Page 16 of Wild (Chicago Underground 4)
The streetlights blinked rapid-fire as we hurtled over Chicago’s I-90. I longed to call my best friend, Allie, to hear her daughter babbling in the background, but any contact could put them at risk. Same went for the shelter. We could be followed or traced or any number of scary things, and all I had was a knockoff Prada clutch with my cell phone and two hundred dollars’ cash.
Well, besides Ella. “Are you going to tell me your real name now?”
Her fingers clutched the leather seat. “How about bite me?”
“For someone running low on friends, you’re not very nice.”
“Why should I be nice?” she demanded. “Are you still trying to turn me into a hooker?”
“Still got your pockets full of other people’s stuff?”
She tightened her lips, and then there was only the steady thump, thump, thump as the tires rubbed strips on the road. I drove in a kind of stupor, grateful for the reprieve. I didn’t want to think about the implications of being set up for murder—or how stupid I’d been to trust Luke. I didn’t want to contemplate what my lapse could have cost us, or what it still could if we didn’t get somewhere safe.
On autopilot I took us into an opulent pocket neighborhood in Schaumburg and pulled into the winding driveway. We rolled to a stop at the gate and stared up at the house—mansion, really. The building drew lines with metal and stacked irregular planes of glass. It should have been the gawky teenager of houses but was instead a revered eccentric, splitting the lush lawn and twilight sky to suit it rather than conforming to the landscape.
“I don’t want to go here.” Ella’s voice shook.
I looked at her curiously, surprised by the intensity of her response. She was shadows and wide eyes, the portrait of a cornered animal. Her lips were pursed. Her skin looked like it had always been light, a stark contrast to midnight eyes, but she seemed to pale further.
“Sorry to say, we’re running low on options,” I said. “What, you don’t like rich people?”
“I don’t like men.”
“Men aren’t for liking, Ella.”
“What are they for, then? Fucking?” Her lip curled. “For money?”
“At least I provide a service when I take their money.”
She scowled as she stared straight ahead: the silent treatment. I really was getting a crash course in parenting a teenager today. Maybe I’d pick up a few tips to share with Allie for down the road. Once I got out of this mess—if I got out of this.
I squinted at the shiny freestanding number pad as if I could solve its puzzle. The green talk light blinked mildly, but idling outside the gate seemed a poor place to beg Philip’s pardon.
On impulse I typed in my old code. It shouldn’t have worked. But it did, in a strange but convenient lapse in Philip’s security. Surely he would have cut off my access the day he’d found out I betrayed him. He was meticulous in his paranoia. Had he expected me to come back? I almost would have suspected a trap if this had happened sooner. But now, months later, there was no expectancy, only relief.
I pulled into the circular drive and stopped. The engine popped, cooling down. I toyed with the hem of my dress, come loose at some point in the evening, the silky fabric unraveling.
“You seem nervous,” Ella said.
I was nervous, so I kept my mouth shut.
“I mean, why wouldn’t you come here first—a loaded guy like this in your address book?” She swallowed audibly. “Unless he’s really bad.”
Philip was bad, in his own way, but not like she thought. No matter how angry he was at me, he wouldn’t hurt her. I was almost sure. “He’s my friend. It’s just that… Well, he might be upset with me.”
“What’d you do?”
“I sold him out.” I let out a breath. “Almost got him killed.”
“Oh.” Even sarcasm seemed to have deserted Ella under the weight of just how desperate we were. She crossed her hands over her chest in a protective gesture.
I had sold Philip out to Luke as an informant, and just earlier tonight, Luke had sold me out. Irony was the madam of life: I could resent the situation she’d forced me into, but deep down, I knew I deserved to be there.
The gate code wasn’t an oversight, I realized as the front door opened to reveal an annoyed Adrian Scott. He was Philip’s butler, on paper, though his true role also encompassed security guard, resident techie, and, I suspected, confessional. Adrian manned all the fancy monitoring equipment; he would have seen us through the cameras. We were only here because he’d allowed us to be. Adrian looked me up and down, his face impassive but his eyes turbulent.
“Philip’s not here.”
Panic crept into my lungs, drowning out his next words. Of course Philip was a busy man, but I’d been so focused on our total lack of options and how I would beg him for forgiveness that it hadn’t even occurred to me that he wouldn’t be here. Where would we go? We might as well head straight for Henri and throw ourselves at his Italian leather-clad feet. At least he’d be amused while he dumped our bodies.
