by Kieran Scott
I swiped the detritus from the dye box into the garbage. That was when I heard Oliver’s voice. He was talking to someone. Quietly.
I’d gone through his phone while he was taking a shower. I wasn’t proud of it, but I needed to check. There had been nothing unusual on it at all. A few missed calls from Robin and Brian and a couple dozen texts from them, which I hadn’t read. There were no calls from unknown numbers, no cryptic outgoing texts, and all his contacts were names I recognized from school, plus a couple of social workers.
I’d been totally relieved. Until now. He hadn’t told me he was going to call anyone. And it was after midnight.
Holding my breath, I took a step closer to the flimsy door that separated the crappy motel bathroom from the crappy motel bedroom.
“Yeah. A couple of days, I think,” he said, then paused. “You never know with these things, I guess.”
Who was he talking to? Robin? Brian? Or was it someone else? And what were “these things” he was talking about?
I opened the door, knowing his reaction would be my answer. But my jaw dropped. He was sitting on the bed, phone to his ear, surrounded by stacks of cash.
“I gotta go,” he said before he set his phone aside. “That was Brian. I told him your grandmother was sick so he wanted to make sure everything was okay. Wow! You look completely—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said, blushing as I tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “We’ll get to that. But first, what the heck are you doing?”
Oliver looked around at the piles of bills. “Do you realize how much money this is?” he asked. “Fifty thousand dollars. Minus what we spent on gas and hair dye. Fifty thousand dollars!”
“Dude. Keep your voice down,” I said, hugging myself. “The walls in this place are paper thin.”
“Do you even understand what we could do with fifty thousand dollars?” he whispered.
“Yeah. We can pay for hotel rooms and gas and food until we figure out who the hell is trying to kill me and why.”
I started to shove the money back into the bag. Oliver grabbed my wrist and rose up to his knees.
“Or.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “We could get an apartment. Get jobs. We’d never have to go back.”
“You, are crazy,” I said with a laugh.
“No. I’m completely serious.” He looped his arm around my waist and planted a long, firm kiss on my lips. “What the hell is there to go back to anyway? Out here it’s just you and me. Are you really telling me you feel an overwhelming need to hang around Lockhart for another year of high school?”
“No, but you do,” I said, shoving him off of me in a playful way. “What about soccer and your friends? What about your scholarship and college? What about Trevor? Why wouldn’t you want to go back?” I asked, grabbing a few more stacks of money. “You’re, like, the God of Lockhart High School. Your life is practically perfect.”
Actually, his life was entirely perfect. If not for the fact that his mom was gone and his dad had ditched him, he had everything a kid could want. He loved his life. Aside from the occasional brooding moments about his parents and worrying about his autistic foster brother, Oliver was the happiest person I’d ever known.
“Whatever.” He went quiet and sat down against the pillows, drawing the German’s tablet toward him. “Forget I said anything.”
My stomach felt hollow. What was wrong with me? Oliver was daydreaming about our future, and I had to go and be all realistic on him. I finished putting away the money and tossed the bag into the corner. Then I crawled onto the bed next to him and lay on my side, propped up on my elbow.
“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I have a lot on my mind. But you are going to college next year, right? That’s the plan.”
“I guess,” he said, not looking at me. He typed random numbers into the four-space password line over and over and over again.
“You are,” I said, tugging the tablet out of his hand. “We both are.” I cuddled against his chest and wrapped an arm around him. The glasses pressed uncomfortably against my face, so I took them off. “Well, as long as we don’t get killed first,” I joked.
“Exactly,” he said under his breath.
But he didn’t say it the way I’d said it. He didn’t say it like he was joking, like he was trying to keep things light. He said it like he meant it.
chapter 7
OLIVER
Every inch of me hurt, and I’d only been driving for an hour. My eyes hurt from glancing from the rearview mirror to the road. My ankle ached from holding my foot at the exact same angle on the gas pedal. My shoulders and hands burned from gripping the wheel. My back and head throbbed from the tension of it all. Every time a car zoomed past us in the fast lane, I flinched. My armpits were stained with sweat and my hairline was wet with it too, and all I could think about was keeping Kaia from noticing how tense I was. Well that, and not getting pulled over by the highway patrol. I was probably the only person who could take apart a car and put it back together with no problem, but was terrified of actually driving one.
Because, technically, I didn’t have a license. I had a learner’s permit, but only because they offered classes through school. Robin had refused to pay for the test or take me to the DMV. Whenever I asked she’d say, “You don’t have a car. Why do you need a license?” Deep down I was sure she was afraid that if I had a license, I’d steal her car and run, ditch the crappy situation the foster care system had dumped me in. And she might have been right.
Not that Kaia would have come with me if I bailed. We’d basically put that issue to bed last night. But I wasn’t thinking about that now. I was thinking about whether the mattress that was tied to the car in front of us was going to fly off and hit our windshield.
Besides, whether or not Kaia would have left with me if I’d had the guts to steal a car didn’t matter. We were here now. Free. What mattered was keeping her with me. Keeping us both alive. And not ever going back.
A black pickup truck leaned on its horn as it passed me and the gold Camry behind me, revving its engine like some kind of badass statement. God, what was wrong with people? I was doing the speed limit, loser.
The truck reminded me of Jack’s truck though, and I wondered what kind of conniption fit Robin was having at this point. I’d turned off my phone last night after I talked to Brian specifically because I didn’t want to be tempted to pick up her calls or read her texts. I knew how guilty she would make me feel, and I knew the guilt would mess with my head—make me consider going back. I wasn’t about to let that happen. I’d made a decision. I’d chosen Kaia.
Except there was Trevor. I couldn’t think about Trevor. He was my only weak spot in all this. The only person at home who really needed me. I used to think Kaia needed me. But now I wasn’t entirely sure.
Kaia, meanwhile, seemed hyper alert and almost happy, possibly because she was finally able to search the Internet. There had been no 4G signal at the motel, and when she’d tried to call her uncle Marco—who, it turned out, was her mother’s brother—the number had gone straight to voice mail.
“Anything?” I asked, as she tapped away on her iPad.
Another three cars blew by us, and I tried to ignore them.
“Not a single news story.” She glanced over at me, lips pursed. I still hadn’t gotten used to the sight of her with blond hair. It made her eyes look like they were an entirely different color. Less blue and more gray. “How is a high-speed chase and shooting on the highway not front page news?”
“Maybe no one was paying attention?” I suggested. “Maybe the people who heard the gunshots thought they were fireworks or a blown tire?”
It wasn’t entirely out of the question. People in our neighborhood were forever setting off fireworks, even in the middle of the damn day.
“Or someone is covering up the story.” The way she said it ma
de me feel naïve, but I didn’t reply. Maybe I was naïve. Compared to her, I definitely was. So I kept my questions to myself and my eyes on the road.
“I’m putting in the first coordinates.”
There was half a second of silence and then, “Oh my God.”
“What?” I glanced at her and started to veer slightly off the road, then quickly yanked the wheel back, heart in my throat. She didn’t even seem to notice.
“The coordinates. They’re…”
Kaia trailed off and started humming. It took me a few bars to recognize the song, and when I did, I started to wonder if she was losing it. “Um, Kaia? Why are you humming the tune to Elmo’s World?”
“Holy crap it is!” she exclaimed, then started tapping again.
“Can you please clue me in here?” I asked.
“What?” She looked up. “Oh, sorry. The first set of coordinates is the location of another one of my parents’ safe houses. The one in Chicago. And the second coordinates…” She glanced at the screen. “It’s for the safe house in upstate New York.”
“What does any of this have to do with Elmo’s World?” I asked as two school buses full of football players passed our car.
“When my parents taught me the addresses of these safe houses, I was really little. They put them to the tune of a familiar song so I’d remember them.”
“Big Elmo fan, were ya?” I teased.
She shot me a scathing look as she typed in another set of numbers. “You weren’t? Because that might be a relationship deal breaker.”
I laughed. “Have I told you lately that you’re adorable?”
“Gee, thanks,” she said. Then she turned back to her iPad and back to business. At least I’d gotten her to crack a joke. That was something.
“What was this guy’s deal?” she murmured. “How did he get all these locations? My parents and I were the only ones who knew where they were. They never even told Marco.”
“So what does this mean?” I asked her.
“I have no idea,” Kaia said. “Maybe if he didn’t find me at Henry and Bess’s he was going to check all of the safe houses to see if I was hiding out at one? Or maybe when he was done with me he was going to search these places for something else? Do you think he’d already been to the coordinates he’d crossed off? What else could he be looking for?”
“Money? Weapons?” I ventured.
Kaia shook her head. “I don’t think so. If he’s involved in some German crime syndicate, he’d have access to all that. It has to be something else.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe he was looking for proof that my parents pulled off the Hamburg job?”
“But why?” I asked. “What would he get out of proving your parents killed someone if they’re already…you know—”
“Dead,” she finished quietly. She squinted against the midday sun. “What if he was looking for my parents? He did ask me where my mother was. Maybe he thought she was hiding out at one of the safe houses.”
I could hear the hope in her voice, and I knew I had to step lightly here. I didn’t want to get her hopes up—or up even higher, I guess—but I also didn’t want to kibosh them. Because what if it was true? What if she could get her parents back?
“Maybe,” I said brilliantly.
She tilted her head, a blond lock falling over those sexy-librarian glasses. “What do you say we find out?”
I smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”
My fingers curled tighter around the steering wheel, and I checked the rearview mirror.
The same gold Camry had been behind us for a while. I couldn’t see the driver, but considering every other car on the road had felt the need to accelerate past our slow-moving vehicle, it was kind of weird that it was still behind us. At least there was no one in the passenger seat, which meant it wasn’t the guys from the gas station. Scarface and his sidekick. Their mere appearance had scared the living hell out of Kaia.
I looked at the speedometer. Fifty-nine miles an hour. Crap. The limit here was fifty-five. I eased off the gas.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “Where to?”
“We head to Chicago. Englewood to be exact. It was the first set of coordinates on his list, and I want to see if I can find what he was looking for.”
I glanced at the rearview mirror again. The Camry was still there, the same distance behind our car as it had been for the last twenty minutes.
“Chicago? Awesome. I’ve always wanted to visit a big city.”
My dad had sent me a birthday card from Chicago once, five years ago. At least, that was what the postmark had said. That card had included a twenty-dollar bill. He must have found a decent job there, at least for a while. My dad was in construction, an HVAC installation specialist, but he’d never kept a job for long. Back when my mom was alive, he used to try to stay close to where we were living—I guess she kept him in line, in a way—always reminding him he had a son he was supposed to be around for. But once she was gone, he’d barely lasted two weeks. I bet he loved the freedom to move from place to place, not always looking for a job within the same few counties among the same few companies. Clearly I wasn’t enough to keep him rooted.
My throat was tight and I cleared it loudly. Screw my dad. It wasn’t like he was still in Chicago. The last card, in March, had come from frickin’ Albuquerque. But Chicago sounded cool. Maybe I could convince Kaia to stay there. I bet I could get work in a big city like that. Of course, Kaia was right: if I didn’t go home, I’d have to give up on college. My early admissions application to UNC Charlotte was mostly filled out, and I was pretty sure I could get a scholarship, but it wasn’t like that would happen if I didn’t go back and finish out the season and then get my diploma. For so long I’d seen college as my ticket out, and I felt squirmy thinking about giving up on that goal.
Kaia stowed her iPad inside her backpack and toyed with her locket. She let out a long yawn before she spoke. “Chicago’s not that big.”
“No?” I asked.
“I mean, compared to other cities.” She briefly lifted her shoulders.
“How many cities have you been to?” I asked.
“Oh, tons. New York, Boston, Houston, Miami, Paris, Marrakesh, Edinburgh, Tokyo, New Delhi. Honestly? If you want to see a big city, go to India. They’re all big over there.”
My stomach coiled into knots. I’d always thought Kaia was a small-town kid like me. It was one of the things we’d bonded over. Occasionally, when I felt the need to be as far away from Robin’s house as possible, I’d show up at Kaia’s, and we’d go on adventures. At least, that’s what we’d jokingly call them—our afternoon adventures. I’d take my bike, and she’d take her skateboard, and we’d ride from our little suburb into Charleston, then explore the old historical streets, making up stories about the people who used to live there. Sometimes we’d even break into one of the courtyard gardens and stare up at the stars through the blades of a palm tree, dreaming up plans for the future and all the places we’d go. The great thing about Kaia was she was never in a rush to get home. It seemed like our daydreams were a safe place. A place full of hope. An escape.
But she wasn’t a small-town girl. She didn’t need our afternoon adventures the way I did, because she’d been everywhere. She’d seen things I could never even hope to see. She’d traveled and experienced and lived. I suddenly felt like she’d been humoring me all that time. The poor foster kid who would never really go anywhere.
“What?” she asked, sitting up straighter. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I tried to shake off my jealousy and humiliation, along with this unsettling feeling that maybe I—a kid who’d never been outside the South Carolina state lines until today—wasn’t enough for her, the wealthy daughter of ex-international spies-slash-assassins. “You must have thought I was so s
tupid, acting like riding my bike into Charleston was some big, exciting, like, voyage into the unknown or something.”
“Oliver! I love our afternoon adventures. Do you have any idea what I would have been doing if we weren’t out exploring? I’d be endlessly searching the Internet. Laying on my bed and wondering what had happened to my parents and whether I could have—”
She stopped and swallowed hard. “No. You have no idea how much all those times together meant to me.”
We were quiet for a second. I wanted to believe her. But it didn’t change the fact that she’d already been to half the places we’d planned to see together.
I glanced at the gold Camry again. It was still there.
“Well…how am I ever supposed to take you anywhere new if you’ve already been everywhere?” I asked.
Her brow furrowed as she turned in her seat, pressing her back to the window. She snapped her fingers. “California. I’ve never been to California,” she said. “I’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean. From this side, anyway.”
I laughed, the knot in my chest loosening. “Okay then. One day, before we die, I’m going to take you to California.”
My eyes darted to the rearview. Yep. Still there.
“Why do you keep doing that?”
“Keep doing what?” I asked, stalling. I didn’t want to worry Kaia. She’d had enough stress since yesterday.
“You keep looking in the mirror.”
I could tell she wanted to check for herself but was forcing herself not to. Her whole body was rigid.
“There’s a car,” I said. “It’s been there for a while now.”
Kaia’s skin went pale beneath her freckles. “Get off at this exit.”
We were already approaching the off ramp. “What? Here?”
“Yes! Go! Now!”
“You want me to change lanes, just like that? Like—”
Kaia groaned, grabbed the wheel, and turned it. I hit the blinker and at the last second, we zoomed off the road and dipped down the ramp. I jammed the brake, slamming us against our seat belts and narrowly avoided crushing the car in front of us. I shot her a look, she shrugged, and then I eased to a more exit-worthy speed.