TERRY'

oom, closing the door on Ca

, as motionless as a statue. H

leave?" V

nty. "The will to survive is

ether, the motel's shabby neo

tly. "But the road home is b

. Fifteen years. Fifteen years of waiting, hiding,

girl in a stained uniform. A nobody who

ttle princess of the

er in Northern California. My mother was Eleanor Beaumont, of the Beaumont family, old-money outlaw aris

p in that world. I ha

ugh the compound in the dead of night. It was not an accident. It was an internal

e flames and carried me out through the back tunnels. He hid me in Charming

d at men who thought I was nothing. But I was not surviving. I was training. I was watching. The Ste

ecome invisible inside their world. Every humiliation bought me another pie

more than a beggar at the table. But a woman who carried the enemy's secrets in her blood-their routes, thei

h then. But I was pati

e bleeding from within. My grandfather was aging. My father was drowning in whiskey. My cousin Dylan was circl

time to

s and gave him a

something like relief crossed his

Kalia. I'll make

Vince. He never asked qu

started the engine. The car

inst the window, wat

had one last

Sterling Knights. Every dollar I gave him, every humiliation I swallowed,

tart-up capital. It would buy me s