Sang

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I never finished eating dinner. I was halfway through when I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any more. I was swaying in the seat.

Erica got after Jessica to get to bed and after a bit, she suggested I go as well. I didn’t know how to say no to her. Not after tonight. Not after finding us and how she looked at me, at Nathan and even at Victor. They had to stay together. Nathan couldn’t leave as he was anticipating a talk with Erica with Kota. Victor couldn’t be alone right now. Not with Volto causing problems.

She knew something happened.

Nathan and Victor waited downstairs on the couch for Kota. I wanted to. I didn’t want Kota to have to face Erica alone. But as Erica told me everything was okay and reminded me that there was school tomorrow, I didn’t know what else to do. Nathan and Victor encouraged it.

Sleep took over quickly once I hit the bed. The only time I woke up, it was when Nathan crashed in the cot after he rolled it out. I sensed there was someone else in the room, too. I think it was Victor on the floor. I was asleep again quickly once Nathan settled down.

Someone was shaking me to wake up the next morning. Despite the effort, my eyes stayed closed.

“Sang,” Victor said. “Princess. Come on. We’ve got to get going.”

I heard it and I still couldn’t wake myself.

Part of my memory was foggy from the night before. The blanket over my body kept me so warm and the bed was incredibly comfortable. The moment he stopped shaking, I was already going back to sleep.

But Volto was out there. Somewhere.

The thought of him woke me.

I sat up sharply, knocking my head against Victor’s hovering face. He reeled back, cupping his hand around his lips and mumbled against it.

“Sorry!” I said, scrambling to get on my knees on the bed. I blinked rapidly. The shock of it all coming to me at once. I leaned into Victor, looking at his face. “I’m sorry.”

He removed his hand. His lip was a bit red and it split at the bottom. Not terribly bad but it must have stung. “Accident,” he said and tried to smile but he winced and touched his lip again. “You okay?”

I nodded. The room was a mess of sleeping bags and the rollaway bed was still out. Someone was in the bathroom. There was activity downstairs, but I couldn’t tell who was here and where they were.

Victor leaned closer and touched my face, around my forehead. “I didn’t bite, did I?”

I didn’t feel anything. “Where’s North? Did he get back?”

“We’ve got him. But let’s wait until we’re in the car...” He continued to focus on me. It wasn’t safe to say too much here.

I crawled out of bed and then stopped. “My school uniform. I think it’s at the security trailer.”

“We can pick it up on the way,” he said. He was already in his uniform, looking polished and ready to go. His hair was combed back on his head, still wet from a recent shower. “Just get some clothes on.”

The urgency in his tone spoke to me more than his words. I stood, hovering on the carpet, trying to put pieces of memory together and figure out what needed to be done.

When he nudged my lower back, bringing me to the closet, I realized he meant right now.

I scrubbed at my face, and instead of grabbing clothes to take into the bathroom, I took what I needed in the closet and started to get dressed in there.

Victor hovered in the doorway, checking in on me, but his gaze went to the stairs on the far side of the room.

He was nervous about...who? Erica?

I dressed quickly in simple, dark cotton pants, a tank shirt and then put on a sweater over top. I stuffed my feet into tennis shoes without socks. “Ready.”

He took my hand and led me to the steps.

The bathroom door opened. Gabriel appeared, already in his uniform and carrying a jacket at his elbow. He was putting in a pink crystal stud into one of his lobes. He hurried behind me as we descended the stairs.

Victor stopped at the bottom of the steps, putting his ear to the door. After a few minutes, he stepped back and pulled the door open. He moved quickly, tiptoeing around to the side door of the garage.

Gabriel followed behind me. His palm touched my back, urging me on and keeping me steady. His usual smile was gone, a grim expression replacing it.

The mix up of people was just registering to me. Where was Nathan? Did he go somewhere? When did Gabriel get here?

Once we were clear of the house, Victor had us going to Kota’s sedan parked out in the driveway.

Victor got behind the wheel. I got into the back seat with Gabriel.

Within minutes of Victor turning the engine, Kota appeared. He rushed out, bag in hand, phone to his ear. He jumped into the front passenger seat just as Victor started rolling the car backward.

We were escaping.

Since Kota was on the phone as Victor drove, I kept quiet. I stretched, yawned, trying to wake myself further. I leaned into Gabriel as part of my memory returned. “Did Luke make it out?”

“He waited inside. Too risky to leave. He’ll meet us in the music room. There was security all over that place last night, so he decided to camp out.”

Security all over for one smoke bomb near midnight?

I rubbed at my cheek and settled back into the seat. He’d need a day off after this, after being up all night.

Gabriel yawned, stretched and put an arm over my shoulder, tucking me into him. We leaned in together, getting comfortable, although it made it harder not to fall back asleep.

Kota eventually spoke into the phone. “Hi, I’m calling in for Marie Sorenson. I need her records...” He paused. “Yes. We need her changed to home school with protected status.” Another pause. “Right. Thank. Let me know.” He hung up. He put his head back against the seat.

“Why did we run out of the house?” I asked.

“My mom was in the shower,” Kota said. “I wanted to get out before she started asking questions.”

“Did she talk to you last night?”

“No.” He turned his head. His eyes were dark with heavy circles.

I raised an eyebrow. “Have you even been to sleep?”

“Nope,” he said, blinking very slowly then looking at me and smiling in such a way that he actually looked a little crazy. His lashes fluttered across his green eyes, a little spark in them from the morning light shining in his face. “Good morning, by the way.”

Victor pulled into the parking lot of the diner and parked close to the security trailer. Gabriel jumped out before I could. “I’ll get them,” he said, and he dashed over to the trailer. He returned with a gray bookbag with a little pink patch on the outside. He shoved it into the seat between us before climbing in.

Once we were on the road again, I laughed a little. The whole rush this morning brought some sharp realization to me. “We really do need a house,” I said. “All of our stuff is everywhere.”

“I was looking at a few,” Victor said. “The thing is, most of the best options are either downtown...”

“No,” Kota said. “Not downtown.”

Victor nodded shortly. “Then the other places are around Mt. Pleasant, maybe out further in John’s Island.”

“I don’t want to be too far from downtown, still,” Kota said. He laughed shortly and put a palm to his forehead. “I know that’s sounding indecisive, but it’s going to take a lot more time to find a big house for all of us.”

His comment and the pause in the conversation had me sitting upright. Kota hadn’t objected to the house before, but I’d thought out of all of them, Kota would be the hardest to convince.

Gabriel rolled his head on the headrest of the back seat. He hadn’t shaved. Coarse hair lined his chin and cheeks, a little dark. His hair was combed in odd directions. He tried to fiddle with it using his fingers as a comb. “Uh, shouldn’t we get the BMW out? Shouldn’t that be first thing?”

“A recovery team was sent out,” Kota said. “Nathan and I were there before dawn to identify where the car went down. They’ll find it.”

“Will it be bad?” I asked. “Can it be fixed?”

Victor spoke, “I may have to get creative with what happened to it. Or find another one and just change the plate somehow without my parents knowing.”

I felt bad for Victor. He’d have to figure out how to not let his parents know about what really happened to the car. “Maybe you can use Mr. Blackbourne’s for now? Maybe they won’t notice?”

“We could,” Victor said. “I might do that tonight. Not that they pay attention too much. I could switch plates for now. But I’ll have a problem later if anyone checks the VIN number.”

“At least until we see if we can get your car fixed,” Kota said. “And Mr. Blackbourne will need a replacement.”

“Another reason for a house,” Gabriel said. “We can switch cars whenever we want.”

“I don’t need any more reasons,” Victor said.

“Another reason,” Gabriel said. He held up a couple of fingers, like he was ready to count off these reasons. “No running out the door without breakfast just to avoid Erica.”

“I’m not avoiding her,” Kota said. “We just don’t have the time this morning.”

“That’s avoiding.”

“Where’s North car?” I asked.

“North reported it stolen,” Kota said. “We don’t know where it is.”

My heart sunk. “We never found it?” I’d left the necklace he’d given me behind the seat. Not to mention he loved his Jeep. I’d hoped Volto ditched it like he had with Mr. Blackbourne’s car.

Kota shook his head but looked back at me again. “Don’t worry. It’ll turn up.”

“Maybe,” Gabriel said, sitting back again and crossing his arms. “If Volto didn’t sink that one, too.”

“If we don’t find it, we’ll get another one,” Kota said. “At this point, we’ll probably need some extra cars.”

Internally, I was laughing at myself. It wasn’t a good laugh, more something odd and out of frustration. A few days ago, I was on bed rest. Today was day two of being allowed back, and it was already wild. And who knew what would happen today. Volto was back. We were down two vehicles. Our mission last night seemed to have failed completely.

Maybe they thought nothing of the cars they needed to replace, but we needed to be more careful. He was probably right about that. Cars we could get. We couldn’t get another Nathan. He could have been seriously hurt last night.

It was really one more reason to get everything settled. Mr. Hendricks. Volto, if we could. Although, I found it odd that Volto was more interested in our activities around the school.

For weeks, we’d been away, and he had stopped. Why did he seem to go inactive and then come back now?

The big question was left hanging open. “Did we find out what was in the boxes going out? And what they brought in?”

“Food,” Kota said. “Just food. It seemed like similar supplies as well.”

“What? Why?”

“We’re trying to figure out why they were swapped. North ended up in a warehouse on the other side of town. It’s hard to explain and I don’t know the full details. We need to get to Mr. Blackbourne and find out.”

Another group meeting. They had more of those than I realized but I knew why now. And I realized they’d probably had a lot before I’d been allowed to join them.

We were safe now, that was good. “Kota?”

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t tell the people you were on the phone with just now about Danielle. Didn’t she want out of school, too?”

“I don’t know how to ask about that without her parents getting involved. Her situation is different. We may need to put her into testing. See if she can qualify for some sort of local private school. Marie’s free to leave the school on her own, but we don’t want to tell her. A home school arrangement will give her mainly what she wants.”

“Good idea,” I said.

“Nathan is going to get them both to come in today,” Gabriel said.

I yawned again. I didn’t mean to, but it popped out of me. “Should I change in the car?” I asked. “Before we show up?”

The others looked at each other and Gabriel shrugged. “Can you do it?”

I opened the bag, finding the skirt and top and jacket stuffed inside. They were only slightly wrinkled but still appeared clean. The skirt was easy enough to put on and slide the pants off underneath. I left the tank shirt on and put the white shirt on to replace the sweater. “I’ll carry the jacket,” I said.

Victor and Kota had ignored me while I dressed. It was Gabriel that occasionally looked my way, but he seemed more concerned with monitoring cars and whatever we were passing by, in case anyone looked in.

Once I finished dressing, I combed my fingers through my hair and then blinked rapidly, trying to remember where I left it. “I don’t have my clip.”

“Just wear it down,” Gabriel said. “There wasn’t one in the trailer. You use the same one all the time.”

“I think I left it in the bed,” I said. “Or next to it. I forgot to grab it.”

Kota looked back this time, at my hair and then at the bag. “Do we need to get you more than one?”

“I had a few. I’m down to the one.” I nudged Gabriel with an elbow. “He’s got a stash somewhere.”

“What are you talking about?” Gabriel asked with a sheepish grin. “Luke takes them all. I don’t have any.”

“I don’t have one,” Kota said.

“Me, either,” Victor said. “Sorry, princess. Do they sell them at—” He paused mid-sentence and leaned toward Kota, looking past him and through the passenger window.

The rest of us turned our attention.

We were in front of the school. The lane was a little congested and Victor had slowed to a crawl with everyone else. The lane split just on school property, going to the front of the school and around a flag pole to loop back. It often served as a drop off point, as it circled back to the road next to the teacher’s lot.

But the loop had been cut off by police cars.

And dead center, parked next to the flag pole, was North’s Jeep. I was pretty sure it was his, at least. No one else at school drove a black four-door Wrangler. We’d have to get closer, maybe check the plate to confirm, but it was far too much of a coincidence.

Everyone in the car remained quiet. Several cop cars were parked in the lane as well. One was standing by the car, writing notes into a pad.

“North reported it stolen,” Victor said. “And it’s here? When did it show up?”

No one had an answer for him.

Kota pulled his phone out immediately and dialed. “Hey. We found North’s car. Actually, the police found it...”

There was a voice on the other end, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying.

“Should we turn around?” Kota asked. “No? Okay. Just checking. We’ll see you inside.” He turned off his phone and put it back into his pocket. “Mr. Blackbourne says go in as usual but...something’s up. He couldn’t say much.”

“North should have been notified they found it,” Victor said. “Did they call him?”

“Not as far as I know, but they might have just found it. Better to wait for them to call him.”

“Won’t they tow it?” Gabriel asked, turning around and looking forward. “It’s just parked where it shouldn’t be. And why are police around it?”

“I don’t know,” Kota said.

I turned in the seat, watching the cop that was writing things down. He was joined by another officer. His partner pulled out yellow tape and started circling the car with it.

“Guys?” I said, and I pointed back to North’s Jeep. “I don’t think he’s getting it back yet.”

Gabriel and Kota spun around. Victor looked over his shoulder but had to focus on the traffic. He readjusted the mirrors to look.

The first officer was helping pull yellow tape around the car on top of thin poles I hadn’t noticed before now.

“Why are they blocking it off with caution tape?” I asked.

Gabriel’s expression turned grim, and his tone darkly serious. “Because it’s a crime scene.”