“And I’m not turning off my location services,” I add, feeling the need to say it out loud, even though I know he expects it. “If I disappear, my people will come for you.”
“Good,” he says. “Keep them on.”
Without another word, I turn on my heel and stalk back to my truck, my breath leaving little clouds in the air. I yank the door open, climb in, and slam it hard enough to make the whole frame shudder. For a few seconds I just sit there, hands braced on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield as if maybe I can see the next ten minutes of my life written on the glass.
I watch as Evan gets into his sedan and starts it up; the headlights throw pale cones across a couple of stray shopping carts and the battered newspaper dispenser by the curb. Then he pulls out.
I follow.
His taillights cut two red slashes through the dark as we leave the diner lot and merge onto the road. The trees crowd close, the town thinning behind us.
My phone vibrates in the cupholder. It’s a text from Riley: u dead yet?
I almost laugh. Instead, I type back: still breathing, 8/10 prospects of survival.
I set my phone back down. Evan’s sedan is three car lengths ahead, not trying to lose me, not trying to get me to speed up. Just guiding, as promised.
My pulse keeps whispering the same thing as I stay behind his car: this is either worth the five minutes, or it’s the start of my biggest mistake.
Chapter Eighteen
Evan
I keep my hands at ten and two, rigid, like the sedan deserves respect it never earned. Four-door, low-mileage; the inside still stinks of off-gassing plastic and the last owner's gardenia air freshener. It's the car companies use in commercials to sell the myth of safety: airbags, lane assist, a seatbelt that hugs you close like a worried mother. I’d rather be balancing between danger and velocity on a bike, blacktop whirring under me, wind trying to sandpaper my cheeks off. But I can’t risk it right now. Not with this being Twisted Devils territory and not with the Sons of Sorrow watching.
Molly’s truck stays steady in my rearview, always two or three car-lengths exactly, headlights unwavering. She doesn’t tailgate, doesn’t lag behind. She holds position with the precision of a sniper, as if following me is a test of willpower or an insult she can outlast. Like she’s telling herself this is nothing, this is fine, this is five minutes and then she’s back to being untouchable.
We burn through two, maybe three sleeping towns on the way out — rows of shuttered gas stations, brightly painted yoga studios, the occasional neon beer sign tiredly blinking “OPEN” at nobody. Molly keeps up the whole way, like she’s wired into my GPS, like she knows every turn I’ll take before I make it. By the time I flick the blinker and glide off the highway onto Briar Glen's main drag, the world outside the windshield goes thick with fog and darkness. Trees crowd the road, and the onlylight comes from the odd streetlamp reflected in puddles and the flickering red of taillights in the distance.
The place I’m taking her is tucked between a tattoo shop and a closed florist: a bookstore with big windows and warm light, and a sign that reads:
INK & WHISKEY - Open Late.
Molly’s truck rolls into the lot behind me. I park near the front, kill the engine, and sit for one beat, watching my hands on the wheel.
This is stupid.
Not the location. The effort I put into finding this place, thinking of something I could do for a woman who loves studying, booze, and who, even though I know she should be nothing more than just a means to save my sister, makes my chest feel too tight to breathe.
I push out of the car and stand under the streetlight, waiting. Molly’s already outside her truck, hands buried in her jacket, red hair yanked back like she’s ready to brawl. She stalks toward me in heavy boots, gaze leveled like a dare, then stops just short of the sidewalk, arms crossed over her chest. She doesn’t say hi. Doesn’t even nod. She just looks at the bookstore-bar, then at me.
“What’s this?” she says, each word a pebble bounced off my forehead.
“It’s a place,” I say, and start walking slow enough she has to decide whether to follow. “Come on.”
She follows. Of course she does. For all her talk, Molly’s curiosity is bigger than her pride.
“Why are we here?” She says, stopping as we get to the door. Her tone says she’s not asking; she’s drawing a line in the dirt.
Why are we here?
Because I saw your syllabus on the counter. Because I memorized your test dates like they matter. Because you looklike you’re holding yourself together with dental floss and spite, and I want to be the thing that loosens the knot.
Because Midnight said results.
Because June.
I pick the safest truth and wrap it in something that sounds normal.
