapped you, you knew your parents had a plan to have me shot, and you stopped it, literally putting yourself between me and Anselm’s rifle. That’s one. Then you walked away from me and forced me to choose between you and who I was—or perhaps who I was pretending to be. That was the second time, saving me from myself. Now, you have infiltrated a sex-trafficking ring and risked being molested, if not raped and sold. You were forced to strip naked and be photographed. You killed several men in the process of rescuing me, literally and physically.” He swallows hard again. “That’s the third. I might argue there’s a fourth way you’ve saved me—by agreeing to marry me, after all that.”
I shake my head. “I’m not counting, Apollo. And I was willing to wait for you to be ready to marry me for the rest of our lives, if that’s what it took. I told you that day I walked away from you that if you became a manyoucould be proud of, that I would love you. You did, and I do. And I don’t commit halfway, my love. I’m all in, forever, no matter what.”
He inhales deeply, holds it, sighs shakily. “We’ve already tested till death and for worse. So I think now we get to enjoy as long as we both shall live, and for better.”
I laugh. “I think you’re right.”
His eyes flick to the passenger side-view mirror. “Make a right. Slowly.”
I follow his gaze—a nondescript sedan, an aging Mercedes, is a car length or so behind us. “They haven’t been on us for long.”
“No,” he agrees, watching behind us as I make the turn. “Keep going like normal.” Another pause, and he hisses curses in Greek under his breath. “They passed several other cars to get behind us. Not very smart if you want to tail us. But if you’re trying to catch up and shoot us? A different story.”
“They made the turn after us?”
He pulls his handgun from the small of his back. “Yes, they did.”
“I’m getting sick of this. How do they keep finding us? And more importantly, how can we end this bullshit once and for all?”
“We have to get Spaulding for that.”
“So let’s find Spaulding.”
He snorts. “We have zero resources except for some cash and some guns.”
I groan in frustration. “This is just getting us nowhere. He’s going to keep sending these half-ass goons after us and we’re going to keep killing them. I need to get ahold of Dad or Uncle Harry. Mom said they’re coming for us, but…how will they find us? How do we find them? And more to the point, how do we find Spaulding so we can put a bullet in his fucking skull?” I jerk the shifter angrily as I pull a left and gun the engine, deciding to try and shake them rather than play cat and mouse. “At this point, I’m pissed off enough that I’d kill him with my bare hands.”
Apollo watches in the mirror. “Agreed. I have to believe that your people will find us sooner than later.”
“Can we afford to wait for that?”
He eyes me. “You have another idea?”
I shrug. “Yes. Maybe not a good one, but something.”
