I pulled back to look at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I stopped going."

I gaped at him. "But you're so close to graduating. How are you going to find another school to take you now?"

"I'm not," he said. "There's no point. A degree isn't going to do shit for me in these streets, Gracie."

"But you didn't want-"

"I know," he said, cutting me off. I didn't have to finish because he knew what I was thinking. "But sometimes we have to make choices we fucking hate to get what we want out of life. A little compromise never hurt anybody."

As he said that, all I could do was stare at his battered face. Whatever this compromise was, it certainly hurt him. I was trying to wrap my head around it, trying to makes sense of what he was saying. I was trying to think of the words to explain what I was feeling, but I never got a chance.

Because my dreams?

They went right up in flames.

It started when I heard a key in the door, the lock turning, the clicking echoing through the living room.

Cody heard it, too.

He was on his feet instantly.

Panicked, I jumped up, trying to clean up the empty beer bottles but there wasn't enough time.

"Get out of here," I hissed, pushing Cody toward the window. He shoved it open, and I cringed at the loud groan of old wood. The sound was deafening. He was slipping out, the metal banging when he scaled the fire escape, just as the last lock clicked and the door shoved open.

My father appeared.

He looked right at me as I stood in front of the open window, visibly trembling, with an empty beer bottle in my hand that I was trying to conceal. It only took him a second to put the pieces together as his eyes swept along the living room.

Before I knew it, he was running, disappearing back out the door. Shit. I hoped Cody made it, that he was gone before he could get caught, and climbed out onto the fire escape to try to warn him before it was too late.

My breath caught as I look down. Busted.

Cormac Moran stood on the sidewalk near his town car. Cody was beside his father, shivering his ass off in the cold evening air. He wasn't wearing his hoodie. My gaze darted behind me, toward the couch in the apartment. His hoodie was still on the floor along with some other discarded clothes.

Oh God.

Oh no.

My knees went weak.

I had to grip onto the railing.

I watched down below as my father burst outside, his voice booming like thunder as he lunged right for Cody. "You little son of a bitch! You think you can come into my house? You think you can violate my daughter? You think you can do that and get away with it?"

Cormac intervened before my father could throw any punches, stepping between the two of them. I couldn't hear what the man said, but whatever it was silenced my father . . . at least temporarily. The men talked heatedly for a minute before my father turned away from them and stormed back inside. I watched, frozen, as Cormac roughly grabbed Cody by his shirt, throwing him against the passenger side of the town car, so hard it left a dent. Cody raised his hands in a sign of surrender as Cormac verbally laid into him. After shoving him back against it again, Cormac finally let go to walk around to the driver's side.

Cody paused briefly, glancing up at me on the fire escape, before getting in the car.

They hadn't even yet pulled away from the curb when my father returned to the apartment. I heard the front door close and heard his footsteps along the wooden floor. I braced myself for his rage. I was prepared for disgust, even ready to feel the man's hatred.

What I got was far, far worse.

"I'm disappointed in you, Grace Callaghan," he said, his voice laced with dejection. "I thought you were better than this."

"Grace." My father's voice is always gruff, like he's constantly fighting to keep his emotions in check, but I know that's just his natural tone. "It's great to hear your voice again."

Closing my eyes, I swallow thickly. "Dad."

I love my father.

I do.

But he made this bed that I'm forced to lie in, day in and day out, all alone in this ironic little town, so it's hard not to feel some resentment. He gave me life, sure, but I also blame him for taking my life away. I always knew he did bad things, always knew he hung around bad people, but I never knew the scope of it until the day Holden let me read the thirty-page indictment against him.

My father was linked to a body count higher than Ted Bundy's.

It's hard to reconcile that fact with the man who raised me.

My father was Dr. Jekyll.

The man on the phone is the evil Mr. Hyde.

Connor Callaghan.

He got to keep his last name.

"How are you?" he asks. "You staying safe? How's school?"

He fires questions at me, innocently enough, but I have to think through every answer before saying anything at all. Something as simple as conversation about the weather could lead the wrong person right to my front door.

I say I'm fine, people are nice, school's great, but the truth is I stopped going months ago and I haven't made a single friend in this place. Holden leans against the counter and listens in on the conversation, knowing I'm lying my ass off.

Maybe I'm better at being dishonest than I think.

I absently scribble in the margins of the manual as my father babbles on and on, doing what I always do-signing my name.

My fake name.

Over and over, practicing until it practically bleeds from my fingertips.

Ten minutes isn't that long, not when you haven't spoken to someone in over a year, but there's a lot of awkward silence when you have nothing to say. I'm ashamed by the relief I feel when Holden pushes away from the counter, tapping two fingers against the face of his watch, telling me time is up.

"I have to go," I say, interrupting my father as he's talking about something. I don't know. I stopped paying attention.

He lets out a deep sigh. "Just a few more years, Grace, and I'll be out of this mess. A few more years and we can start over as a family."

I don't respond to that.

I've faced reality.

There's no starting over for him and I.

"Goodbye, Dad."

I pull the phone away from my ear and hit the button to end the call before holding it out to Holden. I drop the pen after he takes the phone, leaning back in the chair and running my hands down my face. "Please don't ever do that to me again."

Holden pulls out the chair across from me and sits. He's quiet for a moment, and I glance over, meeting his eyes, seeing the frown on his lips. He thought he was doing me a favor, that talking to someone I knew in that other world would pacify me, but hearing my father's voice again only made these feelings worse.

I haven't seen the man in a year, yet he's still controlling my life.

I've never felt so smothered.

"You wanted it to be somebody else on the phone, didn't you?"

I scoff. "What makes you say that?"

Holden motions toward the manual I'd been doodling in. One glance at it gives me my answer. I'd absently scribbled Cody's name more than once without thinking. Picking up the pen again, I quickly scratch out every instance of it, knowing there's a rule against leaving shit like that around. There are ways, of course, of communicating with the past . . . these untraceable phone calls, letters hand delivered by Marshals that are burned after reading.

But in my case, it wasn't possible.

I look around the kitchen, looking at everything except for Holden. We've had this conversation about Cody before, and I'm not in the mood to have it again. "Can I ask you something, inspector?"

From the corner of my eye, I see him grimace. He hates being called that about as much as he hates being deemed a handler.

'Just call me Holden,' he'd insisted. 'Not Inspector, not Marshal . . . just Holden.'

Holden is his last name, technically. I didn't even know that until I spotted it on some paperwork a few months back. United States Marshals Service Inspector Brian Holden.

I've never called him Brian.

He probably doesn't even realize I know that's his name.

"You can ask me anything," he says, tearing the manual away from me and tossing it across the room, onto the kitchen counter, when I start doodling in it again. "As long as you look at me when you do."

I stare at him, still clutching the pen, and defiantly start scribbling right on the top of the kitchen table. He doesn't stop me, knowing he really can't. The Marshals Service paid for this table, but it belongs to me. Holden wants to intervene, though. I can see his fingers twitching.

"Have you ever lost a witness?"

It's kind of funny, I think, that I'm considered a witness, considering I haven't witnessed a fucking thing. Unless the injustice of humanity counts . . .

He hesitates. "Define 'lost'."

"As in 'died'," I say. "Has anyone ever died on your watch?"

"No."

"Never?"

"Never," he says. "No witness has ever died that followed the rules."

"And the ones that didn't follow the rules? How many of them have died?"

"About thirty."

Thirty.

My father's personal body count is higher than that.

"Out of how many?"

"There are about seventeen thousand people under protection."

That momentarily leaves me speechless.

That's a lot of people living lives that don't belong to them. I wonder how many feel like me. I wonder how many leave because of it, how many risk death, risk becoming one of those unlucky thirty, just for the chance to be themselves again.

"I know thirty doesn't seem like a lot," Holden continues. "But it's thirty lives we tried to save . . . lives we would've saved, if they had just followed the rules. It's a senseless death, and I pray to God there's never a thirty-one."

I nod, tinkering with the pen, scratching marks into the table until Holden reaches his breaking point. He covers my hand with his own, prying the pen from my grip.

"The program works, Gracie," he says, pocketing the pen before I can take it back. "You just have to learn to work with it."

Standing, Holden starts gathering his things, and I watch as he pulls himself together to leave. The tie goes on, his badged slipped around his neck, before he puts on his holster to conceal his gun beneath his coat.

I know he's still standing in front of me, but I suddenly feel utterly alone.

"I have some other business to attend to, so it'll be a while before I make another scheduled visit," he says. "It'll probably be closer to Christmas."

Christmas.

It's only three weeks, but it feels so far away.

He's never stayed gone so long before.

"Call me if you need me," he says, pulling out an envelope and dropping it on the table. "Here's your stipend for the month."

I grab the envelope, pulling it into my lap, and skim through the cash as he finishes getting ready. There's fifteen hundred dollars in it. My father used to leave me that much when he left for a weekend.

Holden strolls around the table to where I'm sitting on his way to the door, placing his hand on my shoulder and squeezing. "Happy Birthday, Gracie. Here's to many more . . ."

The sound of tapping glass was so faint I felt like it had to be a figment of my imagination, a phantom echo from somewhere deep down in my soul. My head turned, slowly, the sense of disappointment already brewing in my gut, preparing for the let down.