Page 4 of Midnight Auto Parts
With two drivers, they could alternate who ate and who slept, not that Tameka required either.
Thanks to Badb ordering me around, I was the last to arrive at the wagon, loaded down with her junk.
As I drove us to Bonaventure, I chewed my cheek until bright copper notes too sweet to be mortal blood teased my tongue. I would have spat it out if I’d had a tissue handy, but no such luck.I had to swallow it, and the way it slid down my throat wasn’t right. The taste. The texture. All of it was wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Poor Pascal would be stuck in the men’s room until dark, but he promised it was fine.
Now I really owed him one. He would be bored out of his mind. Not to mention dodging sunlight for hours.
With a drowsy Matty tucked onto the backseat, I returned to the shop and helped him to his apartment.
“Lock up behind me.” I dithered in his entryway. “And don’t forget to arm your security system.”
These days, we each had a private home security system for our apartments in addition to the coverage in the shop and on the property. I just wished we had investedbeforeArmie violated our privacy.
“Harrow isn’t going to lunge from the bushes to kidnap me the second you leave my side.”
“I know that but—” I let him push me out onto the landing. “I just don’t want anything to?—”
“I’ll be fine.” He shut the door in my face then yelled through the wood, “Love you, Mary.”
“Love you too,” I sighed, tromping down the stairs while firing off a text to urge Josie to hurry over.
While I was gone, the cat bed had appeared on the front bench seat between Kierce and me. The crow it held gazed with adoration at herself in her mirror, its bells jangling in her claw. I just shook my head and, with a soft click, fit my cell into the phone mount with the tracking app open on Tameka’s location.
“I could wait with him until Josie arrives.” Kierce draped his arm across the seatback, and his fingertips brushed my shoulder. “I’m almost fully recovered from my injuries. I can likely cover the distance from there to you.”
To choose between them made my stomach hurt. “I need backup more than he needs a babysitter.”
“Then why are you grinding your teeth?”
“This is the first time since everything happened that I’ve left him alone.”
Post kidnapping, Matty had only gone as far as from his apartment to mine or the garage or my office.
With his gaze, Kierce traced my profile. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Nope. Nah-uh. Not even a little bit. “Let’s find Tameka first.”
To convince him I was too focused to chat, I studied the fast-moving dot that indicated the loaner. At the same time, I made a big production of keeping an eye out for the notifications announcing Josie’s arrival.
When my phone pinged as motion was detected out in the parking lot, I snorted at the screenshot of her sticking her tongue out at the hidden camera. Had I not been driving, I might have watched to make sure she reached Matty safely. But no. I couldn’t bring myself to do that. To spy on her.
If I tracked her frame to frame, I would feel no better than Armie.
“The flashing dot represents the loaner.”
Quickly swiping the notifications off my screen, I nodded to Kierce. “That’s right.”
“What does it mean when it disappears?”
“No. It blinks, it doesn’t…” I cut my eyes back to the map, “…work like that.”
Heart in my throat, I guided the wagon onto the shoulder of the road.
We waited a minute. Five minutes. Ten minutes. But the dot didn’t return.