The Billionaire's Obsession: Catching His Savior

stepped into the rain. She didn't bother pulling up her hood. The water was already see

ing OPEN, past the Methodist church where Brenda made her sit in the back pew every Sunday

ad backed his truck into it last summer. Two cardboard boxes sat in the mud in front of the doo

ooked at the boxes. S

The old lock had been silver, scratched, the ke

handle anyway.

the

shout. She'd learned early that

, the jowls, the cigarette dangling from his lip. He mouthed somet

huge in the rain, hollow and desperate. She hit it again, feeling t

rs, her mouth moving fast. She held something up to the glass. Bills. Fi

of value in that tin can of a home. They'd sold it. They'd sold it for grocery mo

's the

s, her breath fogging the surface. She knew they co

his front pocket, his jeans too tight, the gesture obscene-and pulled out the ceramic doll. Her mother's doll. The one with t

at her, his tongue poking through the gap

ngers curled into fists. She took one step forward and drove her knuckles into the window glass.

enough. "You hear me? I call the cops, they see your reco

y phone, beige, the cord tangled. She held the rece

rearms and evaporating immediately, leaving trails of white mist. Her heart was hammering, not

hospital. The last time, when she was fourteen and the fever hit 108, the

with the doll still dangling from his fingers. She memorized their faces.

urned and

d, past the clothes she'd collected from thrift stores and church donations, past t

spasms starting in her fingers. Her vision blurred at the edges, the world tilting. Her le

eached into her bra-her only safe place-and pulled out the metal cylinde

black, the size of her thumbnail. She didn't have wat

down with a swallow that felt like swallowing

eal burnin

edges, then black, then red again. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, too fas

cold. She n

nk fence separated the commercial district from the woods. The Black Pines. Fifty acres of sta

ars of condensation on the metal. She dropped

the fire in her veins, the pressure building behind her eyes,

dug her fingers into it and felt the wood char under her t

he hea

ink, rhythmic. And breath

hrough the rain, she saw something pale in t

ed to her chest, feeling her heart try to escape her ribs.

thing w