POV ESMERAY
The neon glow of Reno was nothing but a dying ember in the rearview mirror as we pushed deeper into the high desert of Nevada. The air was bone-chillingly cold, but the heat radiating from Ruan's back was enough to keep me anchored. I clung to him, my emerald silk dress ruined and stained with the soot of the casino, but my heart felt lighter than it had in days. Arthur Vance was gone. The man who had turned my world into a hunting ground was finally facing a darkness of his own.
Ruan drove with a new kind of intensity"not the frantic pace of an escape, but the steady, powerful rhythm of a man returning to his kingdom. We were only miles away from crossing the state line back toward a safe house in the mountains, a place where the Phantoms held absolute sway
"Are you
