“You might be right,” Zina said grimly. “I guess all we can do is remain one jump ahead. At least in a town theremightbe reason for them to keep a low profile. But if they catch us out here…”
She glanced out the window at the vast, open emptiness of the red-sanded desert. She knew she didn’t need to finish her sentence for Trent to understand her perfectly:If they catch us out here, no one will ever even find the bodies.
Well – assuming the Bloodhound and whatever band he was leading had orders to kill them, Zina thought, with a twist of her lips. She didn’t really know what happened to people Hargreaves considered traitors. It wasn’t like there was a huge sample size.
“Ugh.” Trent blew out an annoyed exhale. “I know I couldn’t have, but this would be so much easier if I could just tell my teammates about you, somehow explain everything…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “But the only reasonIknew you were in trouble was because my agency was told to be on the hunt for you. So it’s not exactly like I can just goaskthem to help.” He let out a small, wry laugh.
“I wouldn’t want to drag anyone else into this mess anyway,” Zina said softly. “It wasn’t even my intention to dragyouinto it.”
“Hey, I dragged myself, remember?” Trent said, glancing across at her and shooting her a grin. “And I’d do it again. I thought I already made that pretty clear.”
“No, you did,” Zina said, smiling despite herself. “I just wish that –”
What she wished for she never got the chance to say. Because at that exact moment, Dusty woke up.
He seemed to come awake all at once: one moment, he was snoozing peacefully in Zina’s hands. The next, he was standing up, eyes wide, pupils dilated, his tail standing straight up like an especially startled exclamation mark.
And then heyowled.
Far from the bird-likecheeping sounds he’d been making before, this noise was shockingly catlike – and it was the sound of a cat who had found itself in a situation it didnotmuch like.
“Hey – it’s okay –” Zina started to say – but it didn’t seem to do any good.
Dusty let out anotheryowlof horror at finding himself inside a moving vehicle, and then leapt straight up out of Zina’s hands.
“Ow –ow!”
His claws felt like needles digging into her skin as he launched himself onto the ceiling of the car, hanging upside down there and blinking in obvious terror before he scrambled his way toward the back seat, still upside-down, his claws hooked into the torn vinyl that – barely – covered the inside of the roof of the car.
“Dusty! Dusty, it’s okay!” Zina tried to twist in her seat without jostling Goldie too much, but, it seemed, it was already too late for that.
Goldie had jerked awake at the sound of her brother’s firstyowl, and it was clear she liked being in a large, noisy, moving, mechanical enclosure as little as he did.
Scrambling up onto her feet, she threw herself out of Zina’s hands – and straight onto the headrest of Trent’s car seat.
“Not a great idea, Goldie!” Trent said, his eyes still fixed on the road, but it was clear that having a baby dragon howling with terror directly into his ear wasn’t doing wonders for his concentration. “How about you get down from there?”
“I’ll grab her in a second!” gasped Zina, as she unbuckled her seatbelt to twist around and retrieve Dusty from the roof of the car, as he clawed and slithered his upside-down way around it, still yowling at the top of his lungs. “C’mon Dusty, I swear there’s nothing to be –”
“Argh!”
Zina whipped her head around at the sound of Trent’s pained cry, only to see that Goldiehad, at least, gotten down off the back of his car seat – and was now firmly ensconced on the top of his head, her little needly claws embedded directly into his scalp.
“Oh, my God,” Zina murmured, leaving Dusty where he was for the moment and reaching up to try to coax Goldie away from direct contact with Trent’s skin. “Goldie, honey, come on, that’s not nice!”
It was clear that Goldie didn’t care about what wasnice, however – as far as she was concerned, Trent’s hair was providing her with cover and protection from whatever she thought might be threatening her, and she obviously didn’t intend to leave anytime soon. The more Zina tried to gently prize her away, the more tightly she held on, digging her claws in deeper and deeper.
“Zina, I –ow– I hope I don’t sound like I’m being critical –ah– but I don’t think you’re –oh my God– helping things just now,” Trent said, punctuating his sentence with small exclamations of pain.
“Um. Sorry,” Zina said, withdrawing slightly. “It’s just that. Uh. You’re bleeding. A little.”
It was true – there was a thin trickle of red starting at his hairline ever so slowly tracing its way down his forehead, as Goldie apparently dug herself in for the long haul.
“Maybe she can just stay up there for now until she’s ready to come down in her own time,” Trent said, through gritted teeth. “I don’t think you’re going to convince her without ripping my scalp off. And I justgotthis dye job. I’d at least like the chance to get used to it before it gets pulled straight off my skull.”
“Perhaps that’d be for the best,” Zina said, grabbing a tissue out of her pocket and dabbing at the bit of blood that had trickled down Trent’s forehead. “She does, uh, seem kind of like she wants to stay there for now.”
And it was true – whether out of terror at being in the car or because she’d taken a liking to Trent’s hair, it was clear that Goldie wasn’t letting go of his scalp anytime soon. She crouched amongst the bright yellow strands of his hair, eyes wide, pupils glancing nervously around as if she was trying to look in every direction at once. But at least she seemed like she wasn’t going to go anywhere for the moment.
