Riders (Riders, #1)(18)

Anna would be worried. I should head back. But I was tempted to walk to the nearest psych clinic and turn myself in.

What had I just seen?

“Gideon.”

I launched two feet off the blacktop.

My Jeep. The voice had come from my Jeep, which was parked just down the street. Was that—?

Yeah. It was. Standing on the driver’s seat, propped on the roll bar like she’d been there for a while, was the girl. Daryn.

“How are you in my Jeep?” I asked, walking up. That was a mix of the two questions that fired off in my head.

How do you know that’s my Jeep?

What are you doing in the Jeep that’s mine that you shouldn’t know about?

“It’s a Jeep.” She shrugged. “I just climbed in.” She dropped into the driver’s seat. “Come on, get in.”

Sure. Get in. Right. But what were my options? Go back to my sister’s apartment to field questions I couldn’t answer? More hospitals?

No way. It was an easy decision. Nothing made sense anyway. And I had a feeling this girl was my only shot at getting answers.

I climbed into the passenger side, sliding the bat between the seat and the center console. “Hold on, I left my keys in my sister’s—”

“It’s an old car, I’ve got it.” Daryn reached beneath the steering column for a couple of wires that hadn’t been there before. She twisted a piece of electrical tape over them, sealing them together, and the engine growled to life. Then she threw it into first, and we lurched into the street to the reek and shriek of burning rubber.





CHAPTER 11

She drove like she was trying to qualify for the Indy 500, pushing my Jeep past eighty—its top speed. And that was on the way to the freeway.

My throat ached from Samrael’s grip. My hand hurt so much, it was making me nauseous. I couldn’t stop searching the night for three … monsters? Dozens of people had witnessed the fight I’d just been in. I knew I hadn’t imagined that part. But the way Samrael had transformed … that couldn’t be real.

I looked at the cuff on my wrist. Was it responsible for everything? Or was I hallucinating because I’d sustained a brain injury from my fall?

Unbelievable. My best-case scenario was hallucinations.

Then there was Daryn, driving my Jeep at Mach 3 like it was nothing out of the ordinary, her hair whipping all over the place. Where did she fit into all this? The confrontation at Joy’s had obviously been about her. But why had she come there looking for me? Had she known I’d get into it with Samrael?

After a couple of minutes, I couldn’t take my confusion anymore. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Daryn trapped her hair to the side. “Right now?”

Fair question. An open-top Jeep doing eighty wasn’t the best location for a conversation. We had both shouted to be heard over the roar of the tires.

“Just tell me one thing. Did you hot-wire my car?” I felt like an idiot right when I said it. Hot-wire sounded like such an old-timey term, like I should’ve been twirling my mustache or something. Did you circumvent my car’s ignition wouldn’t have sounded any better, and too late anyway.

“Yes!” she shouted back. “That’s okay, right?”

“Sure! It’s great!”

She smiled at my sarcasm, which I didn’t love. My hand was broken. Possibly my head, too. Smiling needed to be banned for at least twenty-four hours.

I pinned my gaze on the freeway and focused on relaxing. Relaxing and not fighting the pain. Breathe, Blake. I glanced down at the Pearl Jam cassette tape in the player. Just breathe, like Eddie Vedder.

Being a passenger in my car was weird.

Being a passenger in my life was weird, too.

There were hardly any cars on the freeway. The rolling hills and dark fields around us had an eerie human quality. Like the earth had knees and shoulders.

Time passed and we put some miles behind us. Ten, twenty. By around thirty my hand was still swollen but the pain had ratcheted back noticeably. Way more than it should’ve, but that was one mystery I wasn’t going to complain about. Had this same thing happened during my first days at Walter Reed? Pain leaving first, then accelerated healing? Had I failed to notice because I’d been hopped up on drugs?

What was really getting old were all the questions piling up in my head. Would I ever get answers? When? Why was I making it worse by asking questions about my questions?

We exited onto Highway 1, and the hills opened to blue fields on Daryn’s side, the slate-black Pacific on mine. The ocean worked its magic on me and calmed me down some, just seeing it and smelling it. All that churning life out there.

A few minutes later Daryn slowed down, which surprised me. I’d started to think we were driving through the night. She pulled into a dirt lot with warning signs about no lifeguards being on duty and proceeding at your own peril. Appropriate.

As the engine cooled down, I looked around. There were no other cars in the lot. Nothing to raise alarm that I could see. A hundred meters ahead of us, waves broke against the beach, a white line in the darkness. Fog was rolling in and the crash of the surf seemed strangely muffled. Just yesterday, before Jackson attacked me, I’d been watching the ocean at the end of my street. It felt like a week ago.

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said.