If I don’t make it out, can you try to get Aric away from them? Here are papers I managed to fix up in case you need them.

I know you’ll want to call the police for me, but you mustn’t. One of the Rescue police is a member of the Patriot Zealots. Don’t call the FBI or others. Just don’t.

But…please, Frankie. Get Aric out.

Kit

Frankie realized her palms were pressed together in front of her chest. As if prayer would fix this. Kit, what have you fallen into? She opened the other papers. There was a form, witnessed by a couple of people, giving guardianship of Aric, Frankie’s godson, to her.

It made sense. Aric wasn’t Obadiah’s birth son; the boy was three when Kit fell prey to the creep.

There was also a handwritten list of the reasons why Frankie had been nominated as guardian and why no one else, especially Obadiah, should get oversight of the child.

Pictures of Kit and Aric were enclosed. Frankie picked one up.

Blond, blue-eyed Aric resembled his birth father—a man who’d been in Kit’s life for less than a week. She’d never even learned his last name.

Since the picture of Aric showed him as around two years old, Kit’s first husband had probably taken the photos. Even though Aric wasn’t his, he’d been good to the boy, even when addicted to narcotics. He’d died of an overdose before the marriage was a year old.

Poor Kit had crummy luck with men. While she was still reeling from her husband’s death, Obadiah scooped her up and married her.

Frankie riffled through the photos and found none from this year. The religious fanatic of a spouse probably didn’t believe in cameras.

Aric would be turning four this summer. “Get Aric out.” The little boy was in danger.

Oh, Kit.

As the words on the papers blurred, Frankie realized her hands were trembling. Cazzo. Fuck! She didn’t know what to do—but she had to do something.

Roommates for much of college and a couple of years afterward, she and Kit were sisters-by-choice.

Frankie’d been Kit’s birthing partner and helped raise little Aric until Kit married the first time. When the newlyweds moved to Texas, Frankie had bawled her eyes out.

Sure, she had lots of friends, but none like Kit. No matter how much time or distance—and Texas was certainly distant—they always picked up where they’d left off.

“Amica mia, you should have come back to New York when your husband died.” Instead, Obadiah had deluded Kit until she’d disappeared into “the little woman”. The perfect wife.