“Why’d he want you out?” Gabe asked and my gaze skidded to him.
Damn, out of all of Owen’s friends Gabe worried me the most. He was the quietest which meant he listened more than he spoke. It seemed he paid attention to everything, he caught even the smallest nuances.
“What?”
Gabe merely shook his head, catching on to my stall. I needed to get better at this lying stuff.
“You’re a bad liar and you know it.”
Boy, did I know it. But I was still delaying so I lied some more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gabe gave me a small, disappointed smile.
“You’re such a bad liar you can’t even successfully lie about lying. Just to move things along, I’ll tell you how I know. When you’re getting ready to lie you pause and think about your lie instead of it rolling off your tongue. You also pinch your thumb and forefinger together.” I immediately ceased pressing my fingers together and he continued. “I don’t know how you survived in that den of vipers not knowing how to lie—all I know is you’re shit at it. My guess is, just like you’ve done with us in an effort not to get caught in a lie, you stayed silent. So, I’ll ask again, why’d he want you out?”
This time my silence wasn’t because I was thinking of a lie; it was because I didn’t want to tell the truth.
“Sarah?” Owen rumbled and I lost it again.
“Stop calling me that,” I snapped, and Owen’s hand convulsed around mine. Then I straightened my shoulders and decided the truth was my best play. I needed them to let me go. “My uncle hates me. I’m the reminder that he lost the woman he loved to his brother.”
“The old love triangle,” Zane rejoined.
God, did he ever take anything seriously?
“So, your uncle Wilco was involved with your mother?” Kevin inquired.
“Yes. They were together until my father, being the eldest, declared she was to be his. My uncle begrudgingly stepped aside.”
“If that’s the case why would Wilco want you back?”
My gaze went to Myles and I shrugged. “I don’t know why he does anything he does.”
Only, I had my suspicions and I was keeping them to myself. Voicing them would put everyone around me in further danger.
“She knows,” Zane contradicted. “I’ll call Rhode and make the arrangements. You’re going to Sandpoint. I suggest you pack your cold-weather gear.”
“I can’t—”
“Listen up, Sarah,” Zane cut me off. “This is my one and only bit of advice—okay, that’s not true, I’ll likely have to give you more, but this is the one time I’m gonna give it to you gentle. Pull your head out of your ass before you martyr yourself and end up dead. Wilco Pollaski is on borrowed time.”
That was gentle?
Zane paused and when he spoke again his tone was dark and ominous. “No one threatens my wife. No man threatens to take out my men and their families without retribution. I give less than two fucks about my business or my reputation. Wilco Pollaski isn’t the first to try to bring Z Corps down and he won’t be the last. But what he will be is dead—he bought that sentence the moment my wife’s name crossed his mind. I’m not one of his dirty politicians he keeps in his back pocket. I’m not a cop on the take. I don’t fuck the pussy he rents. He doesn’t have a damn thing on me because I’d never leave my family vulnerable. He’s a man who is currently breathing his last breaths on this earth, and while he’s doing that, you’re going with Owen and the team to Sandpoint, Idaho. While you’re there, if you feel like helping us out and wanna fill in the blanks I’d be obliged. You wanna sit back while I engage my men and remain silent, that’s on you. Bitch, moan, complain, I don’t give a shit. Thankfully I won’t have to hear it because your ass will be in Idaho and I’ll be here saving your ass from a lifetime of misery.”
“Why?” The stupid question was out of my mouth before I could think better of it.
No one except for Owen had ever tried to save me from anything. Well, maybe that wasn’t completely true; Owen’s team had helped him, and I suppose Zane being Owen’s boss had as well. But I didn’t understand.
“I guess with you growing up with Barny and Wilco you can’t begin to fathom there are decent people who don’t sit idle when innocent lives are being destroyed. The men standing there with you are four of them.”
“And you,” I murmured.
“There’s not a damn thing decent about me,” Zane returned. “Pack. I’ll call you back in twenty with instructions.”
Myles pocketed his phone and speared me with a cold stare.
“Why’d he want you out?”
“He didn’t. He wanted me dead. Amie gave him a better option so he took it,” I admitted.
“So you knew all along Amie was behind everything?” Myles pressed.
I tried to fend off the memories of that day, but like always they came crashing in. Owen had unknowingly held me through nightmares that were not figments of my imagination but of a day that I couldn’t stop living.
The day I realized I didn’t have a single friend in the world and the girl who I’d thought was the only bright spot in my childhood was not real and true. Instead, she’d be my final downfall.
“I didn’t see her, but after a minute of Amie talking to my uncle I recognized her voice. I was so stunned she was there in his house I was oblivious they were talking about me. And when I figured it out, it was too late. The deal had been struck. An hour later I was in a van, then I was put on a plane. Then you found me in Alaska.”
That was the CliffsNotes version. The facts. I left out the emotional devastation I’d felt that day learning that my childhood playmate hated me with such a passion she’d offered my uncle a deal he couldn’t refuse. It wasn’t surprising Wilco would sell me. Horrifying, yes—that was my life—but not surprising. I found it unbelievably disturbing that there was actually such a thing as human trafficking, but I didn’t find it shocking that the suckage that was my life, the filth I’d been born into, would end with me being bought and sold like the commodity I’d always been.
My only worth was as a bargaining chip to make my mother behave and that only worked so far. She dished out her own brand of hate. Once she was gone, I was useless.
Utterly.
Until I was old enough to perform.
“That day Maloof had you, you said her parents worked for your dad. We didn’t find record of that,” Kevin informed me.
His tone sounded accusatory and I didn’t blame him. But the day Amie ‘had me’—which was Kevin’s nice way of saying had me tied to a chair while she beat the hell out of me—I should’ve stayed quiet and let Amie believe what she needed to believe about her parents. Who was I to shatter the illusion of their innocence?
“I don’t know what to say about that. They laundered money for my dad. And Amie’s dad sold my father’s drugs. She wanted to believe her parents were innocent because she loved them. She needed to believe what happened to her mother was solely my father’s fault, and it was, but it was her father who put her mother in harm’s way. It was Amie’s dad that skimmed money. It was Amie’s dad that started using drugs. Then it was her mother that paid the price. Then her dad and brother went down, too.”