Page 5 of Midnight Auto Parts
Tameka had vanished, and she had taken Camaro with her.
Between packing a bag, dropping off Pascal, driving Matty home, and seeing him up to his apartment, we gave the Ezells a solid thirty-minute head start. They had used that time to reach South Carolina. But the dot had blinked out near Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, a nature preserve straddling the state line between Georgia and South Carolina, providing a sanctuary for migratory waterfowl and other birds.
Ireallyhoped we didn’t have to go in there.
“You’re worried about how much time it takes to get your siblings settled before you leave them.”
Jerking my attention to Kierce, I read his understanding and didn’t bristle. “Yeah.”
“You place your family first.” He appeared to choose his words with care. “You’ve watched over them all of your lives. There’s nothing wrong with protecting them when they’re unable to do it for themselves.”
“I’ve come too close to losing Josie and Matty to let anyone stand between me and their well-being.”
“You want me to call you selfish, tell you that your priorities are wrong.”
“I doubt anyonewantsto hear that, but I worry it’s true.”
“Then we can be selfish together.” Kierce, who was holding his new phone, hisfirstcellphone, while Badb played a puzzle game, stared out his window. “Your well-being matters to me. Sometimes it’s all that matters. It frightens me. What I would do to keep you…” he cleared his throat, “…safe.”
“I want to keep you too.” I felt my lips curl and couldn’t press them flat again. “Safe, I mean.”
Kierce angled his head toward me, watching me in profile, and he rested his hand on my thigh.
Heat swept through me, but I kept it cool. “I have enough mojo to mark loaners with magic now, right?”
“There’s not much you can’t do if you set your mind to it.” He tore his focus away from the obsessed crow, not seeming to notice I was melting under his touch like butter left on the stove. “But that was always true.”
A flush tingled in my cheeks, and I shook my head. “What am I going to do with you?”
Birdlike, he tilted his head to one side, studying me. “What do you mean?”
“You flatter me.”
“Am I not good at it?” A wrinkle formed between his pale eyes. “I mean what I say.”
“You’re very good at itbecauseyou mean what you say.” I reached over to touch his hand, but Badb nipped me to quit blocking the screen. “We might have to implement screentime rules with that one.”
“She has become rather obsessed with it,” he admitted. “She’s barely slept since you gave it to me.”
No one could function in society these days without a smartphone. Josie teased me that I only liked how it put Kierceat my fingertips, that I could track his location.Butthey were required for everything. From paying parking meters (which, okay, he couldn’t drive yet), to buying groceries (though Badb acted like it was her duty to feed him), to providing two-factor authentication for the online accounts he didn’t have.
Okay.
Fine.
Maybe I did like having a connection to him until the Badb-inspired summoning token inked into my skin worked again.
“They make lockboxes with built-in timers you can put electronics in,” I murmured, distracted by the soft ping announcing we had arrived at the pin on the map. Limehouse, South Carolina. “There’s nothing here.”
Just trees, trees, and road. And more trees.
Keen eyes fixed on the horizon, he wondered, “Do you think they’ve abandoned the truck monster yet?”
A click of my teeth trapped my laughter before it hurt his feelings. “If not yet, then soon.”
No successful escape plan, even one hatched on the fly, would involve a huge, noisy, bright-pink truck.
Guiding the wagon onto the shoulder of the road, I reclaimed my cell. “I’m going to take a look around.”