Run to You Part Three: Third Charm. Clara Kensie

Your initials are TLC? Like the school?”

      “Yep. ‘You’ll find TLC at TLC’,” I quoted Twelve Lakes Community High School’s slogan. “I guess you really did.”

      He laughed. “TLC. That’s amazing.”

      “Why?”

      “My middle name is Lawrence.”

      “Tristan Lawrence... Oh. We have the same initials.” I was quiet for a moment, and then I decided to be cruel, because for a moment I’d forgotten he was the enemy and his kindness was just another one of his tricks. “But I think for you, TLC stands for terrible, loathsome and contemptible.”

      The light left his eyes, and he sank to the cot with a sigh. “I hope one day you’ll change your mind about that,” he murmured.

      I just shook my head.

      * * *

      “You want me to believe my parents are criminals,” I said to Tristan after sitting in silence for a while. “That they blackmailed and murdered people.”

      “Yes.”

      “You want me to believe that Denn—that he isn’t going to kill us.”

      “Yes.”

      “You want me to believe the complete opposite of everything I’ve known for the last eight years.”

      “Yes.”

      “Even after everything Kellan did. Punching me, kidnapping me, holding me as bait. He made me watch his men shoot my parents. After all that, you still want me to believe that my parents are the bad guys.”

      Sighing, he ran his hand through his hair. “Yes.”

      “If I believe you,” I said, “that means my parents were lying to me.”

      “They were,” he said.

      “If I believe my parents, that means you’re lying to me.”

      “I’m not lying to you.”

      “But you did lie to me, Tristan Walker.”

      He winced. “Yes.”

      “So the only thing I can prove is that you are the liar.”

      He slowly nodded his head. “What can I do to make things better?”

      Nothing he did now could ever make things better. He’d lied to me. Used me. Betrayed me. Tristan was the son of Dennis Connelly. Killer’s blood coursed through his veins with every beat of his heart.

      I studied him from the corner of my eye. Legs wide, shoulders slumped, elbows on knees. Head down. Dejected.

      He turned his head to look at me, his eyes wide and sorrowful.

      He was desperate as well.

      I licked my lips. Tristan had used me; now I was going to use him. “There is something you can do.”

      “Anything.”

      “I need you to help me get that green binder Dr. Sheldon had.”

      “Why?”

      “Whatever evidence you claim to have is in that binder. I want to see it.” And then I would prove there was no evidence. Once I convinced him of that, I would get him to help my parents and me escape.

      And then I would leave him behind forever.

      He eyed me for a long moment, and I offered him a tiny smile.

      “Okay,” he said. “Tonight. After everyone has gone home.”

      Chapter Thirty-Nine

      The alarm on Tristan’s phone rang at exactly eleven o’clock that night. “Ready?”

      Holding my breath, I nodded.

      He rang the buzzer on the intercom, and a few moments later a low voice crackled through the speakers. “Yeah?”

      “We need a guard down here.”

      “What’s wrong?”

      “Nothing. I just need a guard to let me out.”

      The intercom went silent, and Tristan buzzed it again. “I’m not a prisoner. I work here. I’m an agent.”

      “What’s an agent doing locked up in the Underground?”

      “That’s classified.”

      No reply from the intercom.

      Tristan sighed. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

      “...No.”

      “I’m Tristan Connelly.”

      “So?”

      Licking his lips, he glanced at me. “So, my dad is Dennis Connelly.”

      I tried not to show him how much that upset me as the intercom clicked off.

      When a few minutes passed without it clicking back on, I said, “He’s not coming.”

      Tristan gave me a knowing smirk. “He’s coming.”

      A few minutes later, a guard with a thin, weasely face and a stubbly attempt at a mustache opened the door. Tristan took my hand and stepped into the doorway. “Whoa, not so fast,” the guard said. “Warden says you can leave whenever you want.” His eyes landed on me. “But the girl stays.”

      Tristan tightened his grip on my hand. “That’s right. She stays with me.”

      Weasel Face widened his stance, folding his arms across his chest. “I can’t let her out. Warden said it’s Doc Sheldon’s orders.”

      Tristan growled and fisted his hand, but I stepped in front of him. Intimidation wasn’t going to get me that binder, not with this guard. I lowered my chin and looked up at him with doe eyes, attempting to appear as docile and meek as possible. “Please, sir?” I begged Weasel Face, who couldn’t be more than three years older than me. “You’re the only one who can help us.”

      He looked nervously down the hall and back to me. I made my lower lip tremble. With one more glance down the hall, he stepped back, waving us out. Tristan squeezed my hand, and we rushed from the cell before the guard could change his mind.

      I’d been in the hallway three times before but had never seen it. I’d either been blindfolded, paralyzed by fear, or lost in the fog. This time I purposely raised the fog, enough to clear my mind and focus on every detail, planning an escape route.

      The hallway was long, narrow, full of turns. Musty and damp. Gray metal doors, all sealed shut, lined the cinderblock walls.

      My parents were behind those doors.

      Strutting beside us, Weasel Face watched me with a suspicious frown. I blinked innocently at him.

      We reached the elevator. “Wait for us here,” Tristan told the guard.

      He snorted and rested his hand on his tranq gun. “No way.”

      The elevator doors slid open silently, and the three of us entered. We rode up four floors and arrived at ground level.

      We dashed close to the walls. This hallway was lined with closed doors as well, but instead of solid steel, they were made of heavy paneled wood and had brass knobs. Shadows stretched above us as the hall disappeared into complete blackness at the far end. From the other end came the faint tapping of booted footsteps—guards on patrol, perhaps. I tried to breathe slowly through my nose, sure they would be able to hear each exhale.

      We neared a door illuminated in red from the word EXIT hanging above it. Tristan seized my arm, pulled me in tight. Weasel Face noticed and gripped his gun.

      They were probably right to suspect I’d try to burst through that door and flee, but running hadn’t