"No!" I cried. "How?!"

"The man has lots of connections," Gage shook his head and sighed.

"Then fire the whole fucking lot of them!" I screamed, not even thinking about what I was saying. "Why the hell can't anyone do their job right? And who the fuck is letting him get away with all this shit!?"

"Jules, calm down," my dad said, putting his arm around me.

"No," I bawled, turning to bury my face in his chest. "You don't know how evil that man is. He has no conscience at all. He's coming after us, I just know it."

Harry just stood and stared at everyone, a completely blank look on his face.

Poor Detective Gage had been trying to get a word in the whole time I was freaking out. "We are going to move you to a more secure location," he finally managed to say. "Get your things packed and we can go from there. I have a few officers planning to meet me here so we can escort you."

"Why?" I cried and slumped down on the couch. "Why can't this just be over?"

"Come on, Jules," Harry said softly. "Let's pack our things."

I blindly followed him to our room and shook my head in disgust. We had just shared an intimate connection there and now we were practically running for our lives again. I couldn't live like this, with the constant upheaval, thinking one moment that we're safe and the next that we might be hunted down by a crazy man. I sat on the edge of the bed and just looked around, unable to force myself to move.

"Jules," Harry said. I looked at him and noticed my suitcase was almost packed.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm just so scared."

He came and knelt in front of me. "I am, too, Baby. But we're not alone. We have your parents, my mum, and Clive. And the police are looking out for us. We'll be all right."

"How can you be sure?" I whimpered.

"I can feel it," he said. "Everything is going to be fine."

I leaned over and kissed him, lingering long enough to make my heart flutter, long enough for him to impart a bit of courage to me. "Okay," I said and gathered up the rest of my things.

Once we were all packed, Detective Gage, Detective Hughes and another officer came to escort us. They told us, "We're going to take you out the back. There are two unmarked SUV's waiting for you there. Once you get inside, just sit tight until we arrive at the next location and one of us opens the doors for you."

I nodded without fully comprehending the reality of this situation. How had my life turned into this in less than six months' time?

I climbed into the first SUV with Harry and his mum and I burrowed into his side after I buckled my seat belt. I knew he was afraid and I felt the sting of guilt, feeling like I should be the one to reassure him. But I was exhausted by this process and couldn't muster up enough courage even for myself, let alone anyone else.

We arrived at the new location, an extended stay suite hotel on the east side of Vancouver. They had considered moving us further east still, but they wanted us to be in their jurisdiction. We drove up to the loading bay at the back of the hotel and waited until the police officers opened our doors and led us to our suites. Our suites were directly across the hall from each other, each with two bedrooms and a kitchenette. Harry, his mum and I would stay in one suite, and my parents and Clive would stay in the other. We decided to swap room cards so we'd always be able to get into the other suite. The space was pleasant enough but my mind was still heavy with worry.

"How is this safer than the other place?" I asked the officers.

"First of all, it's not reserved in any of your names," Detective Hughes answered. "The hotel also has heightened security, with guests only being able to arrive through the front door and two side doors during the day. All of them are on security surveillance. For guests and visitors arriving after 11:00 PM, they can only enter by checking in at the front desk."

Like any of that will stop Theodore, I thought sarcastically. He would scale the side of the building to get to us if he had to.

Detective Gage told Anne, Harry and myself, "It should be obvious to the three of you should lay low as much as possible. Stay off of social media completely." He turned to me, "Have your parents go out and run errands for you if necessary, order in for meals." Then turning to Anne, he said, "You are a key witness and Theodore does not know you're back in the country. So it's extremely important for you to stay off of his radar. Do not leave the hotel without checking with the police first. We will be putting you in touch with a few officers in the Vancouver department since they're a bit closer than we are and can respond more quickly, but we are still very much on the case."

"Thank you," we all said quietly as they left.

"Jules," Harry whispered when we arrived in our new bedroom, noticing my hunched shoulders and my worried expression.

"Just don't ever leave my sight," I sniffled. "As long as I know you're okay, I'm okay."

He slipped his strong arms around my waist and I stood on my tiptoes to sling mine around his neck, burying my face into his shoulder and wishing that this could just be over. Anne came in saying, "How would you-" and then she stopped. "Oh, I'm sorry." I let go of Harry and noticed that Anne looked a little embarrassed. I was embarrassed, too.

"No, I'm sorry," I said. "It must have been a shock to learn Harry was alive but then to come and find out that we're...involved. Maybe we should have been a bit more discreet or-."

"Nonsense," Anne grinned and came over to hug Harry and me at the same time. "Clive told me about you. I just didn't want to interrupt when I walked in just now."

Harry chimed in and playfully said, "Yeah, you're gonna have to get used to us hugging and kissing because we do it a lot."

"Harry!" I barked out a laugh.

"It's fine," Anne said. "I'm not embarrassed by a sweet display of affection once in a while. Just don't get too carried away," she winked.

Oh my god. If I wasn't embarrassed before....

"Well I was just going to ask if you two wanted some dinner. How about a pizza? We can order from the in-house restaurant." She seemed remarkably calm for the fact that Theodore was on the loose.

"That sounds good," Harry said and I agreed.

We sat in our new suite and waited for the pizza to arrive. Clive and my parents planned to eat with us and then I knew everyone would tuck in early. "Care to tell me about how things started between the two of you?" Anne asked. "I mean I know you were hired as his nanny," she began but then left it to us to fill in the blanks.

I felt my face redden. "It sounds terrible, doesn't it?" I said and she shook her head, still smiling. "I knew early on that something wasn't right with the way Theodore was presenting things. From the fact that he told originally hired me, telling me Harry was seven, and then telling me he was seventeen when I arrived. It was obvious to me that Harry was very intelligent." I glanced at Harry and his face broke into a shy grin. "I figured out pretty quickly that he was not learning disabled and there wasn't much that pointed to any other kind of disability either. The worst things I saw were the sleepiness and he had some tics and stuttering. How much of this do you know?" I asked before continuing.

"Clive mentioned the prescription drugs but he didn't go into great detail," Anne said.

"It appears that Theodore had planned a particular cocktail of drugs so he would have side effects that mirrored some symptoms of intellectual disability, like lack of coordination, spasms and tics, stuttering and general confusion and mental fog."

Anne closed her eyes and held back her emotions. "Oh, that wretched man!" She said through gritted teeth. "It's lucky he didn't kill Harry!"

"Right, so after I looked up all the pills online by their description - Theodore wouldn't tell me what Harry was taking - I contacted my brother-in-law who is a doctor. He said Harry was taking more than the recommended number of Central Nervous System drugs and that the doses were very high. He helped me to come up with a plan to lower them to safe dosages while watching for any symptoms of actual disorders he might have. But Theodore kept adding more prescriptions without Harry ever seeing a doctor!" Anne shook her head in disgust and pulled Harry next to her with a protective hug. "That's what led to the overdose," I said. "You knew about that, right?"

Anne answered, "Not in any detail."

I recounted the story of how Theodore threatened to fire me if Harry didn't take all his pills, but then Harry and I decided how we wanted to handle it." I looked at Harry. "I wanted him to know what was going on and to help with the decisions." I finished telling her about the overdose and how Theodore's men came to take Harry away.

"You poor thing," Anne said to Harry, kissing his forehead. "And you, too," she said to me. "You must have been terrified." I nodded.

"I felt like I would die, not knowing what they did with him, or if anything happened to him," I said softly. "And, I'm not proud of this, but I, had broken into Theodore's files and found some of Harry's medical records and his old wellness check updates. That's when I figured out Harry was not 17, but 20." My face flamed red. "I promise that nothing happened between us before I knew how old he was."

Anne chuckled as did my parents. "Don't worry about that, darling," she assured me. "We all know that Harry is very smart and capable. I knew it as soon as we saw each other again. He's an adult, perfectly capable of making his own decisions." Harry's shy grin reappeared.

The pizza arrived just then, so we dished up and everyone returned to the lounge area so we could keep talking.

Together, Harry and I told Anne the rest of the story, from Theodore bringing Harry back unconscious and then withholding his medications to our escape attempts and finally to the night we started the fire. Interspersed with the harrowing story of our captivity, we told her about our growing feelings for each other and eventually admitting those feelings to each other. She motioned for me to sit by her other side and she hugged Harry and me together tightly saying, "I'm just so thankful that you're both okay now. I wish...I wish I would have been here." She started to get emotional and I squeezed her hand. "If only I had come back to check on the company and the inheritance, I might have..." Her words were interrupted by her sobs.

"Don't blame yourself, Mum," Harry soothed. "You thought I was dead." His voice cracked a bit as he said it. "It's not your fault," he continued. "But I missed you so much."

Soon we were all sobbing again; crying was becoming a daily ritual for all of us as we processed everything that had happened and everything that was still happening.

Finally, Anne spoke again. "Well now, there's nothing we can do about the past. We just have to make sure we do whatever we can to put that bastard in prison for the rest of his life." Harry chuckled at his mom's curse. "And then we can be together as a family and not worry about being separated ever again."

"How do you do it?" I asked her.

"Do what, dear?"

"How can you be so hopeful? So positive? You and Harry have both lost all the years of his childhood when you should have been the most important people in each other's lives. How can you let go of the bitterness? I have to admit, I hate Theodore so much that I fantasize about killing him myself." As I said it, I knew it sounded terrible, but justified all the same. "I just want him to pay for everything he's done. And he has only messed up the last few months of my life. He completely screwed you both over. I can't understand why you're not more angry."

Anne sighed deeply. "Darling, I'm very angry at everything he has done. And some days it threatens to overtake me. Who knows? Maybe some day it will. In the past few weeks, I've learned not only that my son is still alive but that the man responsible for him kept him in captivity and drugged like a criminal. Maybe I haven't fully processed it all yet. But the bottom line is that I can't do anything to go back and change what's been done, can I? None of us can. We can simply do everything in our power to bring Theodore to justice and decide to be grateful for the time we have ahead of us. And I'm so grateful for you," she said, squeezing me tightly again. "Who knows how long Harry would have been trapped there if you hadn't come along?"

"I think Harry was figuring things out by the time I got there. He was definitely more aware than anyone gave him credit for." I reached across Anne's lap and grasped Harry's hand.

"So now, we can look forward to being together," Anne reiterated. "I'm devastated that I missed Harry's childhood but it's overshadowed by the joy that he's still alive. And I hope you two don't plan on getting rid of me because I'm here to stay," she chuckled. "Or wherever you end up, I'm coming along."

"Sounds perfect, Mum," Harry said warmly.

"I didn't get to watch you grow up but maybe I can watch my grandchildren grow up," she said and Harry's face turned pink with his adorable smile. "Of course, I hope you're being careful to avoid that for now," she added and now my face matched Harry's. "You've both been through so much. It will be a while before you're ready for that responsibility."

"Mom," Harry whined and my parents chuckled softly.

I burst out laughing and Anne was giggling as she said, "I'm just looking out for you, but I know you're both very wise. Consider the subject closed." We continued giggling and hugging each other until the food arrived.

My parents and Clive had tucked into their suite for the evening and we also opted to head to bed shortly thereafter since it was getting quite late. I snuggled into Harry's side as we drifted off and I allowed myself to believe that the worst was behind us and that now, all we had to do was lay low, get through the trial and plan our future.

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