Caught off guard, he stumbled a step back, his hand flying up to his mouth and coming away red.
He looked from the blood on his hand to me. “You are so dead, kid,” he said with a disconcertingly wide smile.
I flexed my hand; the skin had split over the knuckles, but nothing was broken, as far as I could tell. “Not today,” I said, shifting forward, my weight on my toes.
He pushed up on me, getting in my face, and I braced myself for impact, to roll and turn his momentum against him. I’d had years of practice, between lacrosse, my dad, and my older brother, Quinn. My dad and Quinn were built like Adam but on a smaller scale. Everything was on a smaller scale compared to Adam.
But the anticipation surging in my veins, that was new. I’d always gone into any fight or clash on the field with jaw-clenching determination, but that was different than enjoying it.
I wanted him to take a swing at me. I wanted to feel the impact of his fist. It would fuel the fire burning in me to stand over him and howl in triumph.
But then, as if he could read my mind and sense my eagerness, Adam grinned at me, his teeth bloody from the cut on his mouth. “Even better. It’ll be a surprise.”
He turned and jogged out of the alley, heading away from the bagel place, as was the plan. Which was probably better because, as he’d pointed out, we were already running late, and Justine would not put up with that.
“TBD, bro!” he called over his shoulder to me.
I exhaled slowly, trying to quiet the thundering drum of my pulse in my head.
Fucking Adam. I wasn’t sure how Justine or Emerson were compensating or rewarding him for his reduced role in all of this. More steroids or whatever he was already doing, maybe?
I hoped whatever it was involved permanent ball shrinkage.
My hand starting to throb in time with the raw patch of skin on my chest, I hurried out of the alley and the remaining blocks to the restaurant.
It didn’t take me long, under five minutes. Hole in One was a small place, taking up a corner in the lobby of another skyscraper. Through the windows, I could see that the half-dozen booths appeared occupied, and the line of caffeine and carbohydrate-deprived businesspeople snaked out through the door and onto the sidewalk, where damp metal tables sat under closed café umbrellas, waiting for the lunch crowd.
The popularity of the eatery was, I had to guess, part of Justine’s plan to make Ariane feel less exposed.
But there was no sign of Ariane in the window-facing booths as far as I could tell without going inside, and I had a hard time imagining her joining the line of coffee seekers.
I turned and checked the sidewalk in both directions, hoping to see her approaching, her white-blond head tucked down against a nonexistent wind, just as I had seen it innumerable times at school.
But no, she wasn’t in sight. And she should have beaten me here.
The worry I’d felt at the hotel, that maybe she’d been saying good-bye for real, returned with a vengeance, until the pain in my hand was nothing more than a vague memory. I crossed the sidewalk and pushed my way in through the door, earning more than a few glares for stepped-on toes and a few mumbles about “the back of line is that way.”
Inside, it smelled of coffee and fresh bread and a not-unpleasant mix of colognes and perfumes from the impatiently waiting patrons. On any other day, I might have appreciated it more, my stomach rumbling for food.
But today I barely noticed, my focus pulled elsewhere.
A quick look around didn’t reveal anything that I hadn’t seen from the outside, except that the line of waiting people was even longer than I’d realized. It zigged and zagged through a series of a poles and ropes, like the ones they use at amusement parks to keep the line under control, with a set of bakery racks on the right side to box everyone in.
Ariane wasn’t here.
Then, with a sinking feeling, I realized, neither was Justine.
I looked for her dark red hair in that tight ponytail—when you’re tall, that’s how you recognize people, by the tops of their heads—but no luck.
What did that mean? Had I missed them both entirely? Had Justine been able to convince Ariane that quickly and without me present? That didn’t seem likely.
Or was this meeting an elaborate trap I hadn’t seen coming, Justine in league with the other government people and hiding it for some reason?
Maybe they’d already hauled her away, drugging her so she wouldn’t protest. I’d seen it happen before, the night I first learned who she really was and what she could do. GTX security had shot her with sedative darts outside a party at Rachel Jacobs’s house and then carried her off to a van.