Puppy love. To hear Prentiss mock my feelings for Kaz, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he used words neither of us had yet spoken aloud, drove a spike of hot fury into my mind. But that just cemented my determination: if I hadn’t already been committed to fighting him, I would be now.
But Kaz refused to be sucked in. “You won’t find Hailey. Ever.”
“Really? Consider this, Kaz. If young Chub knew where she was, we would already know. Oh, don’t worry, we wouldn’t use anything so primitive as torture. We have other means. Let’s just say that all our research into the machinations of the human mind has led to some very interesting discoveries. It would be accurate to say that none of the little boy’s secrets are safe with us.
“So what happens when we find you, Kaz?” Prentiss went on in his oily voice. “If you know Hailey’s whereabouts-and for the sake of argument, let’s say that you find out somehow-how long do you think it will take us to get the information out of you?”
Kaz’s gaze locked on mine, but he didn’t blink.
“You won’t find me.”
“If you are foolish enough to take that gamble, and, young man, I am betting on you being as smart as your teachers think you are and realizing that the only course that makes sense is to cooperate with us, but if you wish to gamble with the little boy’s safety, then let me assure you that you will also be jeopardizing your mother. Tell me, Kaz, would you like to know what she is doing now?”
Kaz was silent, lips parted, his grip on the phone so tight his knuckles showed white.
“She is staring out the kitchen window, no doubt wondering where you are. She is twisting that pretty brown hair around the fingers of her left hand. That is her habit, yes, when she is worried? And how worried she must be, about you.” He knew exactly how to torment Kaz-and he was enjoying it. “I’ll leave you with that thought, young Kazimierz,” Prentiss said softly enough that I had to lean in close to hear. “When you decide to call me back-and you will, my friend, of that you can be sure-you may reach me at this number at any hour of the day. And now I must bid you good night.”
I heard the click that signaled the end of the conversation, but Kaz stayed frozen with the phone to his ear.
“They’re watching your mom,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yes, but they didn’t follow us here,” he said slowly. “And they don’t know where we’re going.”
Where were we going? I thought of the money in my purse. A few twenties-how far would that take us? And then I thought of Prairie and was hit with a wave of guilt-not because she’d given me the money; I knew she wouldn’t care about that. But because she was a prisoner now, unable to do anything but worry.
I could picture her thinking, chewing her lower lip, a habit we shared. I had put her in an impossible position. She was supposed to be taking care of me. She felt responsible.
But it was different for me. I was a kid. I wasn’t responsible for anyone. And neither was Kaz.
That made it possible for us to risk everything to rescue her and Chub.
Kaz handed my phone back, but before I put it in my purse, I had a thought. Prairie had programmed all the emergency numbers. I wrote a quick text message to her, knowing that Prentiss would have had her searched, that her purse and the emergency phone had probably been taken from her first thing.
I LOVE YOU, I wrote. DON’T WORRY ABOUT US.
Then I hit Send, not caring who saw my message. Prentiss’s men could intercept it; they could throw Prairie’s phone away; they could lie to her. But they could never extinguish the feelings that had taken root in my cold, lonely heart.
11
I LOVE YOU.
I had said those words to only one other person: Chub. When he came to live with us, he became my problem, as Gram couldn’t be bothered to feed or change or bathe him. It took only a couple of days for me to know that he and I were linked forever, to learn the curve of his chubby cheeks and the way his little hands felt holding mine.
I didn’t look at Kaz as I slipped the phone back into my pocket. He’d probably said it a hundred times. To his mother. Perhaps even his father, whom he’d known only a few short years.
And… I imagined him saying it to me. Could feel the words on my lips, could easily say it to him. But we had been strangers not long ago. And besides, we had a job to do.
“What now?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
I focused on his question. It was a welcome reprieve from my thoughts. “You could offer to trade me. We could set up a meeting place and-”
“No. Too dangerous. By the time we set up the exchange, it’d be too late. They’ve got all the advantages, Hailey. Technology, weapons, everything. They wouldn’t give up anything and then they’d have you too.”
“They don’t have everything,” I said softly. “They don’t have you. They don’t have Seers.”
“We just need to think about what we’re up against. Prentiss said he’s got more people in charge now, Hailey. Not just one like before, when Bryce ran everything. I bet there’s a lot more people than that at the new lab. More security, for one. And more staff, if they’re trying to rebuild the research in the shortest possible time.”
“I still think Prentiss must be ex-military,” I said. It was the way he talked, as though he was used to being in command. “If he hires people like him, they wouldn’t care where they work; they’d just move to the new facility, wherever Prentiss told them to go.”
“Yeah,” Kaz agreed grimly. “Prentiss probably has contacts everywhere. Contractors who work for governments all over the world, not just ours. Old buddies still on the inside, who are happy to take his calls, listen to his ideas, maybe have an inside track to approving projects or getting funding.”
“And the Seers,” I said. “If they could train people like you, who could see what the enemy was doing, their movements, their strategies…”
“The visions don’t work like that. I’m a strong Seer, a pureblood, and even I can’t predict when they come or what they’ll reveal.”
“But Bryce was trying to develop ways around that, training Seers to control their visions.”
What if Prentiss found a way to control someone as powerful as Kaz? It was terrifying to imagine Kaz’s gift being manipulated by someone like Prentiss. I prayed that they hadn’t figured out yet that Chub was a Seer. If they knew what Chub could do, they would never let him go.
“So,” Kaz said, “us against the ex-military machine. They’ve got money, weapons, connections. We’ve got, uh…” He shrugged. “Well, we’ve got each other. No problem-ought to be a piece of cake.”
He was trying to joke, but his voice was hollow. The park had emptied as the sky had grown dark. It was just us and the few homeless people who were making their home here for the night.
I shivered, partly from the chill of nightfall and partly from the fear in his voice. I touched Kaz’s face, just a hesitant brush of my fingers against his cheek. I wanted to comfort him, and I moved without thinking.
But Kaz reacted by covering my hand with his and pressing it to his face. He took a shuddering breath and said my name, hardly more than a whisper.
“Hailey… I can’t do this without you.”
He couldn’t do it without me. Kaz was strong and brave, and I was shocked by his admission. He circled his arms around me and I leaned against him and held on, and I could feel his heart beating through his shirt and his warm breath on my neck as he bent toward me, and his eyelashes brushed my forehead.
And then he kissed me and it was like the first time, the day we’d left Chicago, when we’d stolen a private moment in the shadow of his mother’s garage.