He gets in the driver’s side of his truck but doesn’t start it, just using the privacy of the vehicle to talk to his girlfriend.
“So, that happened,” Noah starts.
“This is all your fault, Noah,” accuses Mason.
“What? How is this my fault?”
“Ever since you complained you were missing out on the drama, we’ve had drama coming out of our asses!” Mason smirks, his comment cutting through the tension.
“Sure, I guess you’re right. At least I’m not missing out on anything anymore.” And with that wisecrack, the uneasy atmosphere is broken.
“Hey, Amelia! Maybe drama can be our thing? We still haven’t found one, and it sure seems to love you,” Noah suggests.
“Maybe we should keep looking, Noah. I don’t want to openly invite drama into my life.”
“Fine. But I will find something!” Noah trails off, and we fall into an awkward silence again.
“So . . . that was Anna’s half brother,” Charlotte states.
Noah nods, answering Charlotte. “That’s the first time she’s seen him in a while.”
“I don’t think she’s seen him clean in a very long time,” Mason adds quietly.
“What did she mean? When she said he killed their mother?” I ask quietly, hesitantly.
Aiden sighs beside me. “It’s a long and complicated story.”
“But what does—”
I stop talking when I feel a palpable shift in the air, not only within our group, but at the Tracks as a whole. Something is wrong; we can all feel it. Aiden’s on high alert, his astute and intuitive eyes scanning the Tracks for the potential threat we all feel. He suddenly tenses with realization, his head whips toward me and he meets my eyes with his now widened ones.
“Leave. Now,” he commands as he closes the distance between us and puts his hands on my shoulders, roughly shoving me toward Mason’s SUV, the closest vehicle.
Sirens.
“Cops!” a random person in the crowd yells, sending everyone else in a frenzy.
They aren’t far away either—the police probably didn’t turn their sirens on until they were practically on top of us, and there’s clearly more than just a few cars. There are a lot of sirens. The flashing blue and red lights of the police descend upon the Tracks all at once, blocking in many of the frantic people trying to flee.
My heart beats erratically inside my chest. We can’t get arrested. I can’t get arrested! The local cops don’t know about me—no one knows about me. Only the specialized team assigned to my case has any idea who I really am. Getting arrested is not an option. I can’t compromise this identity, and never see the Boys, Charlotte, Annalisa, or Aiden ever again.
“Go!” Aiden shouts, and we scatter into action.
Julian’s truck door opens. “Guys!” he shouts.
Everything is in chaos. I don’t know who gets into which car. The sirens wail in the distance, growing closer with each second. Cars are taking off in all directions as the entire population at the Tracks registers what’s going down. I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here, and I don’t know what will happen when we get arrested. All I know is that Aiden opens the nearest door of Mason’s SUV and practically throws me in. He’s about to close the door on me when I realize that his car is parked some distance out.
“What about you?” I ask frantically.
He looks from me to his car in the distance. “I’ll be fine.” He looks at Mason, who’s starting the engine. “Get them out, take the back roads and take lots of turns. I’ll meet you at Amelia’s.”
With that he slams my door closed, leaving no room for objection, and Mason takes off without a second thought.
He speeds through the frantic crowd, dodging cars and people and cop cars alike.
A hand grips mine, and only then do I realize that Charlotte is sitting beside me in the back, but the front seat beside Mason is empty. Noah and Chase had better have jumped in Julian’s truck and managed to get out of here. My pulse is racing; my adrenaline pumping. There are cops everywhere, cars driving around in every direction trying to escape, and those left behind getting arrested.
“Mason!” I yell as a cop car skids to a horizontal stop directly in the path where he’s driving.