I shouldn’t have been surprised he knew how to hotwire a car, even though I’d have expected that more from Damon with his recent criminal associations. Gabriel knew cars inside and out, thanks to his dad who’d been the garage manager on my estate since before Gabriel or I was born. Until my dad had fired him because of Gabriel’s friendship with me, that was. I didn’t want to think about everything that had happened after.
But I did have to think about Gabriel. My heart wrenched, but I forced myself to touch his arm. “You don’t have to stay with us, you know. We’re not consorted. If you’re not with me, they might leave you alone. They’ll be so busy coming after the rest of us—”
Gabriel jerked around, setting his hand over mine. His bright blue eyes held my gaze intently.
“I’m not going anywhere, Rose. Not now, not ever. You don’t have to offer. I knew what I was getting into already.”
I swallowed thickly, but I couldn’t help smiling. It wasn’t as if I’dwantedhim to leave.
“I lifted a phone off one of the guards,” Kyler said, jogging around to the passenger side of the cab. “Already disabled anything that would let them track it. I can navigate. Is there anywhere you think we should go, Rose?”
I rubbed my forehead as if that would put my thoughts in better order. “We just need to get as far away from here as we can as quickly as we can, before anyone realizes and sounds the alarm. Someplace where we can get another car, I guess, since they’ll start looking for this one.”
“That’s the start of a plan,” Seth said. “Come on, let’s get you in and resting.”
Damon had already tugged open the van’s back doors. We clambered in, Seth giving me an extra boost. A few boxes were stacked against one wall along with a dolly and a couple of thick wool blankets, I guessed for extra padding.
Jin grabbed the blankets and spread them on the floor. I sat down on one with a sigh of gratitude. Up front, the engine hitched and rumbled. Kyler let out a little cheer.
“Ready to go?” Gabriel called back to us.
“Almost!” Seth yanked the doors shut. He, Damon, and Jin gathered around me on the blanket. “Good to go!” he shouted to Gabriel, and then ran his hand over my hair. “Lie down. Get some rest. We can take care of you for a little while, all right?”
“If you need magic for anything, don’t hesitate—wake me up,” I said, and he nodded.
“Go to sleep, angel,” Damon said, tugging me down next to him. I closed my eyes. The van rocked as it backed out of the parking space. My body was still aching, but with Damon holding me, Jin tracing gentle patterns on my back, and Seth stroking my knee, I didn’t care.
I was with my consorts again. I’d saved them, at least for the moment.
Now we just had to find out whether we’d actually escaped or if we had another battle ahead.
Chapter Five
Seth
We’d been on the road about twenty minutes when Kyler popped open the door between the seats up front and the van’s storage area. “Hey, Damon,” Gabriel called back from beside my brother. “Have you got any ideas about where we could find another van or a truck no one will be able to trace easily—and that won’t cost a ton?”
“And why exactly are you asking me?” Damon muttered, but he got up to consult with them anyway. It wasn’t exactly a secret that he’d been hanging out with some pretty questionable characters over the last several years. If any of us was going to know where to get something under the table, it’d be him.
“We’ll want to pick up some burner phones too,” Ky said. “I’ve got to tell my clients something, and Seth and I should probably send some kind of message to our parents, so no one worries when we don’t show up for work.”
Damon sighed. “I’m sure we can manage that too. Burner phones are pretty simple.”
I shifted to take his former place beside Rose. She stirred and scooted closer to me, nuzzling my chest in her sleep. On her other side, Jin smiled at her with so much affection his face almost glowed in the thin light seeping through the back windows. He kissed her shoulder lightly and got up to check the boxes stacked by the van’s wall. “I wonder if any of these have food in them. I’m starving. Aren’t the rest of you?”
“We can look for somewhere to grab a meal after we’ve ditched this van,” I said. “Rose said we should focus on getting as far away from the Assembly as possible until then.”
“Oh, I know. But it can’t hurt to check what we have.”
As he shuffled through the boxes’ contents, I lay my head down next to Rose’s. Her scattered black hair still held a little of her usual light lilac scent. I’d just closed my eyes in the hopes of getting a little rest myself, my hand on her waist, when she gave a wordless murmur and stretched her arms. When I looked at her, her eyelids had fluttered open.
“I don’t think you’ve gotten nearly enough sleep to recover from all that,” I said.
“What about you?” she said, her dark green eyes still dreamy. “How much have you recovered?”
“I’m just fine,” I told her. “But I didn’t spend the last twelve hours shielding five other people and myself.”
She wrinkled her nose at me. Then her expression turned serious. She touched the side of my face. “Did I manage to shield you? They didn’t hurt you?”