Page 43 of Savage Surrender

He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, but he still stops beside a trash bin so we can dump the collars and my tracker before taking off again.

Tristan watches through the rear window. The drone doesn’t follow around the corner. When Owen doubles back, we catch one glimpse of it hovering above the bin before the houses swallow it.

“It still saw the car,” Weller says.

We run the scanner over every inch of skin to be certain. Nothing beeps.

Weller takes one of the new phones from Winston’s bag and turns it on. He types a message, sends it, then pulls the battery.

“What did you just do?” I ask.

“Mason has been waiting for our signal to set everything in motion.” Weller slides the loose battery and phone into a side pocket in the bag.

For a few miles, nobody speaks. Freddie rubs the raw line around his throat. Owen drives with the windows down and one hand reaching into the backseat for mine. Tristan is still holding me tight, and Weller keeps checking the glue at my neck.

“Sooo.” I stretch the word until all four of them look at me, or in Owen’s case, find me in the rearview mirror. “Whitney is alive.”

“I’m not sure how, Princess,” Owen says. “You were thorough.”

A laugh catches at the back of my throat. “She made me look like a lunatic. They attacked me. She cut out all the parts where they were trying to kill me first.”

“Obviously,” Tristan agrees. “And you didn’t look nuts to me. I was hoping to get a copy.” Owen grunts in agreement.

“Ugh. You’re impossible.”

I don’t know why I’m so relieved that they don’t seem disgusted by me. I don’t feel bad exactly, but I know it didn’t look pretty.

Weller takes out a pad of paper and a pen from the bag and starts making notes. “Whitney is alive and unaccounted for. We don’t know who put her on those screens, and we can’t assume the shooter was separate.”

“She was dangerous before,” Tristan says. “But now...”

“I don’t want to have to kill her again.” I twist my hands together. “I want this to be over.”

I let the quiet run until it starts to feel too heavy. We have three hours left until we reach the safe house Ezra has ready.

“So. Tell me all the shit you’ve been hiding from me.”

“Winston’s accident,” Weller says. “We found a payment stub and articles about two accidents on Whitney’s drive. The driver who hit Winston died in another collision shortly afterward.”

“Winston could’ve died... How long have you known about this?”

Tristan answers first. “Right before the gala.”

“I didn’t know either,” Freddie says, shooting a look behind him at Weller.

“Or me,” Owen adds.

It doesn’t make me feel any better.

I look from Weller to Tristan. “Okay. What else?”

Weller breathes out through his nose. “Mason found another TruScent file. It looks like our fathers knew we were matched to you before graduation and tried to make us respond to Whitney before they forced it.”

“What the fuck do you mean they knew we were matched to her?” Owen growls. “How old were we?”

“Sixteen.”

All that time, I thought I was the only one who knew the truth, other than Whitney.