Page 197 of Victorious

He needed to catch up.

He sank behind the wheel, and double tapped an icon on his phone. The screen changed color, the backdrop no longer flat black but a constellation, a chemical formula, rendered as stars. No longer his phone, but Dani’s—a clone.

He hadn’t forgotten what she’d said about her younger brother.

I’m there if he needs me, and he’s there if I need him.

As Victor pulled out of the lot, he fired off a text from Dani’s phone.

Time to see if that was true.

By the time he reached the airstrip, the tracker had finally stopped moving. Dol’s red dot now hovered in some place called Bethany, six hours to the west and south. Halfway between Victor and Merit. His message sat unseen, unread, in Mitch’s inbox.

Victor found the pilot waiting beside a compact jet, chewing his thumb and staring at his screen. “Jeremy?”

Dani’s brother looked up.

In person, the resemblance between the Dean siblings was even sharper. The same keen eyes, the same pointed chin, the same frown that spread outward from his mouth, took over his face. “Who are you?”

“A friend of Dani’s,” answered Victor.

Jeremy looked past him as if his sister might appear.

“She isn’t coming,” he said, wagging his cell from side to side, their conversation on the screen. “You’re here because I need a lift.”

Jeremy snorted. “Yeah, no way,” he said.

Victor thought of hurting him. But pain made people sloppy, and he needed the pilot sharp, so he settled for pulling out his gun, thumbing off the safety as he swung it up, the barrel level with Jeremy’s head.

“I wasn’t asking,” he said evenly.

The pilot recoiled, throwing up his arms like he was being robbed instead of threatened. Victor sighed. “Put your hands down.”

Jeremy lowered them a fraction just as the phone chimed in Victor’s other hand. Not Dani’s cell, but his. A message had finally come in, over on the message board.

TURNINGOVERANEWLEAF: LOOKED LIKE IT. PACKED UP TO BE SAFE.

Victor kept the weapon trained on Jeremy as he wrote back.

SHARPENEDSPADE1652: ACTUAL STORM? OR CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON?

Victor hovered on a knife’s edge, waiting for Mitch to respond. The answer, when it came, wasn’t reassuring.

TURNINGOVERANEWLEAF: HARD TO TELL.

He sent Mitch his current number and waited for the phone to ring.

But it didn’t.

“Is she okay?” asked Jeremy. Victor glanced up. “My sister. Did you hurt her?”

“No,” he said. “And I won’t,” he added, “so long as you do exactly what I say.”

He flicked the gun toward the aircraft, a silent instruction to lead the way. Jeremy turned, and started, albeit slowly, toward the four short steps that led up onto the plane.

Meanwhile, the seconds turned to minutes, and Mitch didn’t call. And the dot beside his handle had gone from green to gray. Offline. Victor swore under his breath and followed the pilot up the stairs.

On the top step, Jeremy hesitated. Victor suspected it was more out of a sense of obligation than a real desire to resist, but either way, he didn’t have time for noble gestures.