“Good morning.”
“Even better now,” she said as she took in the sight of him, pleased by the way his smile widened at the compliment. “Come here.” He took a few steps towards the bed, but then she saw his smile fade. She sat up again, frowning a little. “Conrad?”
“As much as I’d like to,” he said, his tone almost apologetic, “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
Her heart sank as the unpleasant memories from the day before came rushing back into her awareness. The night with Conrad had been so pleasant that she’d almost succeeded in forgetting about the men who’d come to her house to kidnap her. Conrad dressed quickly as he explained that he’d gotten up just after dawn, something telling him to check out the motel … and sure enough, he’d spotted a familiar van parked across the street that hadn’t been there when they’d arrived.
“There are a lot of plain vans,” she said, trying to will her heart to stop pounding so sickly in her chest. But Conrad shook his head.
“There was a man behind the wheel. He was one of the men from the house, I’m sure of it.”
“Goddammit,” Mira muttered, aware that Conrad wouldn’t understand the English profanity but not caring. “How did they find us?”
“That’s what worries me.” Conrad’s brow was furrowed. “I flew us well out of sight of the house before I even thought about landing, and there was nobody on the beach when we got there. There’s no way they should have been able to figure out where we’d gone this quickly.”
Mira felt a cold chill run down her spine. What had Eddie said the day before about technology? The only thing she’d brought with her was her phone… there it was, sitting on the nightstand where she’d left it, plugged into the wall to charge. The furniture might have looked like it had been picked up off the side of the road, but they knew their clientele—the room had come equipped with a universal charger. Still, she gnawed on her lip as she unplugged her phone. A full battery was all well and good… but what if the phone was what the men had used to track her down? After all, Eddie had done the same thing, hadn’t he? She scrolled through the settings, but as far as she could tell, all the GPS and location settings were switched off.
The one upside to having nothing but the clothes on their back was that it didn’t take long to get ready to leave. Checkout wasn’t for a few hours yet, but Mira didn’t feel great about hanging around long enough for the men to get impatient and come looking for them. Nor was she interested in leaving through the reception area. After a quick peek through the curtains to ensure the coast was clear, she and Conrad slipped out of the room and headed in the opposite direction, hoping like hell to find another way onto the street. Sure enough, they found it—a supply room at the end of their row, the door left unlocked. Inside, beyond the clutter of mops, buckets, and other assorted cleaning supplies, was a dirty window, just big enough to climb through. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem designed to open.
Resolving that she’d come back and pay for it once all of this had been resolved, Mira grabbed a towel from a nearby laundry hamper, wrapped her fist in it, and punched a neat hole through the glass. Conrad watched her with both eyebrows raised, but if he was going to say anything, he must have decided against it. With the glass taken care of, she grabbed another couple of towels to cover the window ledge, grateful at least that she was wearing a hardy pair of boots—this wasn’t a job for stilettos, that was for sure.
Not her most graceful moment, climbing through the window—but Conrad assisted her ably, and soon enough they were both outside, hastening through the tall grass and trash beyond the motel and up a small embankment to the road that ran beyond the motel and into a busy part of town. They’d flown some distance, she realized as she got her bearings. This wasn’t a part of town she knew very well—it was more of an area for tourists and beach bums, and at this time of year, there weren’t many of either around.
The insistent question of ‘what now’ kept pressing up against the back of her mind, and she took a few calming breaths to banish it. One step at a time, that was the path through any major disaster. And the next step was to get out of the open. The closest building was a gas station—hardly the most romantic breakfast spot, she caught herself thinking, but it would simply have to do. Anyway, it wasn’t like Conrad would know the difference. She could see him gazing around at the gas station with that carefully disguised fascination of his, eyes lingering on the collection of novelty baseball caps on display at the front counter.
“Good idea, actually,” she said, nudging him. They were close to the highway here, and the gas station clearly catered to truckers passing through—which meant they were each able to buy themselves a change of shirt. After a moment’s reflection, she grabbed them a couple of hats, too, as well as some sunglasses. Conrad still stuck out like a sore thumb, tall and broad as he was, but the hat definitely changed his appearance—as did the red hoodie that he kept frowning at in the mirror on the front counter.
“Relax, you’d look handsome in a burlap sack,” she muttered, adjusting her own hoodie. The baggy fabric made her feel like a teenager again. When she’d first gone through puberty, she’d learned rapidly that being a child was no defense against the leering gaze of revolting men—and for a long time, a wardrobe of baggy hoodies had been her first line of defense. Her classmates at school had teased her for it, assuming that she was ashamed of her body, but the opposite was true—she was protecting it. Still, they weren’t her fondest memories. Even as an adult who was much more comfortable standing up to gross men, she still felt the nagging impulse to cover herself up instead of holding the rest of the world accountable for their behavior.
She caught Conrad smiling softly at her, but his eyes darted away when they met hers. “What?”
“Nothing.” He cleared his throat. “The color suits you.”
He was right, of course—this shade of forest green had always set off her golden eyes—but she still flushed pink at the compliment. Hoping like hell she wasn’t regressing to her teenage years, she headed for the gas station counter to pay. Her phone made a soft sound as the transaction went through, and she narrowed her eyes at it, wondering if even now it was betraying where they were…
“What language is that?”
She blinked up at the gas station attendant, a young man with pierced ears and a curious look on his face. “Huh?”
“That language you and your boyfriend were speaking. I couldn’t pick it. Russian, maybe?”
She looked over at Conrad, who was still browsing the hats, oblivious to the conversation. Resisting the urge to panic, she nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Must be a really obscure dialect. I couldn’t make out any of it, and I can usually follow most of what my family is saying when they speak it.”
Crap. She’d hoped the kid’s guess was coming from a place of ignorance. “It’s, uh, pretty obscure, yeah.” Her heart was thudding in her chest.
“What’s it called?”
“Draconic,” she said, using the word Conrad had taught her. He looked up sharply at the sound of a word he understood, eyes widening just a little. The kid repeated it thoughtfully, the word sounding clumsy on his tongue, then shook his head.
“That’s wild. I’ll ask my Baba if she knows it.”
“Cool. Anyway, we better—”
“Yeah, thanks for chatting. You have a nice day.”
“Everything alright?” Conrad asked in a low voice as she joined him by the display he was studying. She nodded, resisting the urge to look around. If those men figured out where they’d gone and followed them up here, they’d almost certainly ask the kid behind the counter if anyone unusual had come through… and she’d just given him every reason to remember their faces. “Should we leave?”