Slow Burn(59)

    I wasn’t sure I understood how this was connected, but I let him finish.

    “You have to have friends, doll, and you have to lose them,” he said. “Because, if you don’t, you forget why life is precious, and why it’s important for people to be protected. Caring about people makes them matter. If you don’t care about anyone, then nothing matters.”





Chapter Eleven

    The thing about Boston is that it was cold. Even in April. I mean, it wasn’t Canada cold or Alaska cold or the North Pole cold. But compared to West Virginia, in which April meant seventy-degree weather, descending to the mid-fifties was a bit of a shock.

    I was prepared for it. I’d gone to school in Boston for two years before my car accident with Eric. I used to joke that forty degrees was balmy. But I wasn’t used to it anymore. The mid-Atlantic had spoiled me. I was shivering in the north.

    When Griffin told me we were going to Boston, I asked him if that wasn’t actually a really, really bad idea. After all, I was familiar with Boston. Wasn’t it stupid to hide someplace where you actually had ties to people? Weren’t you supposed to run someplace out of the way and foreign?

    He said that was why Boston was perfect. Because it was so obvious, they’d never look here. It was also right under their noses, since Op Wraith was located outside of Boston. Furthermore, Griffin had a friend here, someone who could hide us, and who’d been hiding in plain sight from Op Wraith successfully for some time.

    I figured Griffin knew what he was doing.

    He didn’t want anyone to be able to trace us by the stolen car, so we switched a few times, taking different cars from various shopping centers off the interstate. Finally, we ditched cars altogether and picked up a bus outside of New York City that took us straight to Boston. Once there, we could take the T, the Boston subway, to Griffin’s friend’s apartment.

    I wasn’t sure what to expect of this friend. Griffin didn’t tell me much about him, and I didn’t bother to ask. I knew that this guy was also someone who’d run from Op Wraith and that he was hiding out in Boston. I didn’t know anything else. I guess I simply wasn’t curious. I was too exhausted to care, and I was still a wreck over what had happened to Stacey and Jack.

    Whether I blamed myself for it or not, it still hurt. I’d lost my father and my best friend within months of each other. I’d been chased, had my life threatened, and been forced out of my home. I guess that thinking about Griffin’s friend wasn’t high on my priority list.

    If there was a place where we could stop traveling and lay low for a while, I was all about it.

    I should have asked some more questions.

    Because when we arrived at the apartment, five floors up in South Boston, the person who greeted us at the door was not a guy.

    She was a woman. A very pretty woman. She had blonde hair, like mine, only hers hung in perfect, floating waves that reached halfway down her back. She had sparkling blue eyes, and when she saw Griffin, she started glowing, like some kind of perfect angelic being. I swear, the woman was basically the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

    “Griffin!” She threw her arms around him. “You could give a girl a heads-up that you were in the neighborhood.”

    Griffin wrapped his burly arms tightly around her, grinning wider than I’d ever seen him grin. He planted a kiss on top of her head. “It’s so good to see you, Beth.”

    Beth. Wait a second, I had heard that name. That Matt guy had said something about a woman named Beth when he and Griffin had been fighting with knives in the gas station parking lot at the intersection of 29 and 92. What had Griffin said about her?

    Leave her out of this.

    I swallowed. But Griffin had said they were friends, hadn’t he? Just friends?

    I looked at the way they were clinging to each other.

    I bit my lip.

    Griffin pulled back. “Sorry I couldn’t call ahead, doll. We were in a bad spot. Didn’t know where else to go.”

    Doll? Had he just called her doll? But... that was what he called me. I’d told Stacey that it was his slang word for women, but I had thought... I bit down harder on my lip.

    “We?” said Beth, peering around Griffin to see me. Her smile immediately faded as she looked me over. “You brought someone.” She folded her arms over her chest. Her voice had gotten very bright and cheery. I could tell it was false, though. She wasn’t happy I was here.