Rules of Survival(16)

“Pat has a long list of aliases for you guys,” Shaun said, dragging me from my fantasy world. “Seems like opening a bank account would be a rookie move. Easily traceable.”

“I never said the money was in a bank account. I only said it was in the bank.”

He looked confused, but simply shrugged. “I’m not even going to ask.”

We walked without speaking for a while. We’d both cooled off since the apartment building, so it wasn’t a heavy silence. In fact, it was oddly comfortable—which was just weird, given my loathing of all things quiet.

Despite that though, something Shaun mentioned earlier made me curious. Patrick had chased Mom and me my entire life and I knew nothing more about him than his name and face. “Earlier you said Patrick was like a father to you?”

“Yeah. When I was thirteen, I bailed from a bad situation. Pat found me living in the empty lot behind his apartment building. For three years, he passed up over-the-road jobs to stay home with me. Made sure I went to school. Ate my veggies. All that shit.”

He turned to me, and after hesitating a minute, tugged his jacket, still around my shoulders, just a bit tighter. Our eyes met. In that moment, I was highly aware of him. The way his hair fluttered in the light breeze and the dramatic curve of his bottom lip. The way only a few inches separated us… My pulse kicked up. I knew I should look away, but his gaze was mesmeric.

“When I was sixteen, he started taking on the longer-term jobs again. Then, during the summers. When I turned eighteen, I worked with him full-time. I’m twenty now, and I owe him everything.”

I swallowed hard and managed to look away. “So you trust him.”

“With my life,” he answered, solemn. There was no doubt in his voice. I had a feeling Patrick could have told him the sky was really purple instead of blue, and Shaun would have believed it without question. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

I shrugged. There was no way we were getting into another “debate” like we had at the apartment building. I didn’t have the energy for it. “Go for it. No promises, though.”

“How did you do it? You’re seventeen and have hunters and police dogging you. How have you stayed off the radar?”

“Eighteen.”

“Huh?”

“I’m eighteen, not seventeen.”

Shaun scrunched his nose up. “Are you sure?”

Under a different situation, in another lifetime, I wonder what things would have been like between us. Intense eyes. Wild, dark hair. Strong arms… He was smart, and seemed to have some anger issues, but he also had a sweet streak. Would he be my type?

Focus! No ogling the enemy. It was bad form.

“I think I know how old I am. Why?”

“Pat knows everything about you guys. From blood type to shoe size. He said you were seventeen.”

“So? He got his facts wrong.” I refused to admit that it was more than a little creepy. I mean, I’d felt like I was living in a fishbowl my entire life, but the guy knew my shoe size? How would information like that help you track someone down? Did he know my bra size, too? “Not the end of the world.”

He shrugged, but I could tell he was bothered by it. The idea that Patrick wasn’t quite as infallible as he thought must have shaken the foundation in his world.

“As for my off-the-radar status, it was just life as usual for me. New developments with unsold houses make great temporary places to sleep. Some even have electricity. I also bounced around to some of Mom’s lesser-known friends, but never for more than a day or so.”

His expression fell somewhere between pity and surprise. “I can’t imagine living like that.”

I shrugged, refusing to let it bother me. “That’s how I grew up. Staying off the grid meant sometimes finding unconventional living arrangements. And when we did settle down for more than a few days, it was always the same. We were nameless. Faceless. Wherever we went, we made sure to blend into the crowd. Never stand out. We were moved around constantly. I’ve lived in fifty states at least once, plus Canada, Mexico, and even France. But that was only for, like, a week.”

I remembered our one and only “mini-vacation.” A day trip to see the Eiffel Tower. Mom used the tourist location to lift wallets in order to pay for a trip back to the States, most notably one from a French woman with twenty-three photographs of her poodle and no cash. Mom saved one with the dog wearing a fancy hat and huge sunglasses. For the longest time, she kept it taped to the inside of her suitcase. A souvenir, she liked to joke. But, like everything else in our lives, we hadn’t been able to hold on to it. The picture was lost when we fled an apartment complex in Maine in the middle of a thunderstorm one night.

“One week? Who moves to Paris for one week?”

“It was a good thing, trust me. France smelled like pastry. I would have gained, like, a million pounds if we’d stayed.”

He gently tugged me aside to allow two men in construction hats to pass. One nodded a silent thanks as they hurried past. “Seriously though… You say you haven’t done anything wrong—”

“I haven’t,” I cut him off.

“But if that’s true, why not turn yourself in? They’d find you innocent and then you could quit running.”

It was something I’d thought about so many times. When Patrick got too close, or just after the incident in Texas… Mom would have never accepted defeat, though. To give up would have been to dishonor her memory. I just couldn’t do it. I was tired of running and, more than anything, wanted a normal life. But she’d worked so hard to keep us free—to keep me free—giving up would make all our sacrifices in vain.