for Lucas to follow and together, we jogged toward the door.
“Did you get the speakers?” I said when we were only ten feet away. Plenty loud for the guard to hear.
Lucas’s forehead furrowed until he picked up my intention. “Not yet—he interrupted me.”
At the end of the aisle, Lucas shoved the gun in his waistband and pulled two speakers off the shelves, handing me one. “These will have to do. They’re the best and we don’t have time for the others now.”
Hoping that red herring would be enough to throw the police off our tracks when they investigated, we hurried out the door, through the office, and into the parking lot. The security guard’s car sat unattended a few feet away. A quick slash of the tires, and then we hustled on foot to where the Caprice was hidden, speakers still in tow.
We drove through the gate and exited onto the street, careful not to exceed the speed limit. Once outside the complex, the masks and gloves came off. Instead of driving toward our motel, I wove through the streets in the opposite direction. Lucas didn’t question me, just peered blindly into the night with his hands raking through his hair.
“That was a close call,” I said.
Silence.
I glanced over and frowned at the ghostlike pallor of his cheeks. “Lucas? Are you all right?”
“I—I’m not sure,” he said. He closed his eyes and inhaled a sharp breath through clenched teeth. His Adam’s apple bobbed repeatedly. Suddenly, he bolted upright. “Could you pull over? Fast?”
I swerved into an alley located near a liquor store. The moment I put the car in park, his door flew open. He barely had time to lean over before he threw up on the street. My hands clenched the steering wheel and I stared straight ahead, focusing brutally on the acrid taste in my own mouth. Lucas wasn’t used to this kind of danger. Yes, he’d saved my mother and me back at SMART Ops, but putting his life on the line like this was different. I thought of his obvious spike in stress when he’d aimed the gun at the guard, and my gut clenched reflexively. That was when he realized he was putting other people’s lives at risk, along with his own.
He had to be exhausted. For almost three days, we’d been on the move with almost zero rest. While I could keep going at this pace, Lucas couldn’t. Maybe the fact that I could be so open with him had fooled me into thinking that he and I were the same.
Ridiculous, flawed logic on my part. No matter how much he understood me, Lucas was human, through and through. I needed to get him back to the hotel so he could sleep. Everything else would have to wait.
Once he composed himself, Lucas shut the door, using the mask to wipe his mouth.
“Sorry,” he said.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve seen worse.”
I’d hoped to make him laugh, but his mouth didn’t even hint at a smile. “I’m sure you have.”
“Thanks for being here,” I said as I studied his rigid jaw. If he only knew how much I admired him. He didn’t have to put himself in harm’s way like that. He didn’t even have to be here at all.
That was when his expression finally altered. He shot me a startled look. “Of course. We’re a team, remember?”
His posture relaxed, and I felt the tension drain from my neck. A knot in my stomach disappeared. For a crazy moment there, I’d thought that he might call it quits.
“Do you think they’ll link the break-in back to Sarah?” I said, trying to steer things back to normal.
“My bet is they’ll be going after petty thieves,” Lucas said. “That was smart thinking back there. About the speakers.”
“Speaking of which.” Up ahead, I saw a row of unlocked Dumpsters. No video cameras around. “Should we ditch them here?”
Lucas nodded and we put our gloves back on, tossing the speakers into the Dumpster after we unloaded them from the car. We off-loaded the ski masks about a mile away, in a different set of Dumpsters. The gloves went into an outdoor trash can about a half mile from the last location.
When we got back to the car, Lucas handed me the gun. “This is what I really want to lose. But I don’t want to risk someone finding it while digging through the trash.” He swallowed, and I thought he might throw up again. “That man, the