Joshua swung his dark eyes to the front. “No. It’s spelled differently.”
He definitely acted like a child, despite his furtive look and brawn.
“What if he’s not sixteen?” Christian pondered as he stroked his beard. “What if he’s only saying that to save his arse?”
Joshua reached in his back pocket and slapped his wallet on the floor. “My alias ID shows my age. You can look it up if you want.”
Christian lifted the wallet and thumbed through the pockets. He didn’t give a shite about the kid’s ID; he wanted to see if there was a condom in there. Obviously they hadn’t done anything yet or else Carol would be licking her paws, but Christian didn’t quite know how it worked with Potentials. Sex made them become the Breed of their partner, probably through bodily fluids, but did it work when there was a barrier?
When all he found were a few twenties, ticket stubs to a concert, and a penny, he tossed it back in Joshua’s lap.
“How much do you know?” Viktor asked.
Joshua shook his dark hair away from his eyes. “That you’re kidnapping people.”
“We have done no such thing.”
“Oh?” He snapped his head toward Carol. “Do you want to be here?”
Her shoulders sagged. “No.”
Satisfied, Joshua met eyes with Viktor. “See? Kidnapping. Against her will.”
“We are protecting them,” Viktor fired back, his patience tried.
“From what? Life? Look, I know what she is. I know she’s a Potential. But that doesn’t mean you can hold them against their will.”
“Children cannot protect themselves,” Viktor stated flatly. “Especially human orphans. Would you like me to tell you a bedtime story that will give you nightmares about what happens to young Potentials taken by the wrong people? Shall I tell you about perverse men who want child brides, or perhaps you would like to know about the ones who are held in captivity and tortured in order to make them submissive? Or would you like to hear about a breed of Australian cat Shifters who were going extinct because all their women died, and they kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl to mate with every single one of them to produce more children? Or a young boy of seven who—”
“That’s enough.” Joshua cleared his throat, his eyes downcast. “I get it.”
“I have no time to finesse the truth. Following us was foolish,” Viktor fumed, not giving the kid any leniency. “You put all our lives at risk, and you could have killed her crashing the car!”
“I say we leave him on the side of the road,” Claude suggested, his canines still out.
Christian expected the kid to promise how he wouldn’t tell anyone, but he pressed his lips into a mulish line.
“Nyet. He knows too much. He has seen our faces and knows how we’re traveling.” Viktor turned his attention back to the kids. “How did you follow us this far? We were careful.”
Joshua bit his lip.
“I called him,” Carol confessed.
Viktor jerked his neck back. “With what?”
She looked up at him with wide green eyes. “Your phone. I had no idea we were going to a train station, so I got scared. When you left your phone on the floor, I sent him a message to let him know what was happening. I guess he found out from someone at the train station where all our stops would be and sped the whole way. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him at the station. He was gonna take me then, but that black-haired girl caught us.”
Viktor’s neck turned red, and Christian noticed a little vein appearing on his temple.
Christian furrowed his brow. “And tell me how it is the fella knew you were leaving to begin with? You don’t have phones, and he’s not a Potential.”
“Joshua and I made a promise to each other,” she explained. “They always sneak the kids out in the middle of the night during a transfer, so I said if something ever happened, I’d put a snowman in the window. It’s one thing I saved my money for. It lights up blue and red and green. Joshua lived across the street. We used to just look at each other and wave, but one night he climbed the fire escape to my window. After that we’d meet up on the top floor where nobody’s supposed to go.”
“And why didn’t he take you then?”
She shrugged. “I wanted to, but he said I only had a few years left to go before they released me. As long as we could see each other, it wasn’t a big deal.”
Viktor rubbed his hands together before stroking his beard. “You leave me with no choice. Go in the back until I call you out.”
