Driven by Susan Kaye Quinn Page A

search every morning. I’ve tried paging through the regular public records, too, but kids’ files are sealed until they’re eighteen.
    Or until they turn up in the morgue.
    My door slides open without a tone or any sign of warning. I close my palm screen before I look up, expecting to see pinch-mouth back to gather up my breakfast dishes.
    It’s Ophelia.
    I stare for a beat too long, then push myself to my feet. “Back to finish me off?” The bitterness in my voice fans the hot coals of my anger and flares it to life again.
    The door closes behind her. Her little black dress hugs the soft curves of her body. Spots of light ripple across the metallic sheen of the dress’s fabric. Half the thing is black netting that reveals more of her chest than it hides.
    I hate that I notice.
    “Lirium, baby…” She takes a hesitant step toward me.
    “Seriously?” I ask. She freezes mid-step, still half a dozen feet away. “I think you can stop with all the pet names. Save it for the other suckers you lure in to work for Kolek.”
    She didn’t bring you here, a stupid voice inside me says. That was your idea. The stupid part also feels a twinge at the look of pain on her face.
    She doesn’t say anything for a moment, but she has the decency to drop her gaze and study her pale fingers instead of me. “You’re not going to believe me—”
    “Probably not.”
    Her shoulder twitches. She nods. “I don’t blame you for being angry, ba—Lirium.”
    I take a small amount of satisfaction from the way her hands twist, one gripping the other, like they’re in some kind of battle to hold back her discomfort.
    She finally looks up, eyes dark and round and soft. “But if I hadn’t stopped you, there’s no way you would have made it out of there alive.”
    “I guess we’ll never know.” I want her to say she was wrong to betray me, not make excuses for it. I may have been an idiot for trying to rescue her, for caring about her enough to try, but when we had a chance to run she didn’t have to cut me down before I got two steps out the door.
    She slides closer, untwists her hands, then stops at my stone cold look. “Lirium—”
    “You didn’t have to come with me,” I cut her off, neglecting the fact that I wouldn’t have left her behind. “But you didn’t have to stop me either. You’re worse than Valac. At least I already knew he was a lapdog for Kolek.”
     She stares at me with those big, dark eyes. “If I had run with you, they would have shot us both before we left the building. If I had let you run without me, they would have killed you. And you’re only here, stuck in Kolek’s mob, because of me, baby. I know that.”
    I cringe at the pet name, and I open my mouth to rebuke her again, but she’s still talking.
    “I’m not going to let them kill you, not if it’s possible for me to prevent it,” she says. “But running then was a Guppy move, baby. I had to stop you.”
    Her hands are spread wide. They’re asking forgiveness. Part of me wants to believe she was trying to protect me. That she’s not simply a “survivor,” as Valac calls her, willing to suck the life out of me to save her own skin. But the betrayal still stings. Anger and hope take turns churning my bruised stomach.
    I don’t let it show on my face.
    She inches closer in her teetering spiked-metal heels, peering up at me with solemn eyes, like she’s hanging on every breath that’s heaving out of my chest. She’s close enough that I can smell her lilies-and-rose funeral perfume.
    “Can you forgive me?”
    “Maybe.” A sinking part of me wants to latch onto her explanation like a life raft. Practically speaking, I don’t have a lot of options for help inside the Kolek estate. If she won’t escape with me, then I’ll at least need her to not stand in my way. The last thing I want is to have to fight her. I’m not strong enough, even if I wasn’t half beaten up. Plus the idea of fighting Ophelia makes my stomach tie in