Unwritten by Tressie Lockwood Page B

you going to move, or am I going to have to make you?”
    Meghan smirked. “You could try, and you’d fail.” She stepped to the side and gestured toward the door. “By all means.”
    Evie grabbed her purse and left the house with her head held high. She walked out onto the driveway and then remembered she’d left her car back at the club and Kian had driven her to his house. Sighing, she searched the Internet on her phone for the nearest bus stop and plotted the course to the bar. By three in the afternoon, she’d collected the car and found a hotel to stay in. She dropped onto the bed and pondered her next move. Kian had the phone tapped, but could he do GPS on it? Of course he could, but then she wasn’t trying to duck him. She needed time to sort through her feelings and get a grip.
    Hunger struck an hour later, and she decided against the hotel’s menu because the cost of staying there would start dipping into her savings as it was, and who knew when the bar would open again? In fact, it might be better to just look for another job. Leo had insurance to cover his losses. She didn’t.
    She remembered coming across a Harris Teeter a mile down the road and headed that way. A burger and chips for breakfast meant she needed to eat a healthier meal, so once inside the grocery store, she headed toward the deli and picked up a readymade salad then doubled back to the fruit section. The plums were hard, so she knew they weren’t sweet. An apple might work, but the flavor got old fast. She stood in front of the tangerines and debated those when a ding on her phone distracted her. Her stomach tightened as she assumed Kian was contacting her to demand what she thought she was doing leaving his house. A short combination of numbers and symbols marched across her screen, and she swallowed.
    Unlike the last message, which she’d figured out right away, this one posed a challenge. The symbol that looked like an S on top of another one, the double S , what meaning had Anthony given it? She wracked her brain, feeling a headache coming on, and rubbed her temple. The original meaning of the symbol meant section, but how had Anthony changed it? Then it came to her. Himself. The symbol meant I or me . Her heart thundered in her ears as she translated the message. “I’m here.”
    All strength left Evie’s fingers, and she dropped her phone in the middle of the tangerines. She looked to the left and right. A woman stood nearby, eyeing her with suspicion. A man pushing a cart filled with various items headed in the opposite direction and soon disappeared out of sight. That couldn’t have been Anthony anyway because the man was a good foot shorter, and her cousin stood at six-two.
    Attempting to calm down, she reached for her phone and started to dial Kian. Another message came in. She understood this one right away. “Don’t do that.”
    Evie abandoned her basket and left the fruit section. She considered leaving the grocery store altogether, but that might be a bad idea. With bright lights and plenty of people around, she would be safer. Besides, there was a good chance the FBI had already deciphered Anthony’s code, and they were headed to her location now. All she needed to do was stall her cousin and this nightmare would be over.
    She strode from aisle to aisle looking for him, but there happened to be no big black guys shopping that evening. She almost believed her cousin was playing a trick and he was nowhere around when she came to the frozen foods section. Anthony leaned on one of the refrigerator doors with arms folded across his chest. He smiled at seeing her.
    “Hey, cuz.”
    Her head spun. She hadn’t seen him in person since just before he killed Brad. He’d worked as a bartender at Leo’s bar, but he’d never been very good at it. Leo had told her Anthony didn’t give it much effort. Leo kept him on for her. Evie knew her cousin kept the job as a cover for the work he’d done under the table, but she had