Page 36 of Glass

The SUV has continued to follow us, even off the exit and back onto the highway. This isn’t a coincidence.

“Poppy,” I say her name quietly so I don’t startle her too badly. She’s been asleep in the passenger seat for the past hour. I know she has to be exhausted after this day because, at this point, I’m running on nothing more than fumes myself.

I say her name a second time before she stirs.

“What?” She pushes off the car door and groans as she stretches her back, curving her body toward the dashboard. I watch from the corner of my eye and try not to get distracted by the sight. “What’s going on?”

“We have a tail.” I can still see the SUV steadily following in the rearview mirror. The windows are tinted too dark to see inside, so there’s no way to know if we’re dealing with one person or an SUV full.

“It looks the same as the SUV from earlier,” she mutters. “How does this keep happening? We limited who we told about leaving this time.”

We set everything back up to look like we were staying at the campsite, and Doc helped us sneak away. The only people who knew we were leaving this time were Doc, Kiara, and Kiara’s brother Mekhi. None of them have anything to gain by working with Frank.

“Maybe someone’s watching the bridge.” It’s the only way to leave Acadia after all.

Poppy puffs out an annoyed breath. “I don’t understand what the hell they want.” Her voice wobbles with emotion at the end, giving away her emotions when I can tell she’s trying to sound more angry than scared.

“I don’t know.” I’ve been trying to follow the thread backward from Frank for a while, and I still haven’t answered that question. Maybe I was too hopeful in agreeing to Poppy’s plan, but I wanted to do something to please her.

I keep fucking up. And this can’t be the fuck up that takes her from me, dammit.

My heart pounds in my chest as I cut across two lanes to move into the far left lane. “What are you doing?” Poppy asks as she finally angles her body toward me. I can’t resist the urge to reach out and squeeze her thigh in reassurance, and I’m relieved when she doesn’t pull away or otherwise seem bothered by the gesture.

“I’m going to try to lose them if I can. Or at least make a big enough scene to hopefully scare them off if I can’t.” There’s enough distance between us and the cars behind us to risk it. We might end up tipping off the police again, but even that is better than waiting to see if we wind up dead.

“Be careful,” Poppy warns as I put my hand back on the steering wheel.

As expected, the SUV doesn’t change lanes when I do. We just passed the closest exit, so there’s no hurry for them to get behind us again. Staying in the right lane makes them seem less suspicious—and luckily for us, gives us a fighting chance.

“Hold on.” I give Poppy a split second to follow the command before I slam the breaks as hard as I can without losing control of the car. I’ve never liked driving that much, but luckily I’ve had enough practice thanks to the trips between Acadia and Brooklyn. I turn the wheel hard to the right and hit the gas again, turning us toward oncoming traffic.

I wait until I’m accelerating in the wrong direction before checking my rearview. The SUV is slamming on their breaks now too, but they lost valuable time trying to figure out what the hell we were doing.

I push the sports car to its limits for a minute racing back toward the exit we passed. I only slow when we reach the curve of the off-ramp.

It’ll all be for nothing if I put us in a ditch anyway.

“I’ll get back on the highway and hopefully this’ll put enough distance between us,” I explain to Poppy as I quickly wrench my neck side-to-side to make sure we won’t be taken out by cross-traffic coming off the ramp.

“No.” She reaches past me to point toward my left. “Look, that road is mostly hidden in the trees,” she rushes out.

I hesitate.

“Felix, they’ll expect us to get back on the highway. They won’t expect us to chance driving in an unfamiliar town after the stunt you just pulled in front of witnesses. Half a dozen people have probably already called the police.”

She’s right. Fucking perfect in every way if she would stop fighting our mate bond.

I whip the car quickly onto the main road and then onto the turn-off. I only go far enough to make sure we’re hidden from the main road by a heavy thicket of trees before I cut the lights and park. For good measure, I turn off the ignition. I know I can restart the car again in a split second if I need to. This way, a person would have to do a damn good job looking for us to find us.

“My heart is beating really fast,” Poppy admits in a whisper as we sit in dark stillness. There are no streetlights, so there’s nothing but clouded moonlight to keep the car from being cast in pitch black darkness.

“Mine too,” I tell her, keeping my voice low like hers.

We fall into anxious silence, the pressure in my chest slowly easing as minutes pass and no one shows up on the deserted road. I’m almost ready to get moving again until a phone buzzes loudly in the silence.

It takes a moment for Poppy to realize it’s hers. She digs deep into the hiking backpack she used to discreetly pack the bare minimum of our things.

“That’s weird,” she mutters, looking at the screen.

“What?” I lean in the seat to get a good look at the screen with her. GABE shines up at us in all capital letters. No picture. “Who is that?” I ask her, my words sharp.

I turn my head to look directly into her eyes, but she seems to look right past me keeping her eyes on the phone. “It’s my brother.”