Kaci took a deep, silent breath. Then she leaned out of the car and snatched the key ring dangling from Jared’s hand, so fast my eyes couldn’t follow themotion.
“What the—?” He spun around, still on his phone, as she slammed the driver’s side door and poked the lock button. “Kaci!” he shouted. “Open thedoor!”
Instead, she shoved the key into the ignition, shifted into gear, and backed out of the tight parking space as if she’d been born driving inreverse.
“What are you doing?” Irepeated.
“Kaci!” Jared dropped his phone and pounded on the door as she shifted into DRIVE. Then she took off through the garage, way too fast, following the signs markedEXIT.
I twisted in the backseat to see Chris sliding behind the steering wheel of his rental car, while Jared and Vic spoke frantically into theirphones.
“Escaping.”
“Well, you better escape faster, because they’re coming afterus.”
Through the rear windshield, I watched Vic sink onto the front passenger’s seat next to Chris, but Jared was still pounding on one of the rear windows, while the other two seemed to be trying to figure out how to unlock his door. My guess was that they’d engaged the child safety locks, in anticipation of having Kaci and me in the backseat.
Kaci slammed her foot on the gas again and we spun around a curve in the garage, heading downhill. Then we shot out into the parking lot and headed left, toward theroad.
I sank into the center of the back bench seat, staring at her in the rearview mirror. “You just stole acar.”
“It wasn’t my first time.” She shrugged as she took the next left, and traffic thinned out a little. “They won’t report it. We don’t take shifter business to thepolice.”
“Yeah, but the council will bepissed.”
Another shrug. “What are they going to do? Ground me? I never leave homeanyway.”
“They could declaw you. Or lock you up.” My blood boiled at just thethought.
“Nah. Those are only for capital crimes. Which means I have nothing to lose by helping you get out of the country.” She took the next right, a little too fast. “Can you come up here and navigate, though? I’m totally winging this, and I have no idea where I’mgoing.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror again but saw no sign of Chris’s rental car, so I climbed over the center console, careful not to elbow her in the head, and pulled my cell from my pocket. “Where are we going?” I asked as I opened the mapapp.
“I don’t know. But we can’t fly out of Vegas. They’ll be watching the airport. Can you exchange your ticket for a flight out of another airport without your brother findingout?”
“Should be able to. He doesn’t have access to my frequent flier account. Give me a minute…” I dragged the map around a bit, then started typing. “It’s a four-and-a-half-hour drive to Los Angeles. We could fly out ofLAX.”
“You. Not we,” Kaci said. But she didn’t sound mad anymore, and where I didn’t hear an outright refusal, I chose to see hope. “But if that’s the closest airport, they’ll be watching it too. TryPhoenix.”
I typed some more. “That’s five hours from here. If LA’s too close, won’t Phoenix betoo?”
“It would be, if Arizona didn’t take up half of the biggest free zone in thecountry.”
“What?”
“Which way, Justus? Point me atPhoenix.”
I tapped the directions icon on my phone and set it in the cup holder in the center console. A second later, directions appeared, pointing us toward US highway 93. “I didn’t realize there was a third freezone.”
“Well, there is, kind of, and it’s three times the size of Titus’s Mississippi ValleyTerritory.”
Though until the council officially recognized Titus’s Pride, everyone on this side of the border still called it the Mississippi freezone.
I frowned at her profile. “What do you mean by kindof?”
“Arizona and a huge swath of land surrounding the Four Corners—Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico—are considered a werecat free zone, and nothing will change that. Because a large part of that land is actually thunderbirdterritory.”
“Holy shit. Seriously? So we’ll be trading werecat enforcers for giant birds who pluck people from the ground like flyingmonkeys?”
