Chapter Four
Lying in bed in the room she’d grown up in, Kenzie stared at the white popcorn ceiling, marked by yellow circles from the lamp on the nightstand. It had been after one in the morning by the time she’d fallen asleep, and after a restless run-in with nightmares, she was awake again before dawn. She didn’t need an alarm to open her eyes; since she’d inherited Flapjacks at the ripe old age of twenty-one, she’d been rising before five. For seven years she’d dragged herself to a coffee machine and rolled into the diner before the morning crew arrived. But this morning, she wasn’t sure she needed caffeine.
Men had been waiting outside her restaurant all week. Men she’d seen. Who wanted to hurt people. Who had hurt people.
She knew what it was like to face down someone who wanted to do her harm. Ben Singer had kicked in the door of this house with a flat, ugly hate in his eyes. He’d wanted Cassie, and when Kenzie had stood in his way, she’d taken the brunt of his rage. She’d hoped she would never face another person like him again, but last night she’d been proven wrong.
Thinking of those two men who’d attacked Cole, of what they were capable of, made her more alert than coffee ever could.
Her mind turned to the focus of their attack, the stranger sleeping in her living room.
There were a hundred things she wanted to ask Cassie’s mysterious brother—what had been said last night before the fight, things about Cassie and their family. If he had any more news of the walking disaster that was their father. Her hand trailed over the side of her temple, then her ribs, the places she’d seen Cole hit and kicked. Anger flashed through her. For him, and for herself, too, because if Cole hadn’t come that might have been her. How long had those men been watching her, lurking in her parking lot like a couple creepers? What exactly did they want?
She didn’t want to fault Cole after all he’d been through, but there had to be something he wasn’t telling her. She knew this town; she’d lived here all her life. Bad men didn’t just randomly roll through, kick some ass, and then disappear.
Cole, like his sister, had secrets.
Rolling out of bed, she dressed in silence, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and cursed herself for leaving her makeup at work. Most of the time she finished getting ready there before the doors opened at seven, but this morning she wanted to appear more put together, even if it was only on the outside.
She tiptoed down the hall. The master bedroom door was wide open, no doubt so her brother could hear any movement from Cole in the living room. Remy, a giant mass of tan and black fur, lifted her head from her pillowed bed, ears perked, but rolled to her side when she recognized Kenzie. The dog had been out late with Garrett checking the property, checking Flapjacks, doing what they did. Since Garrett had returned from his last tour, Remy had been by his side, a friend when even Kenzie couldn’t reach him. She was grateful for that, but often wished her brother had an actual human to share his life with. He may have been rough on the outside, but he loved more fiercely than anyone she’d ever known.
Successfully reaching the living room, Kenzie paused, staring at the man spread out over the couch. One of Cole’s arms was bent over his head, the other across his chest. The blanket had been pulled up, leaving his socked feet uncovered. Since the break-in, she’d taken to leaving on a kitchen light when she went to bed, and the glow from the other room was just enough to show the marks on his face and his dark, tousled hair.
On the end table beside his wallet, keys, and phone were his glasses. He’d looked different with them on, even with the tape, even with the cuts and bruises. Like Clark Kent after a night playing Superman.
Who are you? It was the same question she’d had when Garrett had brought Cassie home two years ago, broken and battered after she’d fallen asleep at the wheel. The girl had been so full of secrets she didn’t even have a last name.
Quietly, Kenzie moved closer, hearing the soft sound of Cole’s breathing. Recalling the way he’d looked at her last night when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. Of course she had been; she’d been watching his every move, too. She’d seen the way his gaze roamed around the room, never stopping. The way his heel never stopped drumming against the floor. How his shoulders hunched every time he mentioned his sister.
She wanted to know what had brought those shadows beneath his eyes.
For now he needed to rest, but when he woke, she was going to use it to see if he knew any more about the men who’d jumped him. Letting Cassie keep her secrets had left her totally unprepared when the shit had hit the fan. That wasn’t going to happen again.
Making her way to the kitchen, she flipped on the coffee machine and found her keys in the basket beside the microwave. After what had happened last night, Garrett surely would have objected to her going in by herself, but Flapjacks was her place, her baby. Her responsibility. She wanted to see for herself that everything was all right. Besides, Garrett was still sleeping and someone needed to be here when Cole woke up.
She’d just do a quick once-over, just to make sure everything looked all right, then come back. Chances were they wouldn’t even know she’d left, and then Garrett could bring her in at the usual time later.
Shrugging into her jacket, she slipped out the back door, heading toward the blue RAV4 parked in front of the barn. For two years her best friend had lived upstairs in the loft, but now it sat empty. Likely because Garrett was secretly hoping Cassie would come back.
Kenzie knew better. Cassie and Jake weren’t a temporary thing. When Cassie looked at him, she had forever in her eyes.
Once Kenzie had thought she’d had that look, too. But she’d been wrong.
The sky was still black as she drove down the driveway. Shivering, she turned the heat on full blast, alternating puffs of hot air into each tightly furled fist as she pulled onto the road. Chances were the car wouldn’t even warm a single degree by the time she reached the restaurant, a mile away, but she kept the vents on high anyway.
Instead of entering through the front lot, she took the back alley behind the diner. Flipping on her high beams, she turned the wheel to face around the Dumpster, but the only movement was a stray cat. The front lot was empty. The inside of the restaurant, dark.
Her diner was just fine.
She parked beside the back door, letting the engine idle. Feeling uneasy, despite the evidence that all was well.
Dangerous men had been inside Flapjacks, a place that was more of a home than her little apartment. In a way, it felt as violating as Ben Singer breaking into Garrett’s house, because she hadn’t known what they were doing—that they were watching her. Waiting. Naïvely, she’d smiled at them and probably chitchatted, and shared her food.
Food was sacred. She might as well have given them the shirt off her back.
They were gone now at least. She’d scared them off, which was more than she’d been able to do with Ben Singer. For approximately six seconds she felt good about that, until she remembered the bills she’d been working on last night when they’d arrived, and sunk in her seat.
Task one on this morning’s agenda: Use magic powers to raise last month’s income to surpass the sum of her bills.
If that didn’t work, go with the old standby: Pretend she hadn’t seen them and pray that they got a shitload of customers before the overdue notices came. She liked to think of it as a game—beat the bank. So far she’d been lucky.
It would work out. It always did.
Turning off the engine, she headed toward the back door. She’d just pop in really quick, grab the bills, and bring them home. She didn’t love the idea of working on them in front of Garrett—Flapjacks’s finances were something she didn’t choose to share with him—but she didn’t want to be here alone after last night. Plus, she needed to be there when Cole woke up and Cassie called.
Inside, she breathed in the familiar scents of bacon and French fries—smells that never really went away no matter how much Cassie had cleaned. She hung up her coat on the rack and flipped on the lights, heading toward the office.
A crash in the kitchen had her freezing in her tracks.
Pots and pans clattered to the floor.
“Hello?” she called, voice wavering.
Her body may have been in the diner, but her mind flashed back to the house. She could hear the man’s boot thump against the front door as he kicked it. Feel each impact as she braced her shoulder against the wood. The lock had given way with a splintering crack, and she’d been knocked to the floor.
She shook her head. It wasn’t happening again. Ben Singer was gone. This was probably just an animal. A squirrel had gotten in through the vents, like last summer.
“Hello?” she called again. She wasn’t above making squirrel soup. She’d do it, and then she’d leave it outside so that all the other squirrels knew not to mess with her.
She glanced into her office on the way to the kitchen, and found a man sitting in her chair, closing her laptop. The sight stopped her in her tracks.
A scream formed in her throat, but was silenced by the casual raise of his hand.
The man from last night. Tracksuit, still in the same blue zip-up jacket. She didn’t have to look to know that the person approaching from the kitchen behind her was his companion in the sweatshirt, but she did anyway. He was wearing a black coat now, and her eyes landed on the small vertical scar on his chin before she spun back around.
“Sorry to tell you this, boys,” she said, cursing herself for leaving the pocketknife Garrett had given her in her coat pocket, “but we don’t open for another couple hours.”
Tracksuit smiled.
She’d never hated a smile more.
“We were hoping you’d come,” he said. “Tall bastard sure made the rounds last night. Figured this was the only place we could talk in private.”
He stood, and when she took an automatic step back, she bumped against his friend. Sweat dampened her hairline. Every muscle coiled, ready to spring or fight, whatever it took should they close in on her.
“My brother’s outside,” she said, throat tight. “If I don’t come out in two minutes, he’s coming in, and believe me, you don’t want that.”
Behind her, the man with the scar on his chin chuckled softly.
“Why don’t you go get him, Jeremy?” said Tracksuit. “The more the merrier.” She breathed in sharply, smelling the sweat on him. The man seriously needed a shower. Apparently stalking didn’t afford time for hygiene.
“Wait,” she said, holding on to the slim chance that they might believe Garrett was really nearby. As soon as they opened that door, they’d know she was lying. “You run into him, you’re dead. I’m easier to get along with. Why don’t you just tell me what you want, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Easy, huh?” Jeremy chuckled again. He stepped closer. She could feel him behind her. Feel that violation all over again of him sitting in her restaurant, creeping around her parking lot, watching, watching, watching.
She jerked her shoulder back, bumping into him on purpose.
“I’m feeling more difficult by the second,” she said in a low voice that she hoped didn’t reflect her fear.
Tracksuit raised his hand again, as if to calm her down. “What’s your connection to the Talents?”
She flinched. He saw it, and his grin deflated into a thin, flat line.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
Tracksuit hummed disapprovingly. “You don’t want to lie to us, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call me that.”
She saw Cole as he’d been last night. Taking hit after hit on the ground. She’d been attacked recently, too, and knew what it was like not to be able to defend herself. Maybe it was because of that, or because Cole was Cassie’s brother, but she wasn’t about to rat him out to men like this.
“Come on, Mackenzie,” Tracksuit said, the use of her name making her even more on edge. “We know one of August’s men came out here looking for Marsella not long ago. We know Cole stayed over at your brother’s last night. Either that’s an incredible coincidence, or you’ve got a Talent magnet hanging over your head.”
A coldness seeped into her veins. They were watching Garrett’s house. Her brother was in danger. Cole was in danger. She had to warn them.
“Let’s try this again,” said Tracksuit. “You’re running a Talent safe house out here in Farmland, USA, and now it’s time close up shop. Where’s your friend Marsella?”
Kenzie tried not to let her face show any emotion, but her fear reached deeper, gripping her spine.
“Cole wouldn’t have driven all this way if she wasn’t hiding somewhere,” Jeremy prompted.
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told him,” she said, pulse stuttering. “Ca . . . Marsella left town. I don’t know where she is.”
“Don’t lie to me,” said Tracksuit. “There are consequences for lying.”
“I swear,” Kenzie said.
“That’s too bad.” From the corner of her eye she saw Jeremy lean against the doorframe.
“I’d hoped you’d make a better decision,” agreed Tracksuit with a sigh. “See, we’ve had a setback recently, and someone needs to be held accountable for that.”
“And since not one single Talent seems willing to make things right . . .” Jeremy pulled lightly on a lock of her hair, grinning when she swiped it over her shoulder.
“We have to resort to Plan B,” continued Tracksuit. “We have a responsibility to teach the consequences of running to the cops. So here’s my next question. How much does Marsella value your life?”
Her shoulders rose. Her nails dug into the palms of her hands.
Tracksuit stepped closer. His hand rose, and when she flinched, he stilled, and smiled again. Then, gently, he ran his fingertips down her jaw.
“Would she come running if, say, she knew we had her best friend?”
Cold dread snaked through her veins.
They were going to take her, use her as bait to get Cassie.
“I don’t know where she is,” Kenzie said again.
“But she’ll know where you are,” said Tracksuit. He reached for the office phone, sitting on her desk. “Let’s call Marsella and see how long it takes her to get here.”
Time seemed to slow, and as a result, Kenzie felt her blood cool, and her feet root to the floor. She willed herself to be light, and fast, and strong, but she was scared.
Images flipped through her mind, too fast to hold on to. Her brother. Cassie. Cole. This restaurant that she’d poured years of love into.
She didn’t want to die.
“Please,” said Kenzie. “We can figure this out, all right? Just give me a minute to think.”
Tracksuit aimed a patronizing frown down at the phone in his hand. “If you don’t remember the number, maybe we can go get Garrett. He should be able to help, don’t you think?”
His name almost broke her.
“Leave him out of this,” she said. “He has nothing to do with this.”
A clang of metal in the kitchen drew their attention. It was followed by a strange, fabricated silence, as if someone had bumped into a pot or pan, and then grabbed it before it fell to the floor.
“Go,” Tracksuit hissed to Jeremy, who disappeared down the hall in that direction.
“Garrett?” Her voice was tremulous and high. Was he actually here? Had he come to check on her when he’d woken to find her gone? Suddenly unfrozen, she tried to follow Jeremy, but Tracksuit grabbed her by the arm and shoved her into the office chair. She bucked against him, kicking and swinging her arms in a frenzy of movement. The chair rocked, but he forced her down, even as she arched her back. Two words pounded through her blood, shouting alongside the beat of her heart: Get out, get out, get out.
She fought until a knife came to rest against her throat.
“Please stop,” he said slowly.
She didn’t move. Didn’t even breathe. The cold steel of the knife pressed against her neck, the point digging into her delicate skin. She stared into the man’s eyes, searching for some kind of connection, something to grasp on to, but found only a cold void. Goose bumps spread across her body.
He smirked then lowered the knife. One step back, and then another, until he reached the door. The breath shuddered from her lungs as he stood in the threshold of the door, and smiled at her.
“Jeremy?” he called. “What’s the goddamn hold up?”
Silence, then a flash of movement behind Tracksuit, and a solid thud. What smug superiority remained was wiped off his face. He blinked, and then fell to his knees and toppled forward.
She jolted up, glancing from the body, facedown on the floor, to the man standing behind him in the hall wearing broken glasses and holding a fire extinguisher before him like a bat he’d just swung.
“Cole?”
He looked from the body up to her and gave a quick shake of his head, as if to clear whatever thoughts had formed there.
He dropped the fire extinguisher.
“Come on.” When he reached a hand toward her, she didn’t think of what he was doing here, or if he was dangerous. She stepped over Tracksuit’s still body, feeling the solid grip of Cole’s fingers around hers. Her legs trembled; her whole body seemed to tremble.
“I don’t think so.” She looked up to see Jeremy, bowling out of the kitchen straight toward them.
She didn’t have time to react. Cole was pulling her backward toward the door. She couldn’t hear Jeremy’s next words. She could only hear Cole, shouting her name. Feel the tug on her arm as he dragged her toward the back exit. Before she turned, she saw Jeremy hoisting Tracksuit up and following, but they were already pushing out into the gray, cold morning.
“Come on, come on,” Cole chanted as he pulled her down the step toward his car. He’d followed her here. She could only hope that he had a better reason than the men who’d ambushed her, and that going with him now wasn’t trading one grim fate for another.
“We have to go, Kenzie.”
Her brain registered what he was saying as truth, but the rest of her couldn’t abandon this place. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he shoved her into the open door of his car. She clambered over the divider into the passenger seat, making room for him to drive, but crawled onto her knees to look out the window.
On the ground outside the back door, Jeremy had fallen to his knees, the other man’s arm still hanging over his shoulder. They were both conscious now, both red in the face and glistening with sweat. Both glaring at her through the side window of the car as Cole jammed the key in the ignition. Jeremy jolted up and reached into the back of his waistband.
She knew there would be a gun in his hand even before she saw it.
“Go,” she shouted, slapping Cole’s shoulder. “Go.”
The tires squealed as he stepped on the gas. He ran over the curb, the car’s frame bouncing as he hit the main road. As they went flying onto the street, she gripped the headrest, holding on as inertia whipped her into the door. Behind them she could see the front of Flapjacks, but the two men who’d threatened to barter her life for Cassie’s were gone.
Faster they drove. Faster. Flapjacks grew smaller in the distance as they hit the decline of Beech Acres, the main drag through town.
Then came the boom, an explosion loud enough to shake the car. A scream burst from her throat, and made her duck behind the headrest, gripping the seat as if her life depended on it.
“What was that?” Cole asked sharply.
She lifted her chin and felt an odd sense of separation, as if she were looking on something both real and not real. Terrible, but in the way that a scene from a frightening movie is terrible.
Flapjacks was burning.
Black smoke burst in a plume from an opening in the roof, thick as tar against the pre-dawn sky. The windows had all been broken. The space around the building was shimmering with a mirage of heat and orange flames.
Her restaurant, the one her grandfather had built, taught her to cook in, and given to her before he died, was burning to the ground.
She swallowed the knot in her throat, blinked back the tears. Those men had lit her restaurant on fire.
“We have to go home,” she said. “Turn around. We have to get my brother.”
“We can’t,” Cole said, gripping the wheel as he ran a stop sign and sped down Main Street. The shops on either side were dark; not another car was on the road.
“Go back!” she shouted. “What are you doing? They’ll come for him next.” She imagined Jeremy knocking down the front door of the house, rousing Garrett out of sleep. If he wasn’t ready . . . if he wasn’t prepared . . .
“They’ll come for us,” Cole said sharply. “You and me. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“No,” she said. “We can’t leave him.”
“We have to.” He was nearing the truck stop, getting close to the freeway. She could still see the black smoke behind them. From a distance came the wail of sirens, and it occurred to her with a sinking sensation that they were en route to Flapjacks. The smoke alarms were wired to contact the fire department if they were activated.
This was all happening too fast.
“Stop,” she said, voice shaking. “Stop the car right now.” She considered reaching for the wheel, making him pull over. Even if he didn’t stop all the way she could tuck and roll.
“Listen,” he said quickly, “emergency services have been notified. They’re going to the diner, then they’re going to try to find the last people who were there. Those two guys aren’t sticking around town, smelling like campfires and covered with ash. They’re getting the hell out, and then they’re covering their tracks.”
She sunk in her seat, gripping her knees to keep from wringing her hands.
“You mean, finishing what they started,” she said.
He nodded soberly.
She blew out a breath, tried to focus, but her thoughts were running a mile a minute. Those two men had wanted to trade her for Cassie. They’d tried, and failed, and then destroyed her diner as punishment. Cole was right; they wouldn’t stay in Ambrose, not with the authorities poking around. They’d make themselves scarce, and then come for her, maybe try to stop her from going to the cops.
She’d seen their faces. She could ID them. She’d watched enough mob movies to know that was not a point in the favor of her survival.
“I need to call Garrett,” she said. “My phone was in my coat pocket.” In the diner. Which was now on fire. She put her head in her hands.
She had nothing with her but the clothes on her back.
He removed his phone from his pocket, but when she reached for it, he rolled down the window and tossed it out.
“Hey!”
“These are highly motivated criminals,” he said, as if he’d just read it out of a textbook. “They’ll know how to track our phones.”
“I have to tell Garrett what happened,” she argued. “I have to warn him. If he thinks I’m dead . . .” She almost had been dead. Would have been, if not for Cole.
She had to talk to her brother. Their parents weren’t in the picture. Their grandparents had passed on. Cassie was gone, and Garrett didn’t have any friends from the army. The two of them were all each other had.
“We’ll stop somewhere,” he said.
The sunrise lit the freeway as they climbed the on-ramp, stretching over her town and the home she was leaving behind. Panic welled in her chest as the reality of the situation began to descend on her. She didn’t know who these men were who were after them. She didn’t have a way to reach her brother. She didn’t even know if Cole was truly safe, or if they were both just thrown together by a common enemy.
“What were you doing at the diner, Cole?”
He glanced her way, then back to the road. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel.
“I followed you,” he said. “I thought you might be meeting Marsi.”
“I told you she’d call.”
His shoulder jerked in a shrug. She didn’t blame him for not trusting her; she didn’t trust him, either. But all the same it appeared they were stuck here, together, at least until they developed some kind of plan.
Fastening her seat belt, she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
The only answer was the acceleration of the car engine as they hurtled down the road.