“You can’t kill everybody,” Arlo wailed.
“I can try. That’s the beauty of somebody like me. I don’t feel regret. I don’t feel guilt or anger or remorse. If somebody tries to get between us, I will kill them and I won’t shed a single tear.” He took Arlo’s face in his hands. “I was born to protect you.”
Arlo’s heart was exploding with joy and pain. He’d wanted to hear this for so long, but he didn’t want to hear it like this, when they were both desperate and scared. “I want to protect you, too. I want to keep you safe, too. You’re the only person in my life who has ever cared if I lived or died. I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t. Please. Just don’t give up on us yet,” Dimitri begged. “Please.”
Arlo couldn’t bring himself to lie, so he just clung to him, fat tears rolling down his face to drip between them. There was no way out of this.
When Arlo’s tears dried, he released Dimitri, sniffling. “We should probably go. Whoever sent that note is waiting on us.”
Dimitri gave a single nod, shifting the car into drive before easing back onto the road. Five miles later, they exited the empty interstate to a somehow even emptier highway.
It was impossibly dark. There wasn’t a gas station or even a truck stop, just a long open stretch of pavement. They drove, using the GPS to navigate, as there were no discernible landmarks to help them differentiate one dark dirt road from another. They didn’t have street signs. Dimitri called them access roads.
Finally, the GPS led them onto a barely-there dirt road, ending at an open chain-link fence. Past that, the terrain became rough, the narrow path that led them deeper onto the property made of little more than broken chunks of asphalt. The place had a distinct smell to it. Like gasoline and burned rubber. It might have had something to do with the precariously stacked cars lining either side of the drive.
“What the hell is this place?” Arlo whispered, feeling like, if he spoke too loud, he might wake whatever monster lurked among the ruins.
“It’s a salvage yard,” Dimitri confirmed. “They buy junk cars and scrap them for parts.”
Perspiration broke out along Arlo’s hairline. Nobody would ever find them out there. Their GPS led to someplace entirely different. Could Calliope see where they really were, even if she was spoofing their GPS? Did she know they hadn’t listened to her? That they’d taken off into the night to follow instructions some pregnant stranger had scrawled on white paper with a thick black sharpie?
Dimitri turned off the car, taking a deep breath. “No matter what happens, you stay close.”
“Yeah, that won’t be a problem,” Arlo promised, staring at the entrance of what looked like a metallic maze.
Outside the car, Arlo wrapped himself around Dimitri’s arm, letting him drag him deeper into the yard. The silence was deafening. Arlo forced himself to concentrate on his own breathing just to keep his ears from ringing.
They approached a small building in the center of the facility, but when they tried the door, it was locked tight. Dimitri steered him around the side where they found another open gate separating the front from the back, stopping short in a clearing of sorts to stare upwards at an enormous piece of machinery.
“What in the actual fuck is that?” Arlo whispered.
“I have no idea,” Dimitri said.
There was a sound like an electrical current tripping and then bulbs flared to life above, leaving them standing in a wide spotlight. They both covered their eyes, blinking, as a figure walked out of the darkness. “It’s a car crusher.”
Arlo gripped Dimitri tighter as he squinted, waiting for the man’s features to become clearer. He wore all black, right down to the leather gloves covering his hands. Arlo knew him. They both did. He was a Mulvaney.
“August, right?” Dimitri asked.
The man gave a cool smile. “Yes. I apologize for all the cloak and dagger stuff with my assistant, Cricket, but I thought it might be good practice should this be the beginning of your life of crime and not the end. Besides, I wasn’t certain you were trustworthy.”
“Trustworthy?” Dimitri echoed.
“Mm, people do dumb things when they’re cornered. And while I trust your mother implicitly, I don’t know you. But you clearly know of us, which was not only a surprise but a liability.”
Arlo didn’t know the Mulvaney family. They were just a name in the paper, sometimes a picture on the cover of a tabloid. It was clear after tonight; they were much more than that. But it had never occurred to Arlo to tell the world what he knew. What did he know, in the grand scheme of things?
“To be fair, my mother didn’t tell me about you. I figured it out myself,” Dimitri said. “It took a long time for me to put the pieces together, but the truth is, I never really cared enough to look that hard. Your family is none of my business.”
Was that why this man had brought them there to the salvage yard? To tie up loose ends? Had they just delivered themselves on a silver platter to a murderer?
“Are you going to kill us?” Arlo heard himself blurt.
August somewhat assuaged his fears when he gave a surprised chuckle. “Is that what you think? That I’ve brought you out here to the middle of nowhere to get rid of you?”
“It seems a valid fear,” Arlo countered, looking once more at the machine rising behind him.
