CHAPTER ONE
Abigail
Sweat mingled with the dirt that had gotten kicked up on my chest and arms as I knelt so low to run that my thighs screamed in objection.
Being as small as possible was the most important thing right then. Small meant harder to see. Harder to see meant I might actually be able to get away.
A part of me was in disbelief I’d gotten as far as I had already.
I wanted to say it was all part of the plan, that I’d worked things out down to the most minute detail. But the fact of the matter was, there was a lot of dumb luck involved. Sure, I had all my plans in place. The thing was, I wasn’t supposed to act on it for another two weeks. I had the hour set and everything.
When life threw you an opportunity, though, you had to grab it with both hands.
I didn’t get a lot of those.
Opportunities.
So I couldn’t look away from this one when there was some sort of commotion in the foyer of the house followed by a rushed meeting behind closed doors in the study. A closed-door meeting that had all but the very bare minimum members of the guard abandoning their posts.
I knew better than to think there would be no one watching. There was always someone watching. Especially to keep an eye on me.
You’re a flight risk, pequeña ave.
Little bird.
That was what he called me.
A little bird with clipped wings in her gilded cage.
So he made sure all the possible exits were locked down tight, and there was someone always keeping an eye in case I tried to escape.
I’d just been lucky in that the guard who was closest to me was young and dumb, answering a call from a girl while on-duty and watching her as she, it sounded like, pleasured herself for him.
He would pay for the mistake with his life.
The part of me that was still good and moral and caring wanted to feel bad about that.
The part of me that had been kept as a prisoner in a mansion in a foreign country for actual years while these men looked on and said and did nothing, well, she wasn’t quite as magnanimous.
He could die.
They could all die for all I cared.
So long as I got away before that.
A hiss escaped me as a branch from one of the shrubs I was squat-running along sliced down the skin of my bare arm. It would match the other ones up and down my arms, legs, neck, and the side of my face.
It would have been easier to run across the lush green grounds. But the cameras were sure to see me if I dared. The longer I went without detection, the more chance of getting away I had.
No.
Not chance.
There was no option.
I had to get away.
Because if I didn’t...
Well, let’s just say that the consequences would be swift, fierce, and very painful.
Much more painful than some slices up and down my body.
I pulled to a stop at the side of the estate, taking slow, deep breaths to calm my frantic heartbeat before I craned my neck out to look into the driveway.
Sleek black cars lined the circle drive at almost all times, day and night. Because Raúl’s operation never slept. So his men rarely got a chance to either.
My original plan had involved grocery delivery day and the careful theft of the grocery store van.
But it was in the middle of the night.
There wouldn’t be any deliveries for days.
I was going to need to steal one of their cars.
There was one perk to being the unwilling kept woman of a cartel drug lord—I got a lot of time to observe things. Like how the organization worked. Like how the men behaved.
Which was how I knew that every one of those cars would have the keys or key fobs inside of them. Because no one would dare walk onto Raúl’s property and attempt to take from him. Not if they wanted to live anyway.
Rushing toward the cars would mean a much higher likelihood of someone seeing me. The cameras absolutely would. Even if no one was watching them currently, when they rewound them back, they would see me taking one of the cars.
It didn’t matter, though.
I wasn’t going to keep the car.
I just needed it to get as far as fast as I could.
Then I was going to ditch it, then take steps to get out of Mexico, and back to the United States.
Then I had to search for the only person in the world I thought could help me.
A man who probably forgot I existed, one who might not be happy with me showing up at his doorstep with all the problems chasing behind me.
But there was no other choice.
There was nowhere else to go.
Decision made, I crushed one arm to the backpack I had slung across my chest to keep it from bouncing against my body and making any sort of noise. I’d already kicked off my shoes on the back porch. If I was careful, I could get into the car without making a sound until I turned over the engine.
And with that, before I could let myself think myself out of it, I flew forward over the pea gravel that lined the flowerbeds to keep the weeds down, then across a few yards of lush lawn, the soft blades a nice break for my sore soles, then onto the warm paver driveway.
I threw myself into the car, ducking low, and locking the doors.
I hadn’t driven a car in six years.
Or was it longer?
Time was getting harder and harder to hold onto, just sand sliding through my hand as I desperately tried to hold onto it.
But I’d at least been in one of these cars before, so as soon as I saw the fob sitting in one of the cupholders, I knew all I had to do was press the break and then the push-to-start button.
And just like that, the car purred to life.
I didn’t hesitate.
I threw it into drive and drove off.
Not flooring it, not until I was out of the driveway anyway. Because, amazingly, no one came out to stop me.
Oh, they would be coming. I had no doubt about that. Raúl would never let me get away. Or get away with making a fool of him. So they would come. In force. Combing every neighborhood and city until they found me.
Which was why my first stop involved grabbing hair dye, makeup, and scissors.
But I didn’t dare stop for long enough to put them to use yet. I drove for another two hours before I abandoned the car behind a busy restaurant, then took off on foot, not knowing if the cars had trackers, and not wanting to risk them getting to me faster than I could at least drastically change my appearance.
I locked myself into a filthy gas station bathroom where I stood in front of the mirror, looking at the me I’d always known for the last time, with my wavy strawberry blonde hair, and my freckled face, and my big gray eyes, all of which made me look younger than I was.
Raúl liked the innocent look. I’d been so naive about what a red flag that was.
It was why he’d never let me dye my hair or wear makeup. And I was allowed to cut my hair, but only under his supervision, and the hairdresser was threatened with the loss of her hands if she took more off than he said she could.
On a disgusted sigh, I reached back to part my hair up the back, pulling the strands forward, quickly twisting each side into braids, then reaching for the scissors I’d picked up.
It didn’t matter if it wasn’t even.
I wasn’t going for perfect.
I was going for drastically different.
Exhaling hard, I snipped the long locks into a long bob that skirted my shoulder. Then, since there was no going back, I did the same on the other side.