"Take his badge first," Gabriel suggested nastily, and that got Rob on his feet. And then something seemed to break in all of them simultaneously, and they were running away from the deserted police car.
At first Kaitlyn didn't care where she was running. Gabriel was in the lead, and she blindly followed his twists and turns onto side streets. Eventually, though, when a stabbing pain in her side slowed her down to a walk, she began to notice her surroundings.
Oh, God, where are we?
"It's not Mister Rogers' neighborhood," Lewis muttered and jammed his baseball cap on backward.
It was the most eerie and menacing street Kait had ever seen. The gas station they were passing was derelict: no glass in the windows, no gas pumps. So was the station across the road. The Dairy Belle snack shop was enclosed by a very solid-looking chain-link fence—a fence that had barbed wire on the top.
Beyond the Dairy Belle was a liquor store with a flickering yellow sign and iron bars in front of the glass windows. It was open and several men stood in the doorway. Kaitlyn saw one of them look across the street—directly at her.
She couldn't see his face, but she saw teeth flash in a grin. The man elbowed one of his companions, then took a step toward the street.
Chapter 3
Kaitlyn froze, her legs suddenly refusing to move. Rob moved up beside her, put an arm around her, urging her on. "Anna, come here," he said quietly, and Anna obeyed without a word. Lewis crowded up close.
The man across the street had stopped, but he was still watching them.
"Just go on walking," Rob said. "Don't look back." There was calm conviction in his voice, and the arm around Kait's shoulders was hard with muscle.
Gabriel turned around to sneer. "What's the matter, Kessler? Scared?"
I'm scared, Kaitlyn told him, before Rob could respond. She could feel Rob's anger—he and Gabriel were spoiling for a fight. I'm scared of this place, and I don't want to stay here all night.
"Well, why didn't you say so?" Gabriel nodded down the street. "Let's go there, where the factories are. We'll find some place to hole up where the cops won't find us."
They crossed railroad tracks, passed huge warehouses and yards full of trucks. Kaitlyn kept glancing behind her nervously, but the only sign of life here was the white smoke billowing out of the Granny Goose factory's smokestacks.
"Here," Gabriel said abruptly. It was a vacant lot, fenced and barb-wired like everything else around here. A sign inside read:
SALE LEASE 4+ ACRES
APPROX. 180,000 SQ. FEET
PACIFIC AMERICAN GROUP
Gabriel was standing by a gate in the fence, and Kaitlyn saw that the barbed wire on top of the gate was squashed flat. "Give me a sweater or something," he said. Kaitlyn took off her ski jacket, and Gabriel spread it over the flattened barbed wire.
"Now climb."
In another minute they were inside the lot, and Kait had her jacket back—now dotted with perforations. She didn't care; all she wanted to do was huddle down like a duckling in some place where nothing could get her.
The lot was a good place. A huge rampart of dirt clods screened the middle of it off from the street. Kaitlyn stumbled over to a corner where two walls of dirt met and collapsed against it. The adrenaline that had fueled her for the last eight or nine hours had run out, leaving every muscle like jelly.
"I'm so tired," she whispered.
"We all are," Rob said, sitting beside her. "Come on, Gabriel, get down before somebody sees you. You're half dead."
Right, Kaitlyn thought. Gabriel had been exhausted before knocking out the policeman, and now he was almost shaking with fatigue.
He stayed on his feet for a moment, just to prove that he wasn't listening to Rob, then sat down. He sat across from the rest of them, keeping his distance.
Lewis and Anna, though, scooted in close to Kaitlyn. She shut her eyes and leaned back, glad of their closeness, and of Rob. Rob's warm, solid body seemed to radiate protectiveness. He won't let anyone hurt me, she thought foggily.
No, I won't, Rob's voice in her mind said, and she felt immersed in gold. An amber glow that warmed her and even fed her, somehow, pouring radiance into her. Like cuddling up with a sun, she thought.
I'm so tired…
She opened her eyes. "Are we going to sleep here?"
"I think we'd better," Rob said, his voice dragging. "But maybe one of us should stay up—you know, to keep watch in case somebody comes."
"I'll watch," Gabriel said briefly.
"No." Kaitlyn was appalled. "You need sleep more than any of us…"
Not sleep. The thought was so fleeting, so faint, that Kaitlyn wasn't sure if she'd really heard it or not. Gabriel was the best at screening his thoughts from the rest of them. Right now Kaitlyn could sense nothing from him in the web, except that he was drained. And that he was adamant.
"Go ahead, Gabriel, suit yourself," Rob was saying grimly.
Kaitlyn was too tired to argue with either of them. She'd never imagined that she could sleep outdoors like this, sitting on the bare ground with nothing over her head. But it had been the longest night of her life—and the worst—and the dirt wall behind her felt amazingly comfortable. Anna was pressed up against her on one side and Rob on the other. The March night was mild and her ski jacket kept her warm. She felt—almost safe.
Kaitlyn's eyes closed.
Now I know what it's like to be homeless, she thought. Uprooted, out in the world, adrift. Heck, I am homeless.
"What city are we in?" she mumbled, feeling somehow that this was important.
"Oakland, I guess," Lewis muttered back. "Hear the planes? We must be near the airport."
Kaitlyn could hear a plane, and crickets, and distant traffic—but they all seemed to be fading into a featureless hum. In a few moments she stopped thinking and was dreaming instead.
Gabriel waited until all four of them were asleep—fast asleep—and then he stood up.
He supposed he was putting them in danger by leaving. Well, he couldn't help it—and if Kessler couldn't protect his girl, that was his own lookout.
It had become painfully obvious that Kaitlyn was Kessler's girl now. Fine. Gabriel didn't want her anyway. He should be grateful to Rob the Golden Boy for saving him—because a girl like that could trap you, could get under your skin and change you. And this particular girl, with hair like autumn fire and skin like cream and the eyes of a witch, had already shown that she wanted to change him.