Scooting across the long backseat, Peri rested the flats of her arms on the open window and leaned out to the curb as Taf shut her door, jerking it right out of Silas’s grip. “You’re going to the alliance?” Peri asked as she looked for a lie. Explaining to the alliance what had happened wasn’t a bad idea, but it might just be a ruse allowing him to search her apartment without her.
“I am not going back,” Taf muttered, a flush creeping up the back of her neck. “My mother can just eat green eggs and fart. She was going to give you to Opti,” she said, locking her door when Silas tried to open it again. “My mother!”
“So come back with me and explain to them why that was a bad idea.” Silas’s dress shoes scraped the salt-rimed sidewalk. “Out. Come on. Time to do the grown-up thing and talk to your mom. Howard can get Peri across the bridge.”
It was a good plan, but Peri’s eyes narrowed as she read Silas’s tells: the slight hunch to his shoulders, the tightness of his lips, the way he was swallowing his words. Damn it, Silas knew. He knew she was going to make a play for her apartment with or without him and was chipping away at her resources.
“Silas …,” Taf complained.
“Just go,” Howard grumbled, and after a long moment, the young woman got out in a huff. Peri tried to find a neutral expression so as not to look as if her plan was coming apart.
“I’m sorry for having put your mental health at risk for a chance to bring Opti down,” Silas said, and she snorted at his apparent sincerity. “I have to talk to the alliance before they start coming for us. Me. But don’t hesitate to call if you have any issues with, ah, your intuition. I’ll contact you in a week. It’s not over. I’ll be back.”
“I don’t know why you think me being there is going to help,” Taf said as she zipped up her leather jacket and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I pointed my daddy’s rifle at her.”
“But you didn’t shoot her,” Silas said, almost smiling.
“True.”
Peri jumped, startled, when Jack, coming straight from her subconscious, lifted the handle of the backseat door on the street and slid in next to her. “Silas is a good liar. Almost as good as me,” Jack said as he slammed the door and settled himself behind Howard—which was really weird, since the car door never really opened and the wind never truly gusted, even if she had a sudden chill and had to tuck her hair back. It was her mind inventing a way for him to be there, and it was kind of freaking her out.
“Thanks, Howard.” Silas extended his hand into the car, and Howard leaned to take it. The two shook. “Get her across the bridge. I’ll call you when I know something.”
“Will do. Thanks.”
Silas put his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched and neck red. “I’ll call you in a week, okay?” he said to Peri, eyes pinched and asking for forgiveness. “We need to work on a more permanent solution. I just need to take care of this. I’m not abandoning you.”
But it felt as if he was.
He waited for a moment, and when Peri said nothing, he reluctantly turned away.
Her heart thumped and she reached out after him. Embarrassed by her impulse, she pulled herself back, clenched hands jammed in her lap. She didn’t need Silas’s help. Taf would be sorely missed, though.
His hands still on the wheel, Howard sighed. Scooting to the middle, Peri leaned over the console. “This is going to be harder without Taf.”
“Don’t worry about Taf,” he said, his words slow. “She’ll get four hours down the road and ditch him.” He put the car into drive. “She’ll be back.”
“You sure?”
Howard nodded. “She got out of the car way too easy.”
Not only that, but she’d left without much of a good-bye. Yep, she’d be back—if she could. Still unsure, Peri watched Silas and Taf cross the street ahead of them to reach the bus stop. Silas’s long, slow pace looked odd next to Taf’s fast click-clack in her boots. “Run him over, Howie. Just run him over,” she said. “He’s right in the middle of the street.”
“Ah-h-h, he means well.” Howard pulled out, sighing when Taf enthusiastically waved and turned away. It felt wrong leaving her to make her way back to them, and Peri slumped in the backseat to watch the shopfronts and foot traffic slide by. It bothered Jack, too, seeing as he was cleaning under his nails with the camo knife she had picked up at the airport. She hated it when he did that, and she fought the urge to tweak the imaginary knife away and throw it out the window.
I’m not depressed because Silas left, she told herself. His reasoning to wait was sound, but she couldn’t help but feel abandoned. He was an anchor—and she was adrift.
“You’d better hope Taf doesn’t show,” Jack said, and she checked to see the knife still in her boot sheath. “Even Howard is too much. You’re going to get them killed.”
Guilt swam up, and she sat straighter.
“You think you feel guilty now, wait until they’re dead,” Jack added.