“It was nice meeting you,” she says, then covers her face with her hands. “Wow.”
I snort, despite myself. “Should I say the pleasure was all mine?”
“It wasn’t.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Madeline sighs into her hands.
“This was fun,” I say—the understatement of the year. “I’m glad we met.”
She takes her hands off her face, and it’s hard to tell because it’s dark, but I think she’s bright red.
“Me, too,” she says, and there’s that pause again, this loud silence. I bite my tongue and pray she doesn’t ask to see me again. Then I pray a little harder that she does.
She doesn’t. The hardest thing I do all night is not ask for her number.
Neither of us says anything. But I can’t end it here, can I? Not like this. So I lean in and kiss her, quick and chaste, and the last thing I see is her smile as she closes the door behind me.
Maybe someday,I tell myself. In six months or eight, once I’ve stopped holding myself together by my fingernails. I’ll get my shit together and find her, somehow. Ask her on a real date.
It’s easy to believe in a future version of me who’s capable of all that, so I hang all my hopes on that guy and wait for my ride.
CHAPTER FOUR
JAVIER
Two Years Later
August
I might never get usedto the country at night. Not the deep country, up in the mountains, right off a highway that’s nothing but two lanes and a dirt shoulder. Not after midnight, when even the crickets have gone to sleep. It’s too dark, even with the moonlight, too quiet, toostill.
I don’t exactly miss the city, all that light and noise, but I think I’ll always expect it. The country silence makes the back of my neck prickle in a way that city hubbub never could, and I look over my shoulder every thirty seconds or so, convinced that some enormous, silent, backwoods creature is lurking right behind me. Or, worse, a sheriff’s deputy.
Wyatt, on the other hand, is fully focused on the task ahead of us.
“You didn’t mention the seven-foot fence,” he hisses.
“I definitely mentioned the fence,” I hiss back. I may have forgotten to mention the fence.
“No. If you mentioned a fence, I would have been expectinga fence,” he says, voice still low as he looks up at it. “All you told me about were cameras on the driveway and floodlights in the parking lot. You didn’t mention seven feet of…” He gestures, and I can tell he wishes he could sayrazor wireorelectrified steel, but unfortunately for his dramatics, neither of those things are true. “Chain link,” he finishes. He seems slightly offended that it’s not even barbed.
“Sorry. An insurmountable obstacle,” I say, slinging my pack to the ground and crouching. I got overambitious packing, so it’s too full of things we probably won’t need: several flashlights, headlamps, a length of rope, a length of chain, WD-40, a hammer (a hammer?), pliers, some clamps, several granola bars, a charging cable, two batteries that don’t fit into anything in this backpack, and a pair of night vision goggles that I borrowed from our friend Silas.
We also borrowed the all-terrain furniture dolly—which has large rubber tires instead of standard dolly wheels—from Silas, who wouldn’t say why he had it.
“Okay, you don’t have to insult me,” Wyatt says, and I can hear that he’s grinning. “I’m not saying the fence is a problem, I’m saying next time, mention the fence. Thanks,” he finishes as I hand him a pair of wire cutters.
The fence is unserious, and we both know it. It’s constructed of chain link unspooled around eight to ten metal fenceposts, and it’s sagging. The posts are leaning because they weren’t put in deep enough, and there are at least three holes under it, dug by enterprising animals. At best, it’s the suggestion of a fence.
Unserious or not, we’re definitely not supposed to cut all the links along one pole and roll it back on itself, nor are we supposed to walk through the hole and trespass. I can’t help but thinkWhat if there are tripwires, what if there are hidden cameras, maybe this was all an elaborate sting setup by theBurnley County Sheriff’s Department and a whole SWAT team is about to jump out at us, but none of that happens. It stays dark and quiet, the only movement from the breeze rustling the forest behind us and the weeds in the badly mowed back lawn.
“Did you and Josie manage to figure out where they put it?” Wyatt asks as we step through. “When you were on your recon mission?”
“No,” I admit, though we sure tried. “We didn’t breach the perimeter to look through any windows. It seemed too risky in the daylight.” Wyatt snorts and muttersbreach the perimeterto himself. “Also, I didn’t want to get Josie in trouble if we got caught.”
“Wow, thanks.”
