“If anyone trails us here, I don’t want them to know we’ve changed our looks.” How I was going to change my appearance was more problematic. I had thought of cutting my hair, but that would only make my scar more noticeable. In the cosmetic department I found the answer: makeup specially constructed to cover scars. That, combined with a haircut, should change me enough to escape anything but a good, hard stare.
“Snack cake aisle is just down there, Misha.” I pointed with one hand while tucking away the glass jar with the other. “That we’ll pay for. Short of pretending one of us is pregnant, there’s no way we can smuggle what you can eat out of here.”
He gave me a look, one far too haughty for a seventeen-year-old, but he went. He always had been smart as hell, far too much so to bite off his nose to spite his face. I watched as he loaded up with box after box of empty calories. “I’ve created a monster,” I groaned under my breath, deciding to pick up some vitamins before we hit the cash register. Kids took vitamins, didn’t they? I remembered our housekeeper’s buying them for Lukas and me after our mom died. I hadn’t taken them, but I vaguely remembered a bottle of colorful characters on the bathroom counter.
We waited in line for nearly ten minutes. Sandwiched between a harassed lady with three sociopathic children and a teenage couple working desperately on making one of their own, I noticed Michael moving his weight from foot to foot. It was a minute motion, barely detectable, but it allowed me to pick up his discomfort. In the past two days with me he’d been exposed to more of the outside world than in two years at the Institute. He and the other kids may have studied it until their eyes watered; it wasn’t the same. This was direct, unrelenting contact with a basically alien existence. It was enough to shake up even the coolest customer.
I dumped the items that I actually intended to pay for onto the counter. “Hang in there, perrito.” As I’d hoped, it distracted him and he instantly turned a pale pink. “Maybe someday we can grab breakfast there again,” I offered lightly. “The food was good and the company not so bad either.”
The pink deepened. “Maybe,” he replied, noncommittally.
I grinned at him, then transferred the flash of teeth at the cashier in the hopes of hurrying her along. She stopped tapping keys long enough to give me a smile back. It’d been a long time since I’d flirted, even superficially, with a woman. Long dark brown hair as straight as a fall of water, bittersweet chocolate eyes, and a tiny diamond piercing her nose, she was a good place to start, but she had to be eighteen at the most. She was too young, and this wasn’t exactly the best time. I slapped down hormones that had been in hibernation for what seemed like years and passed over the cash.
I’d always known that saving Lukas would be saving myself, but to feel the internal thaw . . . to feel ice cracking over black water to let in the first ray of light in ten years . . . It was unexpected in its ferocity. I hadn’t imagined it would be like this. I couldn’t have imagined.
In college my scar and questionable family background hadn’t held me back on the dating scene. At that time I’d used the occasional relationship and anything-but-occasional sex to forget my guilt over my brother’s disappearance. After college I had only one relationship, Natalie. And after she left, I gave up on relationships altogether. I wasn’t especially good at them, so who needed them? And sex was easy enough to find at Koschecka if I was in the mood.
I rarely was. When you’re filled with guilt and rage it doesn’t leave much room for the more healthy emotions . . . ones that were beginning to swell in me again. I gave the girl another smile, wistful and wicked, as she gave me my change and receipt, then prodded Michael into motion. “Let’s go, kiddo. We have more shopping to do.”
The shopping I had in mind took place in the parking lot. As with most places, the employees had a spot at the far end designated for their cars so the customers wouldn’t be crowded out. Chances were a car stolen here would go the longest before being missed. I’d already gathered everything out of our old car and given it a quick wipe down. Now I stood casually on the back curb of the lot and made my choice—an old gray Toyota; it didn’t get more nondescript than that, or easier to steal. I’d pulled a jimmy, a thin piece of flexible metal—an old tool for an old ride—out of my duffel bag as I automatically tested the door handle. It was unlocked, unbelievable as that was in this cynical day and age. Motioning Michael around to the passenger side, I started, “Remember what I said. Stealing—”