“How did you get here? Does Diego know you snuck out? Did you drive?”
Tabitha toed the ground and shook her head. “I took the bus and then walked.”
“Well, you’re coming back with us.” I grabbed her by the wet fabric of her black turtleneck. Jesus, the bus would have taken her forever; we were in the middle of nowhere. “In the front. Pilar, get in the back with Willow Grace.”
I drove us out at exactly the speed limit, away from civilization first and then circling around to head back toward the city by another route to avoid any emergency response vehicles. The streets out here weren’t gridded logically, but they tended to follow the mountains in mathematically intuitive ways.
Tabitha started shivering in the front seat. Pilar leaned forward and flicked the heat on. I kept half an eye on Willow Grace, but she hadn’t moved, her hands folded over her purse in her lap and her lovely face in an inscrutable mask.
“Tabitha, sweetie—we should call your dad. He’s probably worried sick,” Pilar said.
“I’m not sure my phone will still work.” She pulled it out of a wet pocket. She was wearing a utility belt around her black clothes, with what looked like lockpicks, a flashlight, and a penknife, among other tools. I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or even more pissed off.
“I left mine tethered to the computer,” Pilar said. “Oh, Cas—there was no outside network connection, but the wireless card was functional, so I tethered and got Checker in. Hopefully he was able to pull stuff right until the minute it kaboomed.”
Hopefully. I supposed the outcome could have been worse—given the number of times we’d been blindsided tonight, Pilar’s data pull was the best we could have hoped for.
Though Willow Grace knew more. I glanced at her in the rearview mirror, but she was staring ahead, focused on nothing.
“My phone’ll be dead too,” I said. “Willow Grace?”
“Beg pardon?” Her eyes riveted to me in the mirror.
“Your phone. Let the kid make a call.”
“It’s out of battery.”
“You’re lying.” It was a guess, but I wanted to push her.
It worked. The car got as tense as if a live viper had been dropped into it.
Then Willow Grace let out a grim breath. “Yes, I’m lying. I have sensitive information on my phone. Confidential messages from sources, contact information for highly secured people. I’m sure you understand.”
All right, that did make sense, I had to admit grudgingly. And at least she’d been up front about it once I asked. Despite having set out to needle her, I couldn’t decide if that made me trust her more or less.
After all, I wouldn’t have expected Rio to lend a kid his phone just to call her father.
“It’s okay,” Pilar said to her quickly, interrupting my frowning thoughts. “Tabitha honey, look in the glove box. There should be a new phone in there.” When I glanced back at her in surprise, she added quickly, “Arthur does that too, for emergencies. I’m not turning into you.”
She said it jokingly, so I wasn’t sure why it stung.
nine
I MULLED over what we knew while I drove, and kept a sidelong eye on Willow Grace in the rearview mirror.
She knew more about Teplova’s situation than she’d said so far, that much was clear. She might have guesses about how the doctor had been tracked and targeted, and she’d definitely recognized D.J.’s name. Plus the “dog” and its master …
I remembered her pressing a finger to the ground, declaring a strange powder to be the first half of a binary explosive.
“Hey. Willow Grace.”
“You can call me Willow.”
“Okay. Willow,” I said. “Let’s start here. How did you know about the binary?”
“I’ve reported in a lot of war zones. I’d seen this before.”
“Where?”
“The Middle East.”
Something flashed on the back of my eyelids: bright lights of a city street, crowds and cars, a woman shouting happily.
“That’s the stupid, easy answer,” I growled. The Yaris swerved. I wrenched it back on track. “Give me a real one.”
Pilar’s hand touched my shoulder. “Cas? You okay?”
Shit. My fucking brain and its fucking broken memories.
That question hadn’t even been connected to Teplova or Pithica or men whose faces I half-recognized before they shredded me in panic.
Fuck, I needed Simon, or Rio, or at least to get somewhere where I wasn’t at risk of slamming us all into a tree if Willow Grace gave me the wrong answer. The ticking clock on Arthur’s disappearance felt like it timed itself with my heartbeat. What use was I to