Page 87 (1/2)

STOP! I felt my lips form the word, but I couldn’t hear myself STOP!

And the man did, with the blank look of someone whose skull had just been cracked open and exposed to freezing air He sat back, his gun on the floor at his side

I was coughing and hacking, trying to bring air into un and stuffed it into the waistband of rab my winter coat from where it had been thrown across the room’s desk chair, and then I was outside, in the hallway, staring at the place where a uardon I kneould happen to

I was running down the hotel’s stairs, out through the kitchens, out back past the Du,afterfor the trees, the darkness--

"Ruby--Ruby!"

I came back to myself in Clancy’s office bit by bit, with a headache severe enough that I had to putup all over myself

"They tried to kill you," I said, when I finally found my voice "Who?"

"Who do you think?" Clancy’s voice was dry "That ents ere supposed to be guarding me"

"But that doesn’t make any sense," I pressed the back of ainst the dizziness "If they were carting you around and using you to explain the rehab program, then why…?"

"Because he figured out that I hadn’t been rehabbed at all," he said "My father, I mean The only reason they let me out of Thurmond is because I ot too a hiht" Clancy trailed off for a et out, I’m sure, but he couldn’t just take me out of the public eye, not when he’d been the one to thrust et rid of ine what kind of spin he’d put on races of his fellow A while, speechless

How did you survive that life? I wanted to ask How are you you, and not the ot out that night I met Hayes, and then Olivia, and then others We found this place and went to work, and all the while my father couldn’t put a bounty out on raet the press off his back" Clancy smiled then "So, you see, I did win in the end"

He rose fro conscious of it, feeling soers My head was silent I felt myself lean forward

"When I heard your story, I knew I had to meet you I had toon, so you wouldn’t be caught in the dark the way I was"