“I told you,” Lacey whispered, her mouth now at Mia’s temple, as if comforting a child. “I told you he’d get tired of you.”

Then she was gone, lost in the festival’s crowd, Mia left once again watching Cash watch Asher and Monroe as they walked away from him together, just like that first night at the beach.

Mia blinked back into the present, even as the memories of a million little barbs wrapped around her, slid into her chest, her belly, every empty, aching part of her. Lacey had chipped away at Mia that summer, slow and methodical, patient and vicious.

Lacey leaned forward until her nose brushed lovingly against Mia’s cheek. Her lips came to rest along Mia’s hairline, so she could murmur in her ear, just like she had that one night. “You, darling, are my masterpiece.”

And maybe Lacey was too used to the way she could make her puppets dance to worry about Mia. But Mia wasn’t a scared little girl.

She deliberately let out a shattered breath, one that made it sound like she was on the verge of giving in completely.

Then, without hesitation, Mia brought her bound hands up and over Lacey’s head so that her wrists rested at the nape of Lacey’s neck. There was only a second to savor the flash of surprise on Lacey’s face before Mia used the leverage she’d just gained to slam her forehead into the woman’s nose.

The crack that sliced through the quiet was satisfying, though Mia knew she wouldn’t go down completely. The hit had done enough that Lacey went a little limp, her hands clutching at her face. Mia unlooped her arms from around Lacey’s neck and pushed her, hard, so that she went easily to the floor.

Then Mia rolled up to her feet and repeated the motion she’d executed in the basement, bringing her arms up and then down quickly. By this point her wrists were rubbed raw, bleeding in spots, but it didn’t matter. The plastic snapped.

She glanced at Robert, who was staring back wide eyed. When his finger didn’t twitch against the trigger, Mia bent, and with a few easy tugs the knot around her ankles relaxed. Not only had it been tied by inexpert hands, but as Lacey had been talking, Mia had been slowly working it loose with small movements.

Mia had two options: Either fade into the shadows of the house in the hope of getting lost in the vastness of its long hallways and empty rooms. Or risk the temperatures outside, the snow, and the ice with her damp jeans and T-shirt.

Get the hell out of there, Hart.

Without hesitation, Mia ran to the door, flung it open, and fled into the safety of the night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

IZZY