"Sev—"
"Okay then—" I unbuckle my seat belt and start to open the passenger door when Atty curses and finally pulls off the road to a barrage of honking horns behind us.
"Fuck, Seven," he snaps, grabbing me by the sweater to stop me from jumping out of the car. "What are you doing?"
"I can't do it, man."
"Do what?"
"Leave."
I throw my hands through my hair, feeling little bits of dried, crusted blood still stuck to my scalp that didn't wash off in the motel shower.
"You have to have something to go on, Atticus. Any kind of lead—I don't care what it is—justsomething. I can't fly across the ocean when she could still behere."
"We don't have time for this, Sev," Elijah argues weakly from the back seat. "We're already wasting time."
"We haven't heard from Céline since we told her to get out of Boone. She might need our help, too. And Ellie? We have to get back. We need to regroup. It's not just Julian—I have the footage from E's English lesson with Aurora. There could be more clues there."
My black sweater tears when I pull away from him, the heat clawing back up my spine.
I can't afford to think about Ellie. Or Céline. Not yet.
We don't know they're in imminent danger right now.
Wedoknow Ro is.
"Wait," I say, stopping with one foot out the door. "You saidmoreclues. What do you mean? Did you already get something from going over the footage while we were still at the villa?"
And not fucking say anything?
"It might not be anything," he rushes to say. "I need to look into it, Sev. I need to get home. I need to get a hold of my contacts—get my hands on my computer. We need?—"
"What is it? Tell me."
"Seven." Eli's tone has shifted. It's sharp now, and it punches through my armor more than Atticus's blunt growls ever could. "Get back in the car."
"I can't, E." Then to Atticus, "Give me the lead."
His hands tighten on the steering wheel. He sighs.
"I'm not asking you to stay with me," I hiss. "You guys go. Go check on Cee and Ellie. Talk to Julian. Do what you need to do. This is whatIneed to do."
Elijah pinches the bridge of his nose. "Sev, you don't even speak the language."
"The language I intend to use is a very universal one."
"We ditched our gear fifty miles back," Atticus argues, but I show him he's wrong, pulling my hooked blade from where I stashed it in the side of the passenger door. It glints in the headlights of the passing cars until Atticus shoves it out of sight.
"This is all I need. Now give me the lead, or I'll find my own."
Atticus slams his palms on the wheel, then sags in his seat and digs into his pocket for the stack of passports under our newest aliases. He thumbs through them roughly and hands me mine.
When I go to grab it from him, he doesn't let go. "Forty-eight hours," he says. "I'm booking you a flight home in forty-eight hours from now. Don't make me waste more time coming back here to drag your ass home."
"The lead?"
"Coyote," he says. "In my military training, there were stories about a guy with that code name. They said he defected. Went dark. I think he had connections in Spain."
