From inside his small Kentucky home, Quill shoved clean, folded winter clothing for a woman and three young children into a good-size box.

“I don’t like this plan at all.” Frieda put an ice pack and individual yogurts into a cooler, along with sandwiches and fresh fruit.

He closed the corrugated box, folding the four flaps so the top would remain shut. “I know. Just breathe, find a distraction, and it’ll be over in a few days.” Even now as he stood on the brink of the most dangerous escape plan he’d ever been involved with, he couldn’t erase Ariana’s face from his mind. It was as if every one of her amazing traits was tattooed inside him. How could she be confused about who she was? It didn’t make sense.

He’d met with Melanie from WEDV ten days ago. When he’d told Frieda a little about the society and that they were always in need of clothing for women, babies, and children, she started collecting the items.

Quill had come home a few days ago to tend to personal business and have uninterrupted time to plan an escape for someone named Gia and her three kids.

Frieda closed the cooler and began putting away all the sandwich fixings. “I don’t understand why you need to be the one to do this. Isn’t this the kind of stuff the police do? Or Child Protective Services? Some organization?”

“My understanding is the woman turned to two agencies for help at some point in the past, although I’m not sure which ones. All I know is it turned out really bad for her, and she won’t trust them again. But I’m not the only one involved in this plan. There’s a team.” He hadn’t chosen the team or even met them, so he had to trust each one was as good as Melanie said. The older woman had been involved in these kinds of escape plans for three decades, but this one had even her rattled. The ex-husband was well connected to violent criminals and had no aversion to killing anyone who got in his way. So why wasn’t he still in prison? A legal technicality. And once he was out, how he had found some of his most vulnerable victims, also known as his ex-wife and children, no one knew. His abusive and controlling ways were well documented, and yet, ignoring all restraining orders, he had kidnapped them and moved to another state, violating his parole. They could call the police and have him arrested for breaking parole, but with his criminal connections he’d make one call, and his ex-wife, Gia Rice, would then be at the mercy of some other maniac until Rice was released. She needed a clean, untraceable getaway. Her fear was if she didn’t escape soon, he would kill her.

Quill pulled his phone out of his pocket, making sure he had the addresses and contact numbers of everyone involved in the plan.

“You’re the one escorting her and the children from the loading dock of the grocery store to your vehicle, Quill. You’re the only one who won’t be behind the scenes.”

“That’s not actually true. But if all goes well, Rice will think the others are mere bystanders. What do you want me to say?” He touched the Notes app and reread the plan one more time.

He’d devised the strategy himself, so he had it memorized, but he wanted to assure himself that he’d explained every detail very clearly in the e-mail he’d sent to the others. One weakness in the plan was that Gia had never seen Quill. When faced with putting her children into a vehicle with a strange man, could she make herself follow through? So far their only interactions had been through notes passed to her with her grocery receipts by the cashier, an older woman named Yvonne.

Quill’s phone buzzed as a text came in. He clicked on it and read a construction-related message from his eldest brother. “Look, I’ve volunteered to do what I’m good at. Yvonne passed her the information about my plan and about me, without mentioning my name. Gia later returned a note to her that said she trusts my plan, but she’ll only follow through if I’m the one carrying it out. Was there anyone else you would’ve agreed to leave with?” His fingers moved effortlessly across the screen as he responded to his brother.

“No,” Frieda whispered. “Only you. But if we’d been caught, they’d have only used words to keep us from leaving, things about going to hell and such. At no time did we fear for our physical safety.”

He lowered the phone and looked at the young woman who was like a sister to him. Because she had needed protection from her father and the church leaders, she’d had to walk away from her siblings, which broke her heart in ways she’d yet to recover from. The idea that something might happen to him, the one who’d made her escape possible and who was like a brother to her, was unbearable.

He slid his phone into his jeans pocket and gently clutched her shoulders. “I’ll be fine.”

Frieda slid her arms into her coat and grabbed the cooler of food. “You will text me every hour.”

He picked up the box of winter clothes and headed out the front door. “Well, maybe not every hour. It’s much more unsafe to text and drive than it is to steal a maniac’s kids and former wife.”

“Was that supposed to be funny?” She paused on the front steps while Quill locked his house.

“Yeah, it was. I guess it fell short.” They went toward his car, snow underfoot. For the most part, Kentucky got less than half the snow Pennsylvania did, but every winter since he’d moved here three years ago, it had seemed more than ample.

He opened the car’s back door and set the box inside before taking the cooler from Frieda. “You do know that if I text you every hour, I’ll be sending messages while you’re asleep.”

“But that way the text will be there when I wake up, and it’ll assure me everything is okay.”

Quill suppressed a sigh. “Sure, I can do that.”

“I’m a terrible person.”

Quill knew where this was going without her saying anything else. “You’re not. You had your life ripped apart, and you’re healing.”

“By leaving with me when you did, you gave up a life with Ariana.”

“No one knows if that would’ve worked out. She was a fifteen-year-old kid with a crush on someone five years older. I’m just glad I never let her know how I felt. But seriously, what were the chances of that relationship actually working out?”

“Remarkable. You had a remarkable chance. I was her best friend, and I know.”

“Okay, you’re not helping.”

“Sorry. I’m just trying to be honest with myself and you.”

“Here’s the bottom line. She will marry Rudy, and they’ll make Mamm a grandmother at least seven times over.”

“Berta isn’t even related to Ariana.”

Quill shrugged. “Family can be whoever you choose. Ariana and Mamm are bonded in ways that make them feel as if they’re related, but—”

“But it’s way past time for me to go see Berta face-to-face, and I think I’m ready. Ariana too, if she can meet me somewhere other than her house.”

“Okay.” He was glad to hear it but cautious. She’d made this kind of proclamation a few times over the last couple of months. Would she really follow through this time? “When you’re ready, let me know. I think it’s safe to say that Ari would gladly meet you at her café after hours and after dark.”

“That’s a good idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“It takes genius-level thinking.” He grinned and opened the front passenger door. “Let’s get you to your place, and I’ll be on my way.”