Using his right elbow, he smashed the driver’s window and opened the door, then unlocked my side. “Get in.”
“Promise to take me to a hotel?”
“Wherever you want.”
While he worked on starting the engine, I climbed in and watched him. “Why do you always take old muscle cars?”
“These are fast, solid, and they almost never have alarms.”
“I thought you didn’t care about police or getting caught.”
He flashed me a dirty look and whipped out onto the street. My manner with him in the past half hour had been leaning toward foolish. If I wanted any control at all, I’d need to turn the manipulation beacon back on. He just made my skin crawl.
I was normally asleep by five or so. My eyelids felt heavy. “Have you ever been inside Maggie’s place?” I asked.
“No.”
“It’s wonderful. I wish we could go there.”
The passing minutes didn’t bother me too much. Philip was doing ninety by the time we hit northbound I-5. I was actually beginning to relax when the first siren roared from behind us.
“Jesus, Philip, don’t pull over.”
“I hadn’t planned to.”
“Can you outrun him?”
For an answer, he laughed out the shattered window. “Now we are having fun, no?”
“No.”
This was all we needed. A cop chasing us down in a stolen car with Philip’s wrist torn open and his shirt soaked in blood.
“You’d better lose him. He’ll be calling for backup.”
“Too many movies,” Philip answered, and then he glanced over at me. “Put on your seat belt. I’m not used to passengers.”
Obeying him instantly, wondering how he could talk and drive so fast at the same time, I looked back to see the police car falling behind. A second siren wailed from our left.
Philip might have gotten me into this, but somehow I believed he would get me out. He wasn’t scared or worried or putting on some macho show for my benefit—as a mortal would. His expression was focused but calm, every fiber, every muscle and reflex moving in rapid sequence.
Whipping to the right with no warning, he threw me off-balance, and I grabbed the dashboard.
“Hold on,” he said.
We flew off I-5 onto the Bothell exit. Philip never took his eyes off the rearview mirror. Sirens still screamed, but no lights were visible. He turned behind the office building of an old wrecking yard and braked the Firebird so hard I jerked forward against my belt.
“Get out,” he said, shoving his own door open.
We ran among rusty cars, trucks, motorcycles, and army jeeps as the sky slowly turned from black to dark gray. Our speed felt good, too quick for most mortals to keep up.
Philip slowed down next to an abandoned barn. The changing sky bothered him a lot more than the cops had. Me, too.
“We better get another car and find a hotel room,” I said.
“There’s no time.”
Tearing the barn door open, he slipped inside. The building must once have been part of the wrecking yard. Hubcaps, blackened socket wrenches, and even an aged engine lay scattered in the grass. I followed Philip to find him on his knees, ripping up floorboards.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer, but my question had been pointless. I knew what he was doing—making a hole under the barn for us to sleep in.
“Here,” he said, “get under here.”
“We can’t stay in this place. What if somebody comes? What if somebody finds us?”
“You would rather take chances outside? No one has been here in years. We’ll be all right.”
My eyelids felt even heavier than my arms, and what choice did I have? He was right. We had no chance outside. The sun would be up in a few moments. Walking over, I slid down into the crawl space between the ground and the barn floor. Philip’s body dropped down next to mine. Lying on his back, he put all the boards back in place over us.
Part of me wanted to thank him, but if not for his reckless behavior, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.
“Sleep now,” he whispered. “We talk tonight.”
“I’ve never slept on the ground before.”
“Never?”
“No.”
His next words were a jumble, and his hard body relaxed slightly in dormancy. I don’t remember anything else.
chapter 20
Upon waking that night, three different lines of thought pushed to the front of my brain. The first was Jet—not only my regret over her unnecessary death, but the experience of reading her mind. How was it possible? Could she have been special like Wade? If so, why didn’t she sense my intrusion?
The second thought, of course, was Wade himself.