“No, I’m not famous. Just passing through.”
“Are you sure? ’Cause you look like you could be someone. Nothing exciting ever happens around here.” She waited for an answer, making it clear she wasn’t going to let it go.
Atticus didn’t want anyone remembering him. He lowered his sunglasses and reeled her into his gaze. “I’m invisible. You don’t remember ever seeing me, and in three seconds, you’ll walk away with no memory of this encounter. One, two, three.”
The girl pivoted on her heel and walked off.
After selecting the clothes he wanted, he searched for hats. Several men were wearing baseball caps, so he chose the camouflage style and headed to the checkout area.
“Pleeeeease.”A little boy with ruddy cheeks gripped candy in one hand and his mother’s shirt in the other.
Atticus flicked his gaze to the conveyer belt. The cashier was scanning milk, ground beef, generic cereal, and other staples. Not a single luxury item to be found. Even the pain medicine was generic. He watched the woman counting her money while struggling to ignore the pleas from her little boy.
“Joey, put that back. Mama doesn’t have enough today.” She handed the cashier coupons and waited for him to adjust the price.
The boy pouted and reluctantly put the candy back on the shelf as he must have done a thousand times before.
“Hold on,” she said to the cashier. “I know I have a coupon in here for the meat.”
After setting his items on the belt, Atticus bent down to the little boy’s level and winked. With a hundred-dollar bill between his fingers, he rose to his feet. “Ma’am?”
When she turned, he held her gaze to charm her.
“This fell out of your wallet. It’s yours. Sometimes money has a way of appearing when we need it.”
She took the money. “Thanks. I didn’t even know that was in there,” she said with a quizzical stare.
“Sometimes I find money in my coat pockets.”
Charming a person was simply confusing them into believing.
“That happened to me once,” the cashier lady said. “Found a twenty in my dad’s coat after he died. Make sure you always check your pockets before donating your clothes to charity.”
Atticus took two candy bars off the shelf and placed them in her pile.
The little boy must have only been six. He beamed as if he’d won the lottery of life. After snatching his candy, he walked jauntily ahead of his mother. Maybe with that extra money, they could splurge on a nice meal.
While leaving the store, Atticus glanced at his phone to see how much time was left before Krys planned to leave. Once he stepped onto the grass to avoid traffic, he slowed his pace and wondered what Joy was up to. Lucian had given him a temporary phone for the assignment but warned them not to use it for personal messages. It was tempting to send Joy a note or hear her voice, but not at the expense of her safety.
He wiped the coating of mist off his face. After ripping the tags off the baseball hat, he put it on.
Once inside the chicken restaurant, he scanned the room to make sure there weren’t any other immortals. Krys was sitting by a window with a chicken leg in his mouth while he stared at his phone.
Atticus dropped the plastic bag next to him.
“What’s this?” Krys waved the drumstick at the bag.
“We’re not forgettable. If the mission doesn’t go as planned, we don’t want anyone tracing us back to Texas.”
“They already know where we live.” Krys licked his fingers. At least he wasn’t wearing any skull rings or other jewelry that Atticus had seen him in.
“The men we caught didn’t know your location until they beat up half the town. There’s no evidence that they shared that information with their boss. The calls suggest they kept communications limited to text messages.” Atticus gestured to Krys’s attire before taking a seat across the table. “Careless mistakes are a siren song for imbeciles.”
Krys gripped his spork like a caveman would and shoveled coleslaw into his mouth. “Put that on a pamphlet and sell your philosophy somewhere else.” His long hair touched his plate as he bit into his greasy chicken.
“Do you want me to lay out all the ways this thing could go wrong? We might get stranded and have to walk. The two workers who won’t be on shift might not be at home, and we’ll have to get involved in the hunt. There could be spies planted at key locations. Look at where we are. Do you see anyone else walking around in trench coats and leather?”
After swallowing, Krys wiped his mouth and said, “You worry too much.”
