Look Away Read online

  “They won’t talk,” Zoe said. “They know you know where to find them if they do. And if you hurt them, I won’t talk either.”

  Spencer considered that, his stare settling on Zoe’s scar. “You’ll talk.”

  “Maybe. But not before the twenty-four hours is up. Let them live and take me to your so-called King. Then I’ll give you everything.”

  Which got Zoe what she wanted, but still left Alfie and Gladys at risk—with nothing to prevent Kagan’s men from returning to silence them permanently. Morgan decided she did not like Zoe’s plan. Not at all. There were so many better ways to do this and still get the justice Zoe was so set upon.

  But it was too late now. Spencer and his men marched Zoe to the door. “We’ll be watching you,” he warned Gladys. “Not a word. To anyone.”

  And then they were gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Morgan waited until she was certain the men had left before leaving her hiding place.

  “Is he going to be all right?” she asked Gladys.

  “I’m just fine, thank you very much,” Alfie answered for himself. “Still kicking. Now you get after them. Don’t let them hurt that girl—I couldn’t bear losing both her and Gavin.”

  Morgan leaned down and surprised herself by planting a kiss on top of the old man’s head. Because Micah was so much taller than she was, he often kissed her like this. She liked it; it made her feel somehow…special. But she’d never before now realized how powerful it was to offer such a tender gesture to another. Was this Hildy’s mask creating emotions that were just part of her act? She didn’t think so. Somehow it felt more profound, genuine.

  Except Morgan didn’t do emotion. Especially not sensitive displays of affection to a man she’d only just met. What the hell was wrong with her?

  “You were very brave.” She turned to Gladys. “Both of you.”

  “Get going now,” Alfie insisted. “You’re going to lose them.”

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” Gladys asked.

  “No. Trust me. I’ll take care of things, and keep you all out of it.” She snuck a look out the front window. The men were loading Zoe into one of two identical white Escalades. They’d be easy enough to track, especially in the flatlands of the Low Country—so different from the mountains, tunnels, rivers, bridges, and narrow winding streets of Pittsburgh.

  She weighed the hard drive in her hand. She could just take it and leave, and let Zoe find her own fate. It was what Zoe wanted—and expected.

  Instead, she grabbed a sticky note, jotted down Nick’s address, and stuck it on the hard drive. He’d give it to Lucy, who had access to the FBI’s resources.

  “Do you have somewhere safe to go?” she asked Gladys.

  She nodded, already packing Alfie’s meds into her purse. “My cousin in Savannah.”

  Morgan handed her the drive. “Could you mail this before you go? It’s very important—there are lives at stake.”

  Gladys hesitated, glancing at Alfie. “Is Allen involved? It would break his heart—”

  “No. At least not as far as I know.” She considered. “Honestly, I’m not sure.”

  “I’ll just tell him I had a family emergency,” Gladys said. “How long? Mr. Alfie doesn’t do well with change.”

  “Just the night.” It would all be over one way or the other by morning, Morgan was certain. By then either Zoe would break or she and Morgan would break Camelot.

  She moved to the garage door, planning to cut through the back yard, then looked over her shoulder. “Thank you.”

  “You take care now,” Alfie called. He looked so very small in his recliner, blood drying on his face. “Come back and visit again.”

  As she made her way to her car, she wondered how much he’d remember. Maybe it was better if he forgot.

  By the time she reached the Ford, the two Escalades were no longer in sight, but there was only route out of the neighborhood, so she easily caught up to them. They were headed to Route 278 and turned east toward Hilton Head. It was late afternoon but traffic was steady, giving her plenty of room to maintain a good following distance without being noticed.

  While she drove, she called Nick. His answering machine picked up like it always did when he was with a patient, so she left a message telling him to expect a package and to take it to Lucy. “It should have everything she needs to break up a human trafficking ring. And tell her to look into the death of Gavin Schultz. He was killed last night in Okatie, South Carolina by someone at All American.”

  She almost told him about Zoe, but stopped. What good would it do? The men were already dead, and surely it would be no comfort to their families to know exactly why they had been killed. Besides, she could handle Zoe better than the cops.

  At least she hoped so. Zoe had spent most of her life as a prisoner. Morgan was damned if she was going to let any court sentence the girl to more time inside a cell, powerless and under someone else’s control.

  Nick called back just as she was crossing the bridge onto Hilton Head.

  “What the hell, Morgan. You’re supposed to be healing, not chasing down a group of killers.” He sounded half amused and half exasperated. And, funny thing, the tiniest bit proud.

  “I stumbled across them by accident. Thought the call center would be a good place to relearn how to lie again, fool Norms into accepting me.”

  “I thought we were past that. Shouldn’t you be here with Micah, practicing how to be honest?”

  They both knew honesty did not come easily to Morgan—nothing in her life had ever prepared her to drop her masks, appear naked, armed only with the truth. Hell, most days she had no clue what the truth was—not in the Sheep surrounding her, and certainly not inside herself.

  “Have you seen him?” she asked.

  “I ran into him briefly. He was helping Andre move some furniture into the office.”

  “How did he look? Was he happy? Did he look like he was happy?” Where the hell had that come from? She forced the phone away from her mouth, clamping her lips tight before any more insipid teenaged babbling could spew out.

  “He was moving furniture.”

  A flush of embarrassment heated her body. Morgan didn’t do emotions. She didn’t do hormones or neurochemicals or whatever the hell drove impulsive, stupid, childish behavior. Her father had. It was what had driven him to kill—and what had gotten him killed.

  “Morgan. What’s really going on? I know you’re not telling me everything.” Of course he did.

  She almost didn’t answer. Didn’t want to face the answers—the truth—herself, much less bare her soul to the world. “What if he’s happier without me? What if he’s better off? I mean, who wouldn’t be better off without a psychopath in their life? Look how many times he’s almost died because of me, because of who I am.”

  “Morgan—”

  “He’s always talking about this girl Bethany. They went to school together when they were kids, and now she’s tutoring him through summer school. I could never do that—I’ve never gone to school. I don’t know anything about calculus or physics or—”

  “Morgan—”

  “What if this Bethany makes him happy? He sounds happy when he talks about her. I couldn’t bear it if I came home and saw he was happier with someone else and he saw me seeing and he knew I knew and he’s the kind of guy, he’d break it off with her just because he’s just that kind and good and everything I’m not. And all I want is for him to be happy, Nick. It would kill me, it really would if he saw how I really felt and didn’t take a chance to be happy because he knew it would hurt me. It would literally kill me.”

  The last molecules of oxygen escaped her lungs as her breath heaved out. They both knew Morgan wasn’t a normal girl who was being melodramatic and who literally would not die. Because Morgan literally would. If she did anything that hurt Micah—even by omission, by not being able to mask her true emotions—she really would kill herself. Not because she was some suicidal emo youth, but because
she knew that if she hurt Micah, the only person in the world she truly cared about, that if she could do that, even by accident, then she needed to die. Before she hurt anyone else.

  Before she had the blood of more innocents staining her soul.

  She’d never actually thought she had a soul—not before she met Micah. Never believed in a god or higher power or karmic slate of who’s naughty and nice. But Micah—and Nick and Andre and maybe even Lucy and Jenna—had all made her take a look at the bigger picture. How her actions had consequences. Consequences she could control and was responsible for.

  Despite the emotions overwhelming her, she thought of Zoe. Who did what she wanted—never deviating from her path, but also never considering the consequences to innocents like Gavin or Allen’s sweet old dad. Could Morgan help her to understand that? To stop her relentless quest for vengeance against men like Curtis Troy?

  Maybe that was what she needed to prove herself worthy of Micah. More than unmasking a killer—helping to save a troubled soul.

  “I just want Micah to be happy,” she finished.

  Nick’s chuckle surprised her. Her first instinct was anger, an urge to hurt and maim. She swallowed that down along with another deep breath—just the way he’d taught her with his stupid relaxation exercises—but her hurt came bubbling up through her words.

  “Are you laughing at me?” she snapped. She wasn’t sure what was more annoying: the fact that her armor was so dented and broken that she’d felt pain at his amusement at her expense, or the fact that he was too far away for her to stab him in the eye.

  But she forced another breath down and realized: no, this was Nick. He was never cruel and never mean or spiteful. So instead of venting her rage and humiliation, she waited.

  “No,” he said. “Never. I’m laughing at me. A happy laugh because I didn’t see it coming, and I should have. Morgan, I’m so very proud of you. This is fantastic.”

  She frowned. “Glad to hear my pain is making someone happy.”

  “Don’t you see? The very fact that you can express these complex emotions, that you would sacrifice anything to see Micah happy—even if it means learning how to wear a mask again, simply to hide your pain from him.”

  “So what I’m feeling is…” She stumbled over the hated word, one never used to describe Morgan, not even once. “Normal?”

  “Oh, no. Very far from it,” he reassured her. “But a huge, huge step from taking your emotions and twisting them into feeding your needs no matter the pain or cost to others. Empathy. Despite popular notions, sociopaths do indeed have the ability to sense other’s emotions; it’s how they charm their way through life.”

  Or know how to torture and manipulate their victims, Morgan didn’t add.

  “But what you just said, how you feel about Micah…that’s more than empathy. Your feelings go much, much deeper.”

  “And that’s a good thing?” She had killed men with her bare hands without feeling this churned up inside. How could it be a good thing? Why on earth would all the Norms allow themselves to shuffle through their dull and dreary lives feeling like this? It was like crawling over broken glass. But it did explain all the stupid movies and books she’d never understood before.

  “It’s a very good thing,” Nick assured her.

  She wanted to ask him about Zoe, but the Escalades were turning off the highway, so instead she hung up, more confused than ever, needing time to sort out her feelings.

  Maybe this was the point of most people’s lives? To feel something, anything, strong enough to shatter the monotony and boredom?

  If so, then how was that any different than the obsession to feel more, more, more that had driven her father? And, she hated to admit, also Morgan; and, she suspected, Zoe.

  It would be so frightfully easy to twist her feelings for Micah into obsession…maybe her instincts to stay away were right. Maybe she wasn’t as different from her father as she wanted to believe.

  Maybe she was just fooling herself with this fantasy of living in a world of Norms and Sheep. Maybe this pain, this whirlwind of broken glass slicing her from the inside out, maybe this was the best she could ever hope for.

  Maybe Zoe was right—better to use that pain for justice, even if it meant bloody vigilante justice.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The two white Escalades led Morgan to a private marina with gated access and a guard. Thankfully, beside the marina was a small collection of shops and restaurants along the waterfront with public parking. She found a space, grabbed her go-bag—a small knapsack that resembled a fashion accessory but actually concealed essentials like her pistol, her CQC folding knife and a fixed blade with a sheath, duct tape, tools, a stash of cash, and a small surveillance camera equipped with optical zoom and thermal imaging that she’d “borrowed” from Jenna.

  Strolling along the promenade that ran alongside the water, she palmed the camera and zoomed in on the marina. Kagan led the way down a metal dock to where a sleek pleasure cruiser waited. The Merlin. Of course Kagan would name his yacht that.

  Behind him, two men accompanied Zoe, who wasn’t resisting or even attempting to signal the marina workers for help. They’d released her from her bonds, and one was holding her with his arm around her waist as if they were a couple. A man was waiting on the boat, standing up near the controls, obviously ready to leave.

  No way could she reach them in time, she thought as Kagan boarded, followed by Zoe and one of her guards. The other stayed on the dock, releasing the mooring lines from their cleats. How the hell was she going to follow them across the water? With a boat that size, built to spend days at sea, they could be headed anywhere.

  She focused on the marina. Other than a man in the office, the only other people she could see were several men working on a boat in dry dock and a man who was pumping fuel into a small boat, several empty bait buckets and fishing rods lining its back deck. Obviously a charter boat returned from a day of fishing.

  A boat couldn’t be that difficult to steal—basically the same ignition as a car—but she knew nothing about driving one and didn’t have time for trial and error.

  She returned the camera to her bag and started toward the marina. The man at the office barely glanced up when Morgan waved toward the charter boat. As she strode down the metal planking, swaying as the Merlin sped away and its wake hit the dock, she reached into the bag for her 9mm and held it by her side. Sorry Mr. Fisherman, but you’re about to have a very bad day.

  Not that Zoe had asked to be rescued. All she’d asked Morgan to do was guard her research and the Camelot data she’d stolen. In fact, Zoe had orchestrated this whole thing; even let Alfie and Gladys suffer in service of her plan to be captured.

  Yet here Morgan was, willing to threaten a stranger with lethal force to go after a girl who clearly wanted to be exactly where she was. Who was Morgan trying to save? Zoe? Or Kagan and the other Camelot leaders?

  Or was it something more Morgan hoped to rescue? Did she really think that she could stop Zoe from more needless bloodshed? That she could save Zoe’s soul? Help her learn how to give up killing and return to her own life?

  Her grip tightened on the semiautomatic. Was it really Zoe she was trying to save? Or Morgan herself?

  She slid the pistol into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled her shirt over it. The fisherman looked up as he screwed the cap onto his fuel tank. He was in his forties, with sun-kissed wrinkles around his eyes as he squinted into the setting sun behind Morgan. “Help you?”

  “I’d like to hire you and your boat.” The gun would be faster, but this way she could hopefully avoid bloodshed—and the harbormaster’s attention. “I’ll pay cash.”

  He shook his head, not at her but at the blood-smeared deck that reeked of dead fish. “Sorry, lady. Just finished for the day and still need to clean up. I’m free tomorrow, though.”

  She ignored him and the stench, stepping past him onto the boat’s railing and then hopping onto the deck. “A hundred dollars.
Now.”

  “Get the hell off my boat. Now.” He didn’t raise his voice, despite her trespass.

  The gun or the truth? Her fingers inched toward the 9mm. “It’s important. I need to follow that boat.”

  His gaze flicked from her to the Merlin speeding out into the Intercoastal Waterway. “No,” he said in a low, certain voice. “Trust me. You don’t want to have anything to do with that boat.”

  “My friend’s life depends on it.” She wrapped her fingers around the 9mm at her back.

  That made him hesitate. He shot a glance at the harbormaster’s shack.

  “Two hundred,” Morgan offered.

  The money didn’t move him—if anything it seemed to have the opposite effect, his face settling into granite. “I asked you once; I won’t ask again. Get off my boat.”

  Morgan didn’t move. They stared at each other, neither yielding, the only movement the sway of the boat and the lengthening shadows as the sun set. Morgan slid her pistol free. She didn’t have time for this—Zoe didn’t have time. The Merlin was now just a silhouette against the horizon; if it turned to head out to sea, Zoe would be lost forever.

  Gripping the gun but not revealing it—not yet—she did the one thing that went against everything in her nature: she begged. “Please. I need your help. She needs your help. Those men, they’ll kill her.”

  “Lady, you don’t understand. Those men will kill me and you and your friend. Best turn around and walk away. Believe you me.” He held his hand out to help her back up to the dock.

  She took his hand with her free one, and when he pivoted, she pressed the barrel of her 9mm against his heart. “See now, that just won’t work for me. Let’s go. Now.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The fisherman cooperated once Morgan threatened him with the gun.

  “Whoa now,” he’d said, raising his hands until she ordered him to lower them. He was smart enough not to test her resolve, and calmly cast off from the dock. Soon she was standing beside him in the boat’s tiny cockpit as he steered them away from the marina and into the Intercoastal.