“Hey, hey,” the cabbie protested. “The fare?”
Ariane paused long enough to thrust a handful of bills through the plastic divider without counting them.
I hung back for a second, just to make sure it was enough. Though, if it wasn’t, I didn’t have more funds to cover.
“You guys on a scavenger hunt or something?” he asked, handing me a bunch of singles through the divider.
“Yeah,” I said to the cabbie, “and we just found the team we have to beat.” I pulled out a couple bills and gave them as a tip.
With one last curious glance at me in the rearview mirror as I slid across the seat and out the door, he gave a nod. “Good luck with…whatever.”
Yeah, that sounded about right.
ELISE AND HER FRIENDS LINKED arms, laughing and chattering, as they walked into the park. They paused just long enough to crowd together and take a picture of themselves on someone’s phone—I couldn’t tell whose from this distance.
One of them shrieked upon reviewing the photo, and they went through the routine again, wobbling as they squished closer.
I felt a squeeze of envy in my chest. Of all the emotions I expected to feel upon actually seeing the girl who was supposed to die at my hand today and who might now be the one person able to help me save lives, envy was not one of them.
But there it was, just the same.
“Hey.” Zane caught up with me, out of breath. Then he frowned. “What’s wrong? You look…sad.”
“Sometimes I just miss what might have been.” I tipped my head toward Elise and her friends.
He followed my gaze and nodded in understanding. “Doesn’t mean you can’t have it, Ariane. Just not right this second, maybe.” He flashed me a smile.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”
“Wait.” He caught at my sleeve. “We can’t just walk up to them and start talking about alien assassins and conspiracies and government agencies.”
“Really?” I asked. “And that was going to be my opening line, too.”
He sighed. “Fine. I deserved that. My point was that we should have our story straight.”
“And what should that story be?” I asked.
He frowned. “The cab driver said something about a scavenger hunt. We could use that. Tell them we need to get points for, I don’t know, getting a stranger to let us use their phone.”
“I was thinking we could tell her the battery ran out on my phone and just ask to borrow hers for a minute.” We wouldn’t be able to say much to Adam because they’d all be listening, but that would be the case, regardless.
Zane opened his mouth and then closed it with a rueful smile. “Oh. Okay, yeah, that could work.”
“Simpler is usually better,” I said, and because he looked so crushed, I stood up on my tiptoes and kissed him quickly, though it was more on his jaw than his mouth, because that was all I could reach.
He looked startled, then pleased.
I drew in a deep breath. “Excuse me,” I shouted at the girls ahead of us, lifting my hands to my mouth to help funnel the sound. “Hey!”
It was a bizarre feeling to shout with the intention of drawing someone’s attention to me; I’d spent so many years working for the opposite. It made me feel exposed.
A couple of the girls turned around to look; neither of them were Elise.
Nor were they looking at me, I realized. The taller of the two girls leaned down to whisper to the shorter as they stared at Zane, and they both giggled. I felt a distinctly familiar buzz of interest from them.
Crap.
“Um, I think you’re up,” I said to Zane.
“What?”
“This is going to go better if you do the talking.” I gestured ahead of us to where all five of the girls had now stopped and were facing us. Elise was in the dead center, smiling, looking on mildly interested as her two friends on the end laughed. She resembled her brother mostly in her coloring, honey-colored hair, and brown eyes.
Zane made a face. “I’m not really very good at that kind of thing—”
“They’re not particularly interested in your words,” I said tightly. One of the girls, the tall one with the gorgeous dark skin, was very loudly wondering in her head if I was his girlfriend and how that had happened.
My meaning sank in and the color in his face rose. “All right,” he muttered.
Visibly summoning effort, he jogged over to them, and I followed at a slower pace.
“Hey, sorry to bother you.” He gave them an easy smile, which all of them immediately and reflexively returned. I gritted my teeth against the gnawing jealousy. Of course they would smile at him. This was his world; these were the type of girls that should be flirting with him.
“I was hoping we could borrow your phone for a minute,” he said, mostly to Elise, because of course that’s whose phone we needed.