“Max, maybe?”
“I don’t know.” I waited another minute and heard nothing but the freezing wind howling. “Max?” I yelled out. No answer. “Hey, dickwad!” Still nothing.
“I think you’re just hearing things.” Weird of him to assume I was imagining it over it being an animal.
I felt too creeped out to stand in the open, so we headed back to the car and leaned against it together. At this point I was just staying close to him so I didn’t fall over and die from hypothermia. I had considered getting my purse from the car and finding a pack of cigarettes to light to keep myself warm, but I was trying to be good about that. Smoking gives you frown lines and yellow teeth, and if I didn’t want to look like an old hag in a few years, I needed to knock it off.
“She’s gonna be all right,” Daggett said.
“The fact that you feel the need to say that makes me think you feel otherwise.”
He stared from the corner of his eye. “I’m just saying. If she’s been running around town doing strange things, odds are whoever is forcing her—if that’s even what’s happening—is keeping her alive for a reason.”
“Who would even kidnap Cora? What the fuck would they want with someone like her?”
“Someone like her?” he repeated.
“Just…innocent.” It was the best adjective I could come up with.
“It’s the innocent that are the best targets,” Daggett replied. “She could also be being used as leverage. Someone trying to find Brinly or Max and using her as bait.”
“Are they really that important?” I was skeptical.
“Max, probably not. Brinly? More than you can even imagine.”
“Right. She’s a dog princess or some shit like that.”
Daggett scoffed. “Yeah, something like that.” I got the impression he was laughing at me in his head. I must have been way off for him to be so dismissive.
“Wouldn’t they get a hold of Max then?” I continued. “What kind of hack kidnapper takes someone and then doesn’t call the family for ransom? Better yet, what kind of kidnapper lets their hostage walk into a restaurant where she could call the cops or ask for help?”
“You’d be surprised. You know how many news stories talk about people being taken and then going out into public together? If you put the fear of God into someone, they’ll never risk screaming for help, even with their captor standing several feet away.”
“Well, I call bullshit.” I stomped my foot onto an icy patch on the ground until it shattered. I then kicked the separated pieces away and watched them slide across the pavement. “Cora is such a little shit for doing this to everyone,” I grumbled. “She doesn’t think anything through, I swear to God.”
Daggett was staring at me again. “You’re worried,” he said, surprised.
I was offended that he’d think I was so emotional. “No, I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are. Why else would you be so mad?”
“Because she’s being a dipshit.”
“You came all the way to Lunar City because you think she’s a dipshit?”
Now it was me who was wordlessly staring. “I’m hungry and cold. I’m going inside.” I stormed past him and to the gas station door and shocker, he followed me.
Once we were inside, I headed straight for the snack aisle. My stomach was growling and I needed to stuff my face with something fierce. The whole time Daggett was pretty much breathing down my neck.
“It’s cute,” he said as he danced around behind me.
“What is?” I asked, not even turning around to look at him. I wanted him to be talking about my outfit.
“That you’re worried.” Oh, for fuck’s sake, he wasn’t. Daggett stood beside me and softly said, “I guess you are human after all.” He was teasing me now. I was ready to swat him in the face, but then he smirked, and it was weird. He almost looked attractive.
“Don’t tell anyone,” I said.
“What, that you’re worried? I won’t.”
“No, that I’m human.”
“Ha, ha.”
He reminded me of Cora. They both had this obnoxious tendency to hyper-focus in on everything I say and try to make it seem deeper than what it really is. They were also both dipshits.
I grabbed a Monster out of the refrigerator and then a bag of Cheetos, and waltzed over to the counter and threw them down. I had one hand deep into my purse before I realized the cashier wasn’t even there. I did a quick scan of the gas station but didn’t see him anywhere. I groaned. “Hey!” I shouted. “I’ve got shit to buy!”
“Jeez, you don’t have to yell. He’s probably in the backroom.” Daggett was shushing me. I don’t know why. Must have been his idea of having manners.
“Customers do this to me all the time, all right? It’s only right that I pay it forward.”
“Isn’t paying it forward meant to be a positive thing?”
“I’m giving him money. That is a positive.”
“Technically you’re giving the company money.”
“Who pay him biweekly, no?”
Daggett’s face suddenly twisted in a weird way, with his nose scrunched and his bottom lip tucked into his mouth. For a second, I thought he was going to barf. “You smell that?” he asked.
I inhaled. The whole place smelled like dirty toilet water. “Smells like a shithole,” I replied.
“No, it’s—” He balled up his fist and pressed it to his mouth. “Oh God, you don’t smell that?”
The fact that he could and I couldn’t started to make me think it was me. I had half a mind to check my pits. “They probably haven’t cleaned this place in weeks,” I griped.
“It’s not a dirty smell, exactly, it’s…it’s coming from the bathroom.”
To our right was a cream-colored door with a rusty knob, and a unisex blue sign
