and turns on the radio, searching until the static is pierced by a man’s wailing voice as he rocks out about heartbreak and fury. My mind can’t make sense of it against the sight of Liam kissing the palm of her hand and holding on to it, fingers interlaced.
“Okay,” she says. “We have a few hours to kill. Why don’t you start from the beginning—what happened when you left Thurmond? We’ll see if there’s some clue about how to help him….”
The burn of tears is real at the back of my throat, choking me up all over again, leaving a confused Mia to explain.
Ruby has found her strength—she’s escaped the cocoon of fear that kept her too terrified to even meet anyone’s gaze directly.
I can do this, I think. I can do this, for him. I can’t let Ruby risk herself for me, not when she’s already sacrificed so much. I feel my hollow heart swell with it, the determination.
If anyone is going to risk their life getting Lucas out, it should be me.
It’s right there in the name, safe house, but some part of me still doesn’t expect them to keep him in an actual house. It’s an indication of how dire it is, I think, this whole situation, that they haven’t brought him to a more secure location, some kind of a bunker or prison to try to contain his abilities. As it stands, this house looks like it could belong in any town; it’s as perfectly American, with its white trim, blue paint, and swing on the front porch, as the Fourth of July; and I resent the hell out of it because I know what a mask it is, what its sweet face is hiding. It reminds me of a story Lucas told us once, about a witch that lured kids in by decorating her house with candy and sweets, only to try and eat them.
We park two streets over and walk between the rows of foreclosed houses and their neglected backyards until we reach the house directly across the street from the one we’re trying to get to. Vida leads us, and forces us to wait as she crawls forward to make sure that this house is empty, too. That no one is watching the safe house from across the street. The boys go next, then Ruby, and finally me and Mia. We crouch down like the others and keep low, using the house’s brick fencing out front as cover.
“All right,” Vida says, voice low. She checks her gun’s clip with a kind of practiced ease that’s unnerving if I think about it too hard. “Liam, Charlie, and I will do a quick sweep of the streets and houses—”
“I want to go,” Mia interrupts.
If I think Vida will laugh off the suggestion, I’m so wrong. She seems to take a moment to size up Mia. “You’re with me, then. And you do everything I say, understood?”
Mia nods eagerly, and I want to protest this, to keep her here beside me where we can both keep an eye on the house, but I can’t bring myself to clip her wings. Despite what little sleep she’s gotten, she’s vibrating with energy, ready to spring into whatever Vida wants her to do.
“Okay, she and I will take nine o’clock, you take three o’clock,” she tells the boys, before giving me and Ruby a loaded look and adding, “And you keep your asses planted right there until we get back.”
“I want to go in,” I tell her. “To get him.”
“One step at a time, boo,” Vida says. “We’ll get you in, no problem, but only after assessing the threat.”
Assessing the threat. There’s a handgun casually tucked into the back of Ruby’s jeans, like it belongs there, and I realize that assessing the threat has been her life, probably from the moment she got out of Thurmond. I need to ask her about that night, about all the new scars I see and feel in her, the grim days spread out between when they took her away and when they brought her back into my life.
I ease back a bit, settling more firmly on the ground. My mind is flinging thoughts at me too fast to take apart. As much as I want to storm across the way, push Ruby back to safety, I trust this system they have. I’ve already messed up so badly in losing him in the first place. I can’t make another misstep. I will wait.
For