A Girl Undone Read Online Free PDF Page A

over the rust-colored sofa, and a Nativity scene filled the brick fireplace mantel.
    The room felt years away from L.A. and Scarpanol and the Paternalists. It felt like someplace from Before.
    “You two must have driven all night,” Vera said, hanging her purse on a hook.
    “Almost.”
    “How about you give me those clothes you’re wearing and I’ll throw them in the wash while you lie down for a bit?”
    “That sounds really good.”
    Vera came back from the spare bedroom with a clean towel and a flannel pajama top that had been worn soft. “You can leave your clothes on the bathroom counter. I’ll take care of them.”
    I stripped off my shirt in the bathroom, exposing the strip of red silk wrapped around my chest. As I undid the pins that secured the ends, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I look like a suicide bomber.
    I rushed to unwind the hanging from my body and let it fall to the floor. Then I kicked it toward the tub, and pulled in a deep breath. Free.
    But as I soaped up my face and arms, I couldn’t block out the red silk pooled on the tile floor.
    The coded names of dozens of Paternalist politicians and foreign leaders, each one linked to bribes, favors, restrictive new laws, and moneymaking schemes, were embroidered into the crisscrossed branches of a blossoming cherry tree. And on the main branch all the others sprouted from—one name: Vice President Jouvert.
    I rinsed off, and dried myself with the towel.
    Maggie’d left two sections unfinished. One outlining a pipeline project with the code name “White Gold,” the other, the trillion-dollar “loans” Jouvert had taken from a source Maggie hadn’t been able to uncover.
    There was no one left who could finish what she’d started and get the last pieces of the puzzle. All her girls had scattered around the globe, and her assistant, Helen, couldn’t continue Maggie’s spying without them.
    I picked the hanging up off the floor and reattached the pins. It was my problem now. But I can’t walk around with it like this. It’s so red. So obvious. Soaking it in bleach could lighten it, but I had to be careful not to ruin the coding.
    Below the pajama top, ghostly bruises spotted my thighs and broken white lines had replaced the deep scratches I’d gotten when I was attacked on Mom’s grave. I ran my finger over the longest one. Was it really only three weeks ago? It felt like months.
    Vera had left the door open to the spare room. The bed was turned down, and flannel sheets lay under the faded apricot-colored quilt. It wasn’t even noon, but I burrowed under the covers. The soft flannel almost made me cry, it felt so good after two days of sleeping on a cold linoleum floor.
    An hour—and I’d get up, I told myself.
    I closed my eyes and, for the first time since Luke and I left Boise, let myself think about Yates. I wondered if he was finally awake. If his fever had broken. If the cops recognized him.
    I could ask Vera to call the night nurse.
    Right, and bring federal agents down on her and Harris? No way. You have to wait until you’re someplace safe.
    I don’t even know where safe is anymore. Is it Canada?
    Even if I managed to get over the border, how could Yates? His voice echoed in my head as I relived the night he helped me escape Hawkins, and I left California, thinking I might never see him again. For a moment I was back in the airplane hangar, Yates’ face bent over mine, his deeply blue eyes the only things I saw or wanted to see.
    I heard him whisper the words of my poem along with me, our lips brushing.
    Love wields the scissors . Love is the escape .
    I felt his hands on my back, holding me like something too precious to let go.
    Love is the rusted fire escape that shouldn’t support our weight but does.
    I drifted into sleep. Yates found me once. He could find me again.
    When I woke, the sun was going down, and someone was chopping wood out back. I peeked through the curtains. Luke was working his way through a large