The Runaways

Chapter 12

Maybe they’d slap me around a little, but I’d already made up my mind that I could take it. Cold makes you numb to a lot of things, threats included.

Liam snatched my face in his hands and dug his fingers so hard into my cheeks that his nails grated against my gums.

        “I believe I asked you a question.”

I stared at him straight-faced and shaking but kept my mouth shut.

        “It’s your life, girlie. Hold your tongue as long as you like, but eventually I’ll make you talk,” he said.

Liam ran his fingers right along the edge of my lips before putting them back into his mouth.

        “I’m curious. Does the rest of you taste salty or are there sweeter spots?”

I crashed my forehead straight into the bridge of his nose and recoiled from the shock. His blood spattered onto my skin while he stumbled backward growling under his breath. Marcus darted over to Liam while Cillian snatched me by the arm and dragged me to the center of the room.

Caleb stood by the door with my phone in his hands like he was waiting for orders. Waiting to make mistakes.

        “Caleb, follow me for a minute,” Liam said.

He disappeared with Caleb out the door. I looked to Marcus for some kind of reassurance, but there wasn’t even a sliver of the kindness I’d seen in his eyes earlier.

He left me standing in the middle of the room—waiting, shivering, freezing, falling apart a quiet piece at a time. The silence wrapped itself around my throat and sucked the air out of my spirit.

I should’ve listened to Liam. I should’ve given him answers instead of resistance. I wasn’t a superhero. I wasn’t a saint. I was a broken girl, in a broken room, full of broken people.

Broken people were the dangerous ones.

Caleb came around the corner with Liam at his heels and didn’t waste anytime approaching me. Liam dragged something into the room behind his back while Caleb blocked my line of vision and tried to redirect my attention back to him. He was so close I felt the heat radiating off of his body, but the chill in the air stole it away.

        “Lift your head up,” he whispered, his voice icier than the air.

I stared into his thinning grey-blues hoping to find the boy with the southern charm I’d crashed into at the station. But he wasn’t there—he was hollow. Chilled tears scattered down my face as he pulled a tattered blindfold over my eyes and tugged the fabric tight.

        “I’m gonna need that password, Hailey. Just be easy about this and nothing bad’ll happen to you.”

        “Watch those promises, Caleb. You’ll only upset her when you can’t keep them,” Cillian said.

Mom would’ve told me to fight, to stay stronger than I felt, and to put up and keep up my dukes. But I couldn’t even make a fist. This was helplessness—frozen hands, raw fear, and no fight.  

Caleb prodded me for the password again, and those four little numbers, the one I never should’ve said, came tumbling off my tongue.

        “Get our man on the phone, Caleb, and make sure you switch the video on so he can see everything.”

Liam sounded close, too close, enough to make the blood slow to a near stop in my veins. There wasn’t enough air to breathe around him, and there wasn’t enough room to run.