Page 64 of Now Until Forever
Eliana patted her pockets, looking for her phone. “Let’s go down to the street. We can see what’s around here, and where to talk.”
Carlos would want to know that she’d met this woman so he could find out at the same time she did whether Sarah had seen his sister.
“Huh.” She kept patting, going over all her pockets again. Then she checked her purse, unzipping it on the strap across her body and searching inside. But the purse itself was small enough that if it was here, she’d have seen it as soon as she unzipped the thing. “I don’t have my phone.”
Eliana turned back to the train, but the doors had closed, and it was already pulling away.
When had she lost…
The guy who’d brushed her in the train station. He had to have picked her pocket and taken her phone. “Someone stole my phone. Or I dropped it somewhere.” She looked around but didn’t see it on the ground.
“Well…” Sarah said, sounding nervous. “Do you need it?”
“Not right now, I suppose. We should find somewhere I can call my friend, though.” She stuck her hands in her pockets. “You look like you could use a hot chocolate. What do you say?”
Sarah bit her lip. “If you think it’s a good idea…”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Two streets over, Sarah looked around. Perking up for the first time since they’d met. “I know this area. My friend’s apartment is close to here. She’ll have a phone you can use.”
“Okay.” Eliana didn’t want to sound like she doubted this young woman’s honesty, but she’d rather have found a coffee shop or some other public place. After all, she didn’t know who this “friend” of Sarah’s was.
But it would be the fastest way to get to a phone and call Carlos. Thankfully, in the heyday of her massive teenage crush on him, she’d memorized his number and knew he kept the same one. The fascination was going to come in handy now.
Who knew.
She smiled at Sarah. “I have a million questions about the Reverence Sisters, if you don’t mind me asking you everything you know about them after I make my call.”
Sarah glanced aside at her. “Is that because you’re some kind of journalist?”
Eliana shook her head. “No, and I’m not a cop either, but my friend is. He’s one of the good ones. Luci is his sister.”
Sarah didn’t let on how she felt about that. Maybe cops made her nervous, or there was another reason she wasn’t feeling reassured.
A group of three men walked toward them on the street, two of them wearing those smart glasses. After what had happened with Elysium and the app being used as a weapon in her own building, she didn’t trust it. Tech was a lot like the drug itself in that way. Addicting. By the time you realized you were in trouble, it was too late—the manipulation had already happened.
“Hey, ladies,” one of them called out. The guy on the left. The one in the middle was the one with no glasses. “Do you Dabble?”
Eliana ushered Sarah toward the front of the building, away from the street. She could shield the other woman if necessary, using her height as an advantage. “We’re not interested.”
One of the guys reached for Eliana’s arm.
She pulled back and twisted out of reach. “Leave us alone.”
“Whatever, mama.”
His buddy said, “Freak.”
They kept walking, and Eliana didn’t exhale until they were out of reach. When she and Sarah set off again, she said, “That was a close one.”
“There are a lot of guys like that in this neighborhood.”
“Is your friend one of the Sisters? Did you get out together?”
Sarah nodded. “We ran one night. We just ran, and ran, and eventually we believed it worked. That we really had escaped.”
“I talked to another woman who escaped the Reverence Sisters a few days ago. Her story was very similar.” Eliana figured Faith could be Sarah’s friend, and the house they were going to, but Faith hadn’t mentioned anything about living with someone. It could have simply been to protect Sarah, though. That would make sense. “How far is it to your friend’s place?”
