Cowboy did look at me then. “Like they would have put me and Peter down?”
I nodded. “I could see it in you from the first moment they dragged you in. There are some people who can’t be broken. It’s not a bad trait, but it’ll get you killed in there.”
“You weren’t broken,” he said.
“I bent,” I replied and shrugged. “I figured out the tactics they would use real quick and gave them what they wanted. For some, it would be a pride issue. Their ego wouldn’t allow them to be small, to be humble, to look broken.” I stepped around a tree, avoiding a series of dried branches on the ground. He walked right through them. I shook my head. “My job is to survive, and that is your job too. You want me to train you, that is the first thing you need to know.”
I could hear my mentor’s voice in my head. Zee had been a survivor too, and he’d drilled it into me time and time again.
“Survive. No matter what you have to do, who you have to kill, what you have to agree to, you fucking survive. You can always make it better if you are alive. Can’t do much from the grave.”
I could almost feel Cowboy fighting that truth. “I don’t want to—”
“Then you’ll die,” I said. “You don’t have to like it, but it’s the stone-cold truth. I’d tell my son the same thing.” And in fact, I had told my boy that. I’d told him to fight when he could and run when he couldn’t. There was no shame in living, but Zee was right about the last bit.
You couldn’t make anything right if you were dead and buried.
This world was not survival of the fittest, but survival of the most adaptable.
We walked for maybe half an hour before we came out at the top of an embankment that slid down into a sleepy suburb.
“You sure. . .” Cowboy cleared his throat and tried again. “What’s the plan?”
“Good catch,” Diego said. “You’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”
I snorted. “And even more flies with shit.” I paused while the two guns snickered. “The plan is to find another vehicle and head to New York.”
“We don’t have Carlos anymore. How are we going to get a vehicle without it being reported stolen?” he asked.
“Watch and learn, young grasshopper,” I said as we stepped onto the main road that led through the suburb. We walked past more than half the houses on the street before I stopped and turned toward the domicile on our left. A house like all the others, painted blue with white shutters, a closed-in garage, gardens laid out along the edges. Very pretty, very suburban. Very quiet.
Cowboy kept up easily with his long legs and Ruby dropped to my side. I went to the back of the house and found what I was looking for. A small window at ground level. I gave it a kick, shattering it, then booted out the rest of the glass shards, making the opening clean and clear. I dropped the bags, took Diego off my back and handed him to Cowboy. “When you hear the car start up, come on around.”
The light of the morning was changing, the early summer sun making itself known. We needed to be out of here before the rest of the suburbanites were awake and caffeinated enough to notice their neighbor’s car being driven by a stranger.
I grabbed the top edge of the window and slid through, dropping silently to the floor. The stairs were right across from me and I jogged up them, not bothering to pull Dinah. There was no smell of abnormals here, and there was no way a powerful abnormal would live here. Well, unless they were a Hider like Carlos and Anita, in which case I wouldn’t mind saying hello and having breakfast. But I doubted my luck was good enough for me to find another pair of Hiders so close to Carlos and Anita.
At the top of the stairs, I pushed the door open and slid through into the stale air of the rest of the house. Pamphlets lay all over the counter, and the helpful itinerary on the fridge informed me that Bob and Don wouldn’t be back from their honeymoon until next week. They’d thanked Janice for taking care of their two cats.
Speaking of.
A sleek black cat with brilliant green eyes flounced into the room and flopped itself in front of me, stretching its legs out and pretty much pointing at the empty food dish, pushing it toward me with one paw. “Sorry, cat.” I glanced at the list of instructions and found the black cat’s name. Apparently she had a penchant for getting herself into trouble and the cat-sitter was to watch for that. “Zam. Pardon me, but I’m not the one feeding you.”
A second cat, tawny with black points, strolled in, giving me a blue-eyed stare that said it all as it sat next to the first.
Feed us, slave.
“Fine. Be glad I left Ruby outside.” I rummaged around, found their dry kibble, and topped up the dish.
“Happy?”
The black cat seemed to give me a wink and the tawny one bobbed his head. Cats. I’d never understand them. And these two were far too human for my liking.
I made my way into the bedroom and dug through the clothes until I found a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that looked to be close to Cowboy’s size and threw the clothing over my arm.
Back in the kitchen, a set of keys hung from a brightly colored rainbow key hanger, and I scooped them off, heading for what would be the garage. The car waiting for me was a small import, dark blue with a leather interior and stick
