Chapter One

“Who’s there?”

The darkness answered Wren’s shout with silence. The whispered threats from just a moment ago were quiet. The glittering vengeful eyes were banked. Only the dark, mellow hush of pre-dawn hung in the air. Patient and waiting.

But the peacefulness didn’t fool her. Wren scrambled to sit up, alert and anxious, her restless legs rustling against the well-worn bed sheets. The pulse point in her throat ticked rapidly as she scanned her surroundings. The seemingly normal clutter and dreariness of the room she shared with her mother was all that greeted her.

She pressed cold fingers against the hotness of her skin to keep her grounded in the moment, but no amount of soothing could erase the raw burn of her larynx. It was a familiar, haunting sensation reminiscent of long-ago nights spent chocking down her own screams.

Wren rubbed her arms against the chill of her nightmares, past and present. It wasn’t supposed to be like this anymore, she thought, trying to hold back a paralyzing panic.

She lived her life inside a protective bubble, a cultivated thin shell against the fright. It’d been her safeguard for so long, the scariness of her world barely touched her anymore. The rules were simple: keep her head down and stay in the corners. By following those simple steps, the fear she’d lived in day-after-day dulled the more time past.

But tonight, something had changed. Now she was exposed.

Ignoring the sense of foreboding, she mentally worked to rebuild the bubble that kept her from the bad things that lurked around her. It was hard, the protective pieces fragmented and shredded from what happened while she’d been sleeping.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Wren did her best to calm down, telling herself she’d simply re-dreamt an old nightmare. She grabbed at that thought no matter how wrong it felt. Being delusional was easier than being threatened and being paranoid was better than being hunted.

“I’m coming for you, Wren. You and the boy.”

Those hateful words exploded in the night again. Shattering her attempts at self-deception.

The taunting voice was so clear, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the owner came out of the darkness and made good on his promise.

She pushed her back to the wall and waited. Waited for daylight. Waited for the feeling of foreboding to go away. Waited for…she didn’t know what else, exactly, but she’d survived so many nightmares, real and imagined, waiting seemed to be the only thing that always worked.

Eventually, exhaustion crept into her bones, overtaking her vigilance. The silent apartment helped to lull her into a feeling of safety. The muted sounds of the L.A. streets outside her window reminded her that people were out there, waking up and getting on with their lives.

Wren reached underneath her flat pillow and pulled out a small rubber bouncy ball.

“Why do you make me feel so much better?” She whispered, staring at her secret toy that glowed red as she made it dance over her knuckles.

The fear was still there, but it was subsiding back to its usual place. She’d had the ball for as long as she could remember, and it always settled her when she needed it the most.

She scooted back down on the mattress before a faint sound stopped her.

It was different than anything else she’d heard that night. Even though it was distorted from traveling through the old, battered walls of her apartment building, she had no trouble putting a name to it: trouble.

Her heart sunk deeper into her chest.

For the first time since she woke up, she glanced over to where her mother should’ve been mumbling in a rowdy sleep. The bed was empty except for a pile of dingy sheets.

Wren and her mother lived month-to-month. With no car and barely a bus card between them, it meant Suzi Tolken had gone to the one place where she could find trouble, excitement and money all in one ugly package.

Wren barely remembered when Suzi had been like a normal mom. Responsible, funny, dependable in flip flops and v-necks. But today Suzanne Marie Tolken rarely laughed, and always fought. The woman had a temper, and she knew how to use it.

“Son-of-a-bitch!”

The words exploded from the living room, punctuated by a loud bang as the door slammed against the front hall wall.

“You get out of here!”

Wren stopped breathing.

“Give me back my money,” growled Suzi’s ‘I’ve gone to borrow some sugar’ friend.

Wren closed her eyes against her mother’s defiant response and prepared for what was to come.

In ten minutes when everything was finally all quiet, she, a 15 1/2-year-old, 10th grade amnesiac, would have to go into the living room to pick up the shattered pieces of her mother. Again.

This was inevitable. Her mother wouldn’t back down, even though she was wrong. Suzi had taken whatever money the guy was talking about because they needed it to keep their family of two going. More importantly, Suzi needed that money. There would be no giving it back.

Her mother had once warned to never come out of the room if any funny business was going down. And Wren hadn’t, not ever.

The mere thought had her trembling. She’d wait for silence before tiptoeing down the hall. She was always nervous about what she might find. And usually, it wasn’t pretty.

Wren screwed up her face and tried to forget about what was happening in the living room.

She’d been surviving with amnesia for years now and, forgetting things was the one thing she was really good at. But this time with the little ball pressed into her palm something sparked as she did her best to block out the quarreling.

She couldn’t unhear the violence and the thought that maybe she should help, just this once, crept underneath her shattered bubble.

It was petrifying to even consider such a thing. Staying in corners, hiding and keeping her distance. That’s what she was used to. That’s what was safe.

But now, with the thought of helping her mom fluttering so close to her sense of loyalty, Wren couldn’t shake the feeling that she had to do something.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the craziness and laid as stiff as a board on her lumpy mattress, doing her best to ignore this new, unwelcome feeling that tried to spur her into some sort of action.

A full minute passed before she reluctantly rolled off her too soft mattress and got up.

Pushing the little red ball deep into the pocket of her pajama shorts, she picked up her mother’s ever-ready baseball bat and the house phone. Her palms sweaty on both.

Then, she faced the bedroom door.

All she had to do was take two steps and turn the knob. She didn’t fool herself into thinking she’d be much good out there, but at least she’d be out there doing something instead of in here hiding inside herself.

That sounded good, right?

Taking a fortifying breath, she pulled the dust and danger of the tiny apartment into her lungs and took her first shaky step.

Quietly, she moved down the short hallway and into the living room. Her hands trembled on the bright pink aluminum bat and her stomach roiled, but she continued to put one bare foot in front of the other until she was close enough to start sweating from the violence in the air.

“You...get out of here.” She said, pointing to the grungy neighbor.

Her voice was a chirp compared to the explosive screams as the pair ignored her.

“Touch me again and you’ll see what I’m talking about.” The man spat, his small eyes narrowing to slits.

“Oh, yeah, Jimmy?” Suzi said, boldly, belligerence dripping off her in waves.

She anchored one strong hand on her hip and pointed the other at the man’s head.

“You’ve already lost your money. Keep threatening’ me and see what else you lose.”

She pushed her red-tipped finger against the man’s forehead.

Wren’s mouth dropped open as everything froze.

Then lightning fast, Jimmy clamped his beefy fingers around Suzi’s throat with enough force that thick veins pushed out against the thin brown skin of his hands.

“You stealing bitch!”

Wren bit her lip, her insides shaking and her vision blurring. Her grip on the baseball bat tightened and the weapon danced in her grasp as her hands shook.

She should call the police, but just as soon as the thought came, it vanished. Considering their lifestyle and her mom’s habits, that could cause more harm than good.

As thoughts raced through Wren’s mind, her mother’s eyes bulged as Jimmy pressed even harder against Suzi’s throat. A guttural sound escaped from her mother’s gasping lips and it ignited something hot, red and angry deep within Wren’s core.

Her body swelled in response and without another thought, she hurled herself at the man with an unnatural fierceness that matched his own.

A “puff” of surprise escaped him when her weight slammed against his back. She was no lightweight.

In the heat of his rugged barks of fury, she dug her half-chewed nails into the crevices of his eyes and held on tight.

Dropping Suzi, Jimmy bucked, grabbing for Wren’s fingers, rabidly working to peel them away from his face.

“Wrennie.” Suzi said, her voice low and scratchy, but heavy with helplessness.

“Wren.”

Sharp with command, a new voice rose above the confusion in the room, a direct juxtaposition to Suzi’s pained whisper or even Jimmy’s nasally grunts.

“Goddammit.” The voice sounded again, but closer this time. It was deep and hard and belonged to the one-person Wren had spent considerable time pretending didn’t exist.

Someone worse than Jimmy. Maybe even worse than the voice from her nightmare.

“Grayson, do something.” Suzi’s voice rang with hope and pain as she directed her command to the man beyond Wren’s line of sight.

Jimmy twisted suddenly and backed up, slamming Wren against the wall. Her body exploded in pain and she tightened her grip reflexively even as she braced herself for another jolt.

But it never came.

Jimmy grunted and disappeared from Wren’s desperate hold.

Her arms now waved empty and free. The heels of her feet scrambled against the wall, no longer wrapped around Jimmy’s body.

For an instant, her position defied all laws of nature. She was pressed against the wall with inches of empty space between her and the ugly brown wall-to-wall carpet, but almost as soon as questions began to form, her body slid gently down the wall, landing softly next to a motionless Jimmy.

He was in a huddle on the carpet and unconscious, but her proximity to him sent Wren shuffling to her feet in a frenzy to get away.

She stopped short when she came face-to-face with the tall man in a bespoke suit who had no place in their crappy apartment.

“Dad?”

The silver flash of her father’s eyes glowed when they settled on her.

And even though he still stood a few feet away from Wren, the heat of his anger scorched her.

“Dad.” She said again, softly this time.

Her mind struggled to comprehend that the man who’d been nothing more than a voice on the other end of the phone for the past year and a half was really standing in front of her.

He’d really come? Finally.

“Yes.” Grayson Tolken gritted out, flexing his right hand. There was a trickle of blood on the white sleeve above a solid gold cufflink.

“We have to get your mother to a hospital. And her friend…taken care of as well.”

Yeah, it was really him.