Eve & Adam (Eve & Adam #1)(20)

“Thanks for coming.” She manages a smile for Solo. “And you brought me a toy to play with on the way. How thoughtful.”

“So what’s wrong?” I ask.

“Maddox. Of course,” she says. “He’s trapped.”

“Trapped where?”

“In the park.”

“And he’s trapped there why?” I ask.

“Some guys. They think he owes them money. He’s in the park and they’re after him.”

“Can’t he call the police?” Solo asks.

“That would be … embarrassing.” Aislin digs through her purse and retrieves some lip gloss. She slides it on expertly, no mirror required. “They might decide to search him.”

“Ah,” Solo says. “He’s carrying…?”

“Some weed. He has to sell it to get the money he needs to pay off the dudes chasing him.”

Solo stares at me, expressionless. I smile feebly. Shrug.

He’s going to turn the car around and take us straight back to Spiker, and I don’t blame him.

Solo pulls into traffic. “I can’t believe your mom thinks Aislin’s a bad influence,” he says. “I think she’s kind of fun.”





– 16 –

There aren’t a lot of roads inside Golden Gate Park. The park is huge, bigger than Central Park in New York. It’s a long rectangle with one end up against Haight Street—hippie town—and the other end right up against the Pacific Ocean. From weed to waves, you might say.

“Where is he in the park?” Solo asks as he takes a tight turn, narrowly missing an old woman on a wobbly bike.

“He’s in a lake,” Aislin says.

“Of course he is,” I say under my breath.

“In a lake?” Solo repeats. “In the water?”

“On an island.”

I pull out my phone. “I’ll Google a map of the park.” When the map glows on screen, I groan. “There are a lot of lakes. Like twenty or more.”

Solo streaks through a yellow light. “Any with islands?” he asks.

We’ve reached the edge of the park. “Is it a big island or a small island?” I ask Aislin. “A lot of them have islands.”

She fires off a text as Solo pulls onto John. F. Kennedy Drive, the road that runs the length of the north side of the park. Traffic is light. The sun is dropping from view and shadows are lengthening beneath the trees.

“He says how big is big?” Aislin reads from her phone.

“That’s an excellent philosophical question,” I say. “Ask him how long it would take for him to walk across it.”

It takes several minutes of texting—Maddox is not, shall we say, academically gifted—before we decide he’s on an island in something called Mallard Lake.

I set the GPS on the dashboard.

“Make a U-turn,” a female voice instructs, in a tone that suggests we’ve already disappointed her.

Solo brakes. “I don’t think it’s legal to.”

“Now make a U-turn,” the voice commands.

Solo pulls the car into a tight U-turn.

“Turn right in a hundred yards,” says the voice.

“What do we do when we get there?” I ask Aislin. “These guys, the guys after Maddox—”

“Now turn right.”

“—they’re not like people who would have guns, right?”

“Turn right in one-half mile.”

“Guns?” Aislin echoes. Like she’s never heard the word before. “They might, but—”

“Whoa,” I say.

“—what are they going to do, shoot us?” She attempts a laugh. It fails.

Aislin reaches up from the backseat and switches on the radio. It’s Rancid, singing about another East Bay night. One of my favorites, despite the fact that it’s partly about earthquakes and watching the freeways fall. (Before my time, that quake.) Even though I like the song, I reach to switch it off. Solo stops me, snatching my wrist in midair. He’s as quick as a snake. “It’s good cover. Makes us seem like regular kids.”

He rolls down the windows. The air is damp and smells of pine.

“Now turn right,” says the voice.

The lake is close by, but you can’t see it from the road. We see it on the GPS map. It’s an isosceles triangle with a circular island in the fat end. The park isn’t busy and there are only a few cars parked here and there. But at the point where the road is closest to the lake, there are three cars, obviously hastily parked.

“That’s Maddox’s stepfather’s brother’s wife’s Ford!” Aislin cries.

The Ford, a dented tan Fusion, is boxed in by the other two cars, a tricked-out Miata and a Civic with spinners and a spoiler.

The Miata’s driver’s-side door is open. No one is inside.

Solo slows down and pulls off onto the shoulder. We are surrounded by way too many trees and way too many bushes. It’s surprisingly jungle-esque for something in the middle of San Francisco.

Our radio plays on after Solo turns off the engine. “Text your boyfriend that we’re here,” he instructs.

“He says he can’t move,” Aislin reports back.