Page 106 of All the way home

“I have an idea,” Kieran announces as they start walking farther down the concourse, back the opposite way they’d gone the first time. He hasn’t stopped smiling.

And, well—

Zach’s not exactly in a position to be arguing with Kieran’s ideas, especially since the last one landed them here. Especially if it keeps that smile in place. So he nods. “Which is?”

Kieran points down the hall at a baggage cart sitting empty by a pillar, nearly forgotten in the dark.

“Oh.” Zach shakes his head, but he can’t squash his grin. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes.” When Kieran beelines for the cart, Zach follows on his heels, caught between helpless fascination and the urge to wring his hands.

Wrapping his fingers around the handle, Kieran jerks his head. “Get on.”

Hesitant, Zach eyes the cart, then looks over his shoulder down the hall.

When he catches Zach’s gaze, Kieran’s eyes sparkle. “Do you trust me?”

Zach gets on the cart.

Carefully arranging himself cross-legged, he mutters, “If you get me killed, Tove’s gonna be pissed.”

“Cross my heart, you’ll be so fine.” Behind him, Kieran swings out of his coat and then drops it in Zach’s lap. “Hold this.”

Snatching at the coat, Zach’s stomach lurches as Kieran starts to push, wheels rumbling. Over his shoulder, he says, “I don’t think this is the intended use for these.”

“Forget intended uses,” Kieran says. “That’s boring.”

Picking up speed, Kieran waves at a gaggle of people gathered in a tight circle holding black binders. And because it’s Kieran, everyone waves back.

“Oh my God.” Zach hides his face behind one hand, peering out between his fingers, the other gripping the cart with white knuckles as the tile whips by underneath him. “Slow down!”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Kieran asks gleefully.

The breeze lifts Zach’s hair off his forehead. When Kieran turns a corner, Zach clings to the metal rungs of the cart for dear life, laughter bursting out of him. It’s like everything Kieran does: zero to one hundred, nothing to euphoria, as they fly down the terminal, wind whipping through Zach’s hair.

“HEY!” someone shouts behind them. “HEY, YOU!”

It’s the same security guard who had scowled at them hours earlier, except now he’s walking straight at them with his hand at his hip.

“Oh shit!” Kieran’s laugh is more of a wheeze as he yanks the cart to a screeching stop and it catches him right in the chest. “Shit, go go go!”

Zach scrambles off the cart, whacking his knee on cold tile in the process.

“STOP!” the guard bellows as Zach struggles to his feet and takes off running, Kieran’s coat clutched to his chest with one arm, Kieran just ahead. “COME BACK HERE!”

Kieran’s faster, so he holds out a hand behind him, fingers snatching at Zach’s. They sprint away together, Zach’s legs burning, lungs on fire, neither of them looking back.

At last, when the shouts behind them fade, Zach stumbles.

“Stop, stop!” He clutches at his side, half laughing, half wheezing.

Kieran yanks him around a corner and behind a pillar before he lets go.

“Put your coat back on!” Zach whispers, chest heaving as he tosses it back to Kieran, yanking his own sweatshirt off over his head and tugging his light-blue T-shirt back down where it’s ridden up. “He won’t recognize you that way.”

“Do you have experience running from the law?”

“The law?” Zach snorts a laugh. “No. I have experience overthinking hypothetical scenarios.”