I bent my head down, pretending to pick at the no-longer-present splinter in my palm, my hair falling in a nauseating curtain around me. I noticed the syrupy blood again and quickly shoved my hands into my jean pockets, focusing on Deena instead.
His smooth, deceptively lazy voice reappeared. “What business do you have with Maeve?”
“That’s personal,” Deena said.
He grinned. “Nothing here is ‘personal.’” He studied me again. “How old are you?Seventeen?”
I opened my mouth, but he stepped closer, catching my gaze in his. Breath whooshed out of my lungs as we stared at each other. There was more to those honey-brown eyes, and it wasn’t the streaks of amber swirling in their depths. It was something like power and danger and…curiosity? As quickly as I identified it, it vanished, recognition and anger taking its place, glittering at me like steel in the hot sun. It pushed me off balance, forcing me to take a step back.
He broke my gaze and smiled, but the smile was all mask. “You have her eyes,” he said.
“Her eyes?”
“Your mother’s. I guess we have to let you in after all. Can’t interfere with you taking her place, can we?” His eyes had turned frigid, his mouth sardonic.
Whoever this guy mistook me for and whatever situation she was in seemed like it’d get a far worse reception than my own. I shook my head. “You’ve got it wrong. I don’t have a mom. This” —I gestured to Deena— “is my caseworker. And I am a foster kid. Dad’s in jail, mom’s MIA, that kind of thing. Maeve Reid is my foster mom.”
His brows drew lower and lower the longer I talked. “I see.” He studied me a bit more before he seemed to snap to a conclusion. “Maeve lives closer to town.”
Deena looked back toward our van as she scrunched up her face. “GPS didn’t show a town.”
He shrugged. “GPS doesn’t work here. That’s why they send us here when they’re expecting outsiders.”
“They?” I asked.
“The council. Maeve’s on it.”
Deena pursed her lips in disapproval. “So, you’re a welcoming committee…who went swimming and only found us by chance.”
He shrugged. “We were gone for maybe 30 minutes?” The guy to his right nodded. “And the road back there runs in a loop. If we didn’t find you just now, we would have seen you in another hour.”
“Fine,” Deena said, her tone clipped. “So, where’s town?”
I could feel his gaze slide across me. “Are you sure that’s where you want to go? Maeve has her reasons bringing you here, and they aren’t in your best interests.”
Even though I already knew as much—I mean, everyone heard stories about foster families that were in it for the money—his words chilled me just the same.
“Now hold on there,” Deena sputtered. “Maeve Reid is a good—”
“It’s not like I have much of a choice,” I said, cutting Deena off.
“Come with us,” he said. My eyes widened.
“Because you have my best interests at heart?” Sarcasm dripped from my voice—and also a little bit of fear. What was going on here that someone was warning me away from this Maeve lady? Was I headed into the type of foster home that inspired crime documentaries?
“Well, I wouldn’t say that, but I can promise you’d be better off with us.” And I knew—just like I always knew when people spoke what they believed was truth—that he really meant it.
“Wow, Deena,” I said, looking over at my tight-lipped caseworker, who was glaring at him with enough heat to cause second-degree burns. “Sounds like Maeve Reid is a real winner, because I actually believe the creepy stranger.”
And I did. There wasn’t a trace of madness or slyness in his eyes. Only a certainty that completely disarmed me and a gut that tugged on me to take him up on his offer, as crazy as it seemed.
“The ‘creepy’ stranger’s name is Edon,” the guy on the left said, his voice gruff in a way that seemed to match the hallucination my mind had picked out for him. “Now you’ve met.”
But it was Deena who all but growled, “Maeve Reid is a thoroughly background-checked individual with an excellent foster care record—”
Edon nodded as if that was to be expected.
“—and it’s not her I’m worried about.”
“What about you?” Edon’s eyes had never left mine. “Say the word, and you can leave with us. I promise you won’t regret it.”
“You—you—” Deena’s mouth opened and closed.
Again, I knew he was telling the truth—as far as he knew it. And my gut had gone from tugging to screaming at me to say yes.
But it had also told me to book it to Denver to be next to Caleb, and that hadn’t turned out so great. So, yeah, I was having some trust issues with it at the moment. Besides, I had too much to lose. If Caleb was in the hospital for longer than a couple of weeks, the only way I’d be able to see him was through visitations Deena organized—visitations I couldn’t have as a minor on my own or if Deena thought I couldn’t be trusted. I couldn’t risk that. Caleb and I only had each other now.
And so what if this Maeve person was awful? I just needed to stick around long enough for Caleb to get out of the hospital.
I shook my head.
“No?” Edon said. “Can’t say I’m not disappointed. But maybe you’ll come around later.”
“Unless you’re going to give us directions to Ms. Reid, I think we’re done here.” Deena’s voice was as tight as her smile and as staccato as a drum beat.
A few weighted seconds went by, as if Edon was giving me time to change my mind. When I stayed silent, he shrugged.
“Go that way for about five miles.” He jerked his thumb toward the torture device disguised as a road. I closed my eyes, already tasting bile. “There’s a small turnoff that says ‘no services.’ Take that and it’ll take you into town.”
“We went by there already. It didn’t seem… right.”
One of the guys
