She opened her mouth to respond, but a German shepherd stuck his head between the seats and gave a low woof of greeting.
Kate grinned and rubbed the dog’s ears. “You have a dog!”
Hunter nodded, his eyes on the windshield. “His name is Casper.”
His voice was easy enough but carried an undercurrent of strain, which made Kate stop playing with the dog and really look at him. The ends of his hair hung across his face, still damp, from a shower probably, and he hadn’t bothered to use a razor this morning. His eyes looked vaguely shadowed, as if he’d been up half the night.
This was a very different boy from the one she’d met yesterday.
She wondered what had happened. The fight with Gabriel Merrick? The girl with the tats? The family issues he’d mentioned last night?
She should drop her guard and touch him, to let the elements feed her information, so she could report back to Silver.
Kate immediately called bullshit on her subconscious.
She wanted to touch him because Hunter looked like he needed someone to be gentle with him for five minutes.
She softened her voice. “You want to talk about it?”
“I’m just tired.”
“This looks like more than just tired.”
He laughed briefly, without much humor to it. “You don’t know me at all.”
She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and whipped her thumb across the keys.
You want to text about it?
His phone chimed almost instantly. Hunter glanced at it and gave a ghost of a smile.
Then his fingers slid across the face of his phone quickly. He didn’t look at her.
Her phone buzzed in her hand after a moment.
My grandfather threw me out of the house last night. The school counselor called and told him I was hitting Calla, the girl you saw in the caf. So he punched me and told me to get out.
She snapped her head up. Her mouth opened, but he held up a hand, his eyes still on the windshield.
“Don’t,” he said.
No wonder he was barely holding it together.
In a flash, she remembered the first time her mother had brought her to that tiny farm somewhere in southern Virginia, saying they were going to the “training compound,” which turned out to be a dark barn that reeked of alfalfa hay and blood. She hadn’t wanted to go inside, and then a massive man had walked out of the darkness.
When his hand came out, she’d thought he was going to introduce himself.
She’d never been hit in the face before that moment.
She remembered rolling in the dust and scattered straw, wondering when the world would right itself, hoping her mother would intercede.
When his phone chimed, he glanced down. Then he looked back at the windshield.
And shook his head.
She knew that feeling, when your life felt so out of control that you had to do something to get it back on a track, any track, just so you didn’t explode with tension from staying in one spot.
She was supposed to be doing some kind of reconnaissance, but she couldn’t disregard the brittle state of the boy sitting beside her.
“Was Calla your girlfriend?” she asked softly.
He hesitated. “No. I thought—I don’t know.”
“What did you think?”
His eyes were locked on the steering wheel. “She found me at a party a few weeks ago. Her dad is in the Marines—mine was, too. I just thought she needed someone to talk to. I didn’t realize—”
Kate waited, but he stopped there.
“You didn’t realize what?” she said.
Hunter took a deep breath—but then he didn’t let it out, and the tension rolled around in the car with them. “You should get out and go inside. I think I’m going to cut, and you’ll be late for first period.”
“I’ll cut with you.”
He shook his head. “No—I mean, I’ve got things I have to do.”
Things? What kinds of things?
Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she was so surprised that she almost dropped it.
Silver.
What are you doing?
She hit a button to clear the screen. Her pulse jumped.
It buzzed again.
Is that our mysterious Hunter Garrity?
Did that mean Silver was watching them right now? She cleared the screen again and shoved the phone into her pocket, where it vibrated a third time.
“Someone wants your attention,” said Hunter.
“He’s like a toddler,” she agreed.
Hunter’s eyebrows raised just the tiniest bit. “He?”
“No one important,” she said. But her phone buzzed again.