Lahat ng Kabanata ng My Husband Married Me For Revenge : Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

Audrey's POVThe phone lit up before it rang, which was how I knew who it was. Reid never called. Reid texted burner numbers that got destroyed by morning, one clipped line at a time, because a call meant something had already gone wrong and neither of us wanted to say it out loud until we absolutely had to."Tell me you're not still at the storage lot," I said, before he could get a word out."Audrey." Just my name, low and careful, the way he said it when he was trying to sound calmer than he was. "I need you to listen.""You said ten minutes. It's been eighteen.""There's a car in the lot. It's not moving. Neither are we."I was already on my feet, already reaching for the jacket I'd hung over the back of the safehouse chair like I'd known, somewhere, that I wasn't going to get to sit in it long. The apartment around me still had the shape of a place I hadn't finished trusting yet, boxes half unpacked in the corner, a single lamp lit because Margaret said too much light in the wind

Audrey's POVThe photo was still pressed to the glass when I hit the crown of the bridge doing sixty in a thirty-five zone, both hands locked on the wheel, my phone wedged against my shoulder so I wouldn't lose Reid's voice."Talk to me," he said again. "Where are you now.""Middle of the bridge. They're still beside me." My eyes flicked left, once, just long enough to confirm what I already knew. The passenger window was down. A man's arm, steady, holding the photograph flat against the wind like it cost him nothing. "Reid, he's not even looking at the road. He's watching me look at it.""Don't give him that. Eyes forward."I forced my eyes forward. My hands weren't shaking. That was the part that scared me, that I'd gotten good enough at this not to shake anymore.The car surged, closed the last foot of space between us, close enough that if I'd reached out I could have touched the door panel. Then it eased back off, unhurried, like it had made a point and was satisfied."They're fa

Reid's POVAudrey reached for the phone before I could stop her, and some old instinct in me wanted to take it out of her hands the way I'd have wanted to take a lit match out of a child's. I didn't. She'd earned the right to read her own threats by now, and taking that from her would have been its own kind of lie.She turned the screen so I could see it too.You already know where to look. Don't make us wait until morning.No number. No name. The same dead-end string of digits the black phone had been cycling through for weeks."They're not asking us to come," Audrey said. Her voice had gone flat, the particular flatness she used when she was working hard not to feel something. "They're telling us there's a clock on it.""There's always a clock on it." I took the phone from her, not to keep her from it, just to hold something steady in my hands while my head caught up. "That's the game. Manufacture urgency, make you move before you've thought it through, make you walk into whatever's

Audrey's POVThe sedan didn't move. It just sat there at the far edge of the lot with its headlights up, aimed at the diner window like it had been waiting all night for us to finally look back, and for a long moment none of us did. We stared at the table instead, at the cold coffee and the legal pad and the phone lying face up between us, because looking at the car felt like agreeing to whatever it wanted from us, and none of us were ready to agree to anything yet."Get back from the glass," Reid said, low, and his hand found my shoulder and steered me half a foot to the left without making it look like steering, the kind of small careful movement he'd gotten good at over the last few weeks, protecting me in ways that didn't ask my permission first and somehow didn't bother me either.Daniels was already reaching for his jacket. I hadn't noticed the shape under it before, but I saw it now, the outline of a holster riding close against his ribs, and something in the easy, unhurried wa

Audrey's POVElena answered the door before we'd even reached the top step, like she'd been watching from the window since we texted her from the car, which she probably had. She didn't look surprised to see us together, and she didn't look surprised by the tightness in Reid's jaw either, the particular stillness he wore when he was holding something in until he had a room he trusted enough to let it out in. She just stood there in the doorway for a moment, taking us both in the way a person takes in weather they've been expecting for a long time, dreading and waiting for it in equal measure, and then she stepped back to let us pass."You found the box," she said. Not a question."You knew we would," I said."I hoped you wouldn't need to." Her voice was quiet, careful, worn thin around the edges in a way I'd never heard from her before, not even at the funeral. Something in the resigned way she moved told me she'd rehearsed this exact moment more than once over the last eleven months,