Page 34 of The Enemy Plot

“Wanna raid my closet?” Emma asks, quirking an eyebrow.

I place both hands on her shoulders. “Thank you. I’m so lucky to have you as a friend.”

“I know,” she says with a small shake of her head. “But you’ll owe me for all those extra hours. That’s some serious reading time I’m going to miss.”

With a giggle, I wrap her in a hug. “Absolutely.”

One thing you should never mess with: a bookish girl’s reading time.

14

Alternate Reality

Alice

Deacon will be picking Lola and me up at the end of the street, since no cars are allowed in Warlington Lane during the day. He keeps his truck in a garage a few blocks away, and he insisted on having it checked out by a mechanic before we hit the road. I appreciate his level of caution. He was admittedly stressed this morning, over-checking that he’d packed everything, but I’m similar in that way. I packed and repacked three times to make sure I was good to go.

“Are you having second thoughts?” Lola asks, scrolling on her phone.

“You have a phone?” I ask, my eyes widening.

“Oh yeah,” she says with a bright smile. “Deacon gave me one for my birthday. It’s not the latest model, but at least I can keep up with people from school.”

“You mean Beanie Boy?” I wink, and she flushes. “Well, I’m glad,” I add, then notice she has the Instagram app open. “Oh, you’re on Instagram?”

She winces. “Um, yeah, but my uncle didn’t exactly allow that. Please don’t say anything to him.” Her eyes are pleading. “I’m only on Bookstagram. I don’t even use it for anything else, and I don’t post much.”

I hesitate. The right thing to do would be to tell Deacon. He’s her guardian, and if he has forbidden her from using the app, he should know. But if I do say something, she’ll probably just make another account anyway. And this way, I can follow her, see what she’s up to. At least one of us will have an in. “Okay,” I say with a faint smile. “I won’t say a thing. What’s your handle? We can follow each other. I have a pretty active account.”

She beams. “Cool! I found the bookstore’s account too.”

We exchange handles, and she accepts my follow request just as Deacon is pulling up to the curb. With a knowing look, she slips her phone in her pocket.

I do feel a little bad keeping this from Deacon, but I also believe I’m doing the right thing. If I see a single thing that’s weird or concerning on her account, he’ll be the first to know.

“All right,” he says, parking in an empty spot along the street. “Let’s go. Hopefully, there won’t be too much traffic. And those clouds will clear out,” he adds with a grimace.

Looks like Captain Cranky is back in town. Although it could just be his anxiety talking. We load the truck bed with an outrageous amount of luggage for just four days, then pile into the car. Naturally, I sit in the passenger seat next to Deacon, and Lola is behind him, but this setup feels a little weird—intimate, almost. Like a family going on a road trip together. Except we’re not. Well,theyare. I’m just tagging along.

His car is nothing like the one I had in France. It’s old, there’s dust on the dashboard, and it smells like wood and mountains. Like Deacon. That one detail helps me ignore the complete lack of neatness. It’s reassuring, comforting, like when you’re wrapped in a blanket with a hot cocoa and a good book.

“I have snacks and a romance audiobook,” I say, grabbing my phone and a few bags of snacks from my purse. “Who’s with me?”

“Yeah!” Lola exclaims from the back seat.

“Sorry.” I glance at Deacon’s face, which is tainted by his signature frown. “Majority rules.”

He gives me a pointed look. “You did that on purpose,” he mumbles in a low voice.

“Well, I am going to the wilderness for you,” I say, matching his tone. “Listening to an audiobook doesn’t even compare.”

Rolling his eyes, he focuses on the road while I plug my phone into the pickup’s sound system. This is going to be an awesome trip.

Six hours later, the audiobook—which we enjoyed with Deacon’s grouchy commentary—is at the halfway point as we’re parking in front of the small house Deacon rented for the trip. Since the moment we left Brooklyn, he seemed to relax with every passing mile, even if we did ask for too many pee stops along the way.

“Finally,” he says, sucking in a long breath. “Some real air.”

I’m not an outdoorsy person, but he’s not wrong. I can already tell the air here is a lot cleaner. I grew up in a tiny village in Alsace, so I really notice New York’s pollution problem.