Page 32 of August

His phone buzzed, and he lifted it up to his ear. “Hey, Atticus.” She watched as his brow furrowed and he frowned. “Seriously? Shit. Yeah, okay. We’ll wait for security, thanks.”

He put his phone in his pocket and looked at her.

Her heart jumped into her throat. “What happened?”

“Someone tampered with the food in the petting zoo.”

She tilted her head in confusion. “What? Why?”

“They don’t know. The security team checked the feed and found someone had covered up the cameras and got close enough to the building to take off the screen from a window, climb inside, pour ammonia all over the norms’ food, and then take off without anyone noticing. It was only when Luna went to refill the food for the baby animals that she realized what had happened.”

Ginny felt a little bit frozen. And entirely pissed too.

“It has to be someone working for my grandfather. But why the hell would anyone target the petting zoo?”

Someone knocked loudly on the door. She startled with a gasp.

August put his arm around her and drew her close. “It’s the security team. They said they’d knock first and then unlock the door with the keypad so we’d know it was them. They’re going to walk us to the employee cafeteria just as a precaution.”

She looked up at him. “You don’t think we’re safe in here? It’s locked.”

“We’re too far back in the park. If they got close enough to the petting zoo to get inside without anyone noticing, they could break in here and we’d be sitting ducks.”

“Well, shit.”

The keypad beeped and someone said loudly, “It’s us, August. You ready to go?”

“Yeah,” he called back. He cupped Ginny’s face and said, “We’ll be quick, okay?”

She nodded.

He took off his baseball cap and handed it to her. She tucked her long hair up on her head and put the cap on. Then they met two males at the doors, Jupiter and Justus.

“Let’s get you two to the cafeteria,” Justus said.

“Thanks, guys,” August said.

“We know you can keep her safe, but it’s better to have too many people around you than not enough,” Jupiter said.

“Yeah, definitely,” August said.

They hurried across the park. Ginny couldn’t stop looking around, wondering if any of the people she saw had been sent by her grandfather. She thought she’d be able to pick out people from her pack, but they could change their appearance or her grandfather could have sent new people to get her.

She still didn’t know why he would have tampered with the petting zoo. She wasn’t there, so what was the point?

When they were inside the cafeteria, Jupiter’s walkie squawked.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Alistair just tangled with some males trying to steal the park van,” a male voice said.

“What?” Jupiter demanded.

“Yeah,” the male said. “He was at the feed store with Alfie, Benjamin, and Silvanus and they went inside to grab the food for the petting zoo animals. He said he had a bad feeling something was wrong, so he rushed out of the store and saw a couple of males trying to hot-wire it. He and our guys fought with them, but they ran off. And I already checked—the feed store doesn’t have outside security cameras.”

“Shit,” Jupiter said. “Have him bring the van back to the employee lot and we’ll check it for trackers.”

Ginny shook her head. “I don’t think they’d bother with a tracker.”