Page 113 of Stolen By the Billionaire
“What is there to question? They said he left, and he was gone. It checked out.”
“Why he left. You never questioned why he left.”
“I was seven.”
“You’re not seven anymore,” Blaze said, rotating the steering wheel under his palms to follow the curving highway. The sunset glared in the rearview mirror as it traversed the car’s rear window. “You should hear his side of the story about why your parents threw him out of the house in the middle of the night when he was a thirteen-year-old kid in eighth grade because it’s probably very different than what they told you.”
“They didn’t throw him out. He left.”
“That’s not what he told me.”
“I don’t think—” she said and then trailed off. “My parents always said—” Again, her voice trickled away. She started again, “He left and he never—”
That time, her voice trailed off in a whimper.
After a while, on a straight section of highway, Blaze took his eyes off the road and glanced at her.
Sarah’s gaze was fixed on the car’s black, curvaceous dashboard, her eyes so wide that the corners must be stretching.
She looked just like a cat having an existential crisis at the thought that maybe the red dot wasn’t real.
“You okay?” he asked.
“What? Sure! Of course I’m okay. I’m fine.”
And yet, he didn’t think she’d blinked.
Questioning everything about your life and history could do that to a person. Coming out the other side with a different perspective would take a massive effort. Many veterans Blaze spoke with on the crisis line never managed to jump the gap. “You sure?”
“—I don’t know anything about Logan. He’s my only surviving family, besides my aunt.”
“Right, the one who’s definitely a history professor and not the head of the Russian mafia in New York.”
Maybe his tone was a little dry.
Sarah nodded. “Yeah, that one.”
She hadn’t picked up on his sarcasm. That was probably for the best. “You look like that time I was in a forward base in Afghanistan taking heavy bombardment, and the guy next to me said to fuck the politicians that flew us pawns halfway around the world to kill innocent people in their own land because the politicos in our government and Russia were having a dick-measuring contest.”
Sarah startled out of her reverie. “What?”
“Yeah, right? I didn’t even hear the next three missiles that hit the base. Rico dealt with fear by philosophizing. Another one of his zingers was that God must be offended by mega-churches that fake Christians build, when, if they read the Bible, they should be building mega-homeless shelters.”
“I—wow.”
“Rico was quite a guy.” His ink was on Blaze’s side, on his ribs. “But that’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you keep trying to run. That’s why you keep diverting yourself and me by threatening me with kidnapping charges. You don’t want to see Logan.”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
Blaze settled back to drive and listen. “How so?”
“If my parents were wrong, if they threw Logan out, if he wasn’t a traitor, then what am I?”
She might just make the leap.
Blaze nodded. “Mmm-hmmm.”
“Did I do the wrong thing by staying?”
