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When dusk settled, I returned the blanket and now empty water jugs to the basement, and restored the key to its place beneath a landscaping rock. We walked through several backyards until we were forced to go street side. The first occupied house we came to had a boarded-up front window and a rust-orange clunker in the driveway that didn’t look as if it was likely to start.
We kept on a few more blocks, though I didn’t want to go too far, because every home we passed was a gamble of being spotted. Remembered. When we finally came to a nicer block house with a promising sedan in the drive, I pressed Emily to hide by the garage.
“If Morgan’s men come here, they’ll be more likely to ask whether the two of us were seen.”
She went along with the plan, but I didn’t think she trusted it.
I knocked on the door, a deep evergreen with white trim, and waited. A gold-plated mailbox hung loose on the red brick, its hinged door stuck partially open. Faded lava rock filled the otherwise empty flower beds. I could see the scuffed white toe of one of Emily’s sneakers peeking out from the corner of the house. Maybe she was scared. Or planned on listening…
“Yeah?” the old man croaked when he opened the door. He wore a robe over a stained white tank top and belted slacks.
I stared into his smoky gray eyes. “Ask me to come in,” I urged in a tone low enough not to carry.
He stared blankly for a moment, and then stepped back. “Come in, young man. Come in.”
Fifteen minutes later, Emily and I were driving a 1992 Pontiac down Emerson toward the freeway.
She spoke around a mouthful of ham sandwich. “You didn’t kill him or something, did you?”
I laughed.
She swallowed her bite. “I’m serious.”
“You decided to eat his food before you asked?”
She took a long swig of water. “No. I just didn’t think of it until then.”
“I’ve never killed anyone, for a Pontiac or no.”
“Good,” she said. “He isn’t hurt?”
I glanced at her. She meant it. “He isn’t hurt, I swear it.”
And, once again, she didn’t ask what hewas.
The old man didn’t have much, but at least I’d been able to get us a car with half a tank of gas and something to eat. I’d used my sway to convince him he’d not seen us, but if Morgan did the asking himself, it wouldn’t stick.
“Aern?” Emily put down the empty napkin that had held her sandwich.
“Yes?”
“What about the others? The ones you said would protect me.”
“I don’t want to tell you that,” I said.
“Because it isn’t safe for me to know? Because he can get information from me?”
I thought,Because I’m not sure myself. I said, “It’s better this way. I wouldn’t keep it from you if I didn’t have good reason.”
“Okay,” she murmured. She was thoughtful for a moment. “And you have good reason to trust them with me?”
She was asking all the wrong questions. I pursed my lips. “They will keep Brianna from Morgan at all costs, Emily.”
And again, she simply nodded. Not asking why her sister was in the middle of a fight between Morgan and some untold others. Not asking why this one girl was so important.
I pulled the car to the side of the road and stared at her.
“Emily, is there something you’re not telling me?”
