Kaci laughed. “Not exactly. Unless something’s changed since I was kidnapped, the thunderbirds are based just east of Alamogordo, New Mexico. About four hours south of Santa Fe. Which means that Phoenix is pretty much a best case scenario for us.” She put on her blinker and merged smoothly onto the highway. “The council has no manpower or infrastructure in place in the western free zone. Thunderbirds keep the stray cat population down out there, and they do patrol the skies at night, but unless we get close to their nest or attack one of them, they should leave usalone.”
“And you think we’ll be safethere?”
“No.” Kaci glanced in the rearview mirror, then eased her foot off the gas a little. “We won’t be safe until you’re out of the country. But the Council doesn’t know for sure where we’re going, so they’ll have to split up their manpower to cover all their bases. Even if they send someone to Phoenix—and that’ll probably be Vic, Jared, and Chris, since they’re closest—we have a head start on them. And they still have to do something about Vic’swrist.”
“Okay, but can’t they just fly someone straight to the Phoenix airport to watch forus?”
Kaci scowled at the highway. “Crap. Yeah, that’s a possibility. They could station a man at every terminal to watch the TSA checkpoints—the bottleneck you’d have to go through. But if they do that at Sky Harbor and LAX, they’ll be using up a lot of manpower, in addition to checking bus terminals and car rental places. Also, eventually TSA will get suspicious of a guy who stands around and never gets on aplane.”
“Shit.” I glanced around Jared’s car, noting the phone charger plugged into the cigarette lighter, a pair of running shoes on the rear floorboard, and the satellite radio receiver stuck to the dashboard with a suction cup. “This isn’t a rental. This is Jared’s personal car, which means he might be able to track it. We have to find anothercar.”
She shook her head as she smoothly changed lanes again. “We can’t steal from a human, Justus. That’ll get us arrested. We’re going to have to rentone.”
“Won’t work. You can’t rent a car without a credit or a debit card, and Titus is authorized on both ofmine.”
“I have a debit card.” She shrugged. ‘I don’t have much money, but it’s probablyenough.”
“You have to be twenty-one to rent acar.”
“Are you serious?” Kaci turned angry eyes on the road. “So, eighteen is old enough to vote or to die for your country, but not old enough to drink, or gamble, or rent a fuckingcar?”
I laughed. “We Americans value our constitutional right to be completely inconsistent andhypocritical.”
“I’m American enough to know that no such right exists in theconstitution.”
“It’s in the fine print, spread out across a bunch of different amendments,” I said, but she only growled inresponse.
“You have to tell the rental place where you’ll be turning the car in, right? So, if we rent a car using your credit card and fake ID, we’ll basically be telling you brother where we are, and where we’regoing.”
“Or…we’ll be sending them on a wild goose chase. We could just tell the rental place that we’re driving to Nebraska, orChicago.”
“Even if your brother believes that, the council won’t. They’ll know that our most likely destinations from Las Vegas are Los Angeles and Phoenix. They’ll expect us to try to throw themoff.”
“Okay, so let’s do what no oneexpects.”
She glanced pointedly at the ring still sitting on her left hand. “Because that worked out so well lasttime.”
“I think it did. And so could this. If they expect us to head to the nearest airport so I can catch an international flight, let’s do the opposite. Let’s drive for a while. Let’s tell them we’re going to Phoenix, then take a road trip to an airport they wouldn’t expect. Like Denver. That’s an international hub, but it’s also at least a full day’s drive fromVegas.”
Kaci seemed to be thinking about it as she stared at the road. And finally she nodded, then glanced at me with a smile. “A road trip. We’ll be in the free zone right up until we get to Denver, which is on the western border of the Plains Territory, but north of the thickest concentration of thunderbirds. That’sperfect.”
I couldn’t agree more. With stops for food, gas, and sleep, the drive to Denver would give me another full day to convince Kaci that the ring on her finger wasn’t a con. That I wanted the money, but I wanted it forus.
That she shouldn’t just put me on a plane—she should get on a plane withme.
Seven
Kaci
Itookthe 215 loop around the south side of Las Vegas and into Henderson to rent a car, because that would make it look like we were headed to Phoenix, for whatever good that would do. I wasn’t convinced anyone would believe we were actually headed to the Sky Harbor airport. But Iwasconvinced they would try to cover all theirbases.
While Justus was inside the rental place, I sat in Jared’s car with the engine running, staring at all the missed calls and unanswered messages from Faythe andMarc.
They were the only reason I’d made it out of the woods alive, when they’d found me in Montana. I owed them an explanation. Or at least the knowledge that I wasokay.
I called Faythe’s name to call her back, and she answered on the second ring. “Kaci?” The baby was crying close to the phone, but I could hear the fear in Faythe’s voice, even over the noise. She sounded scared todeath.
My guilt suddenly felt like an ocean I was drowningin.
