“You won’t escape,” Trey says sullenly, leaning forward in his seat. Opening the small refrigerator and pulling out an ice tray, he dumps a few cubes in the cloth, pressing the cold compress to his face.
“Fortune favors the brave,” I reply with a rise of an eyebrow. Leaning forward, I take one of the remaining cubes of ice from the tray. I touch it to my tongue and watch him watch me.
“That sounds like an argument for doing whatever you want,” Trey growls.
“It’s cause and effect and…I’m just saying,” I let the melting ice cool my tight throat as I try not to pant from the exertion of my last failed attempt.
“You’re just saying, what?” Trey scowls at me, not letting it go.
“I’m just saying that when there is little left to lose, the consequences of one’s actions don’t carry the same weight…painful or otherwise.”
“She has you there, Trey,” Jax replies, grinning at me.
A smirk crosses my lips. “And maybe you should worry more about the consequences of your actions, chester,” I add, nodding toward the television screen mounted near the front of the limo. An awful, grainy photo, taken of me when I was around fourteen flashes up on the small screen as a scrolling marquee runs beneath my photo. “That’s an Amber Alert, making you officially wanted perverts.”
Trey doesn’t seem to flinch, watching the screen as my hideous, unsmiling face stares back at us. “That doesn’t even look like you,” Jax says, and my heart sinks a little. “It looks like a mug shot.”
“It’s me,” I mumble, remembering being processed back into the system after another failed foster home. Quickly, I stuff that memory back down, looking out the window as snow-covered cornfields slide past.
“HO! Did you see that?” Jax bursts out, scrambling in his seat for the remote to turn the volume up on the television. “That was—”
“Kyon!” Trey finishes for him, sitting forward in his seat, riveted to the screen.
“WHAT?” Wayra calls from the front, the car swaying a little.
“It is that knob knocker, Kyon!” Jax swears under his breath, as the newsreel replays me approaching the bar in Lumin before I begin backing up and running. Then it shows Kyon leaping over the bar to follow me. The footage from the camera behind the bar must’ve been turned over to the police and news agencies. The image freezes on Kyon’s face as the anchorman implores his viewers to report any information to the FBI or the Chicago Police Department.
“That means Kyon got away, doesn’t it?” I ask Jax, not taking my eyes off of Kyon’s shadowy image.
Both Jax and Trey turn and stare at me. “What happened?” Trey demands, his ice lying forgotten on the seat next to him. “Did he try to hurt you?” He quickly scans me for anything out of the ordinary. His concern throws me for a second.
My eyebrows pull together. “No, he was super nice—we’re besties now. In fact, Forester and Lecto are my new BFFs, too,” I reply, watching Trey’s face turn from concern to a scowl.
“They’re no friends of yours. You’re Rafe and they’re—” Trey grinds his teeth, looking very muscley all of a sudden.
“Knob knockers?” I ask, trying to fill in the blank he left with what I had heard earlier.
“Alameeda,” Trey hisses. Turning to Jax, he says, “Please refrain from teaching Kricket things she shouldn’t be learning.”
Jax frowns. “She should know a knob knocker when she sees one—it’s a life skill.”
“What exactly is a knob knocker?” I ask Jax, seeing that it’s really irritating Trey. “Shouldn’t your translator tell me what it is?”
“Kyon is a knob knocker,” Jax replies, a grin of approval on his lips. “And I’ll upgrade you with slang later.”
“No you won’t,” Trey says abruptly. “Kricket doesn’t need to know that.”
I scowl at Trey before turning to Jax. “I see. So a knob knocker,” I emphasize the words to irritate Trey, “is a liar who accosts women for his own gain?” I ask. Jax’s grin grows broader as he nods his head.
“What did Kyon say to you? What did he want?” Trey grasps me by my upper arm so that I’ll look at him.
I clamp my lips and Trey’s frown deepens. “You refuse to answer me?” he asks, his voice quiet—deadly. Goose bumps rise on my arms. I know that I’ve just crossed some invisible line with him; I know it because I’ve crossed them many times in the past and usually end up paying heavily for it. Stiffening, I straighten in my seat, bracing myself for the consequences that’ll probably be very painful.
“How far are we?” Trey barks out the question as he drops his hands from me.
“Fifteen—twenty fleats maximum, sir,” Wayra answers in a clipped tone of a military soldier.
“Any sign that we could’ve been followed?” Trey shoots back.
“No sign, sir.”
“I could’ve taken care of Kyon here,” Trey murmurs to himself, his hands balling into fists.
“I take it you two aren’t friends,” I surmise. Trey’s unfocused pupils contract as I interrupt his thoughts. When his eyes meet mine, it’s clear by his intense expression that he’d been plotting something deadly.
Jax laughs mirthlessly, “That’s an understatement—”
“No one answers her questions,” Trey orders, his stare pinning me to my seat. “Our information is more valuable to her than hers is to us.”
“Ooooh, I guess I’m going to have to put on my anthropologist’s hat for this one then.”
Trey ignores me, sitting back in his seat and watching the news on the television as it replays my flight from Kyon. The newscaster breaks in, announcing that there is new information to this story. An interview featuring Enrique with a microphone shoved near his mouth begins rolling. He’s describing the scene at the diner last night.
“It’s Enrique!” Jax grins, causing my head to snap in his direction. “Wayra, that reminds me—you still owe me 12 fardrooms for Enrique. He led us right to her.”
“I didn’t say he wouldn’t. I just didn’t think it’d be so fast,” Wayra counters over his shoulder.
“That wasn’t quick. If one more male asked me to dance last night, someone was getting hurt,” Jax mumbles.
“You must’ve looked at them too long,” I state absently, hearing Jax’s comment.
Both his eyebrows rise. “What?” he asks.
“Usually, a man will only ask you to dance when you’ve made the appropriate amount of eye contact,” I answer. “If you make eye contact for three seconds or longer with a man, you’ve basically invited him over.”
Trey and Jax both stare at me like I’ve unlocked a mystery. “But, then again,” I continue, eyeing them both, “I bet they’d ask you to dance even if you only look at them for a couple of seconds.”
“Why?” Jax asks in confusion.
“Err...you’re all uber-man types,” I falter. I’m not going to tell them that they’re eye candy.
A composite sketch of Jax flashes up on the screen with the name “Trey” written beneath it. Jax’s mouth drops because it looks almost exactly like him. “He only saw me for something like five or six seconds,” Jax says.