In Time (The Darkest Minds, #1.5)(15)

I don’t see any kids, but maybe they have us bring them in through the back?

“How many times do we have to tell you to check your damn applications?” a man shouts from the far end of the hall. The man sitting next to him stands and slams his hands down on the desk, prompting the PSF next to him to stir. “We already searched the plate numbers in the system! He’s not registered—yet!”

The hall carries exactly two words from the man sitting next to him. “Stolen” and “score.” And even before they start to turn to go, I know I’m standing less than a hundred feet away from the beards.

Holy shit.

I back through the door, but I have no idea what excuses I’m mumbling to the soldier. I burst back out into the parking lot at a full run.

Because this isn’t suspicious at all! Good job, Gabe!

Shit, shit, shitshitshit—even if I were to wait for them to leave, the officers in this station will recognize the plate number when I give it to them on my application. Not to mention they probably have me on camera acting like a sketchball at the door.

Phoenix. I can do Phoenix. I’ll change my clothes, wear a hat and sunglasses, swap out my license plate with one from one of the abandoned cars I find along the I-17. It’s less than a two-hour drive. If the gas situation starts to get touchy, well, I’ll figure it out.

I feel better now that I have a plan. It’s probably what I should have done in the first place, but it’s okay. Lesson learned.

The kid is still sitting on the floor when I jump back into the driver’s seat. There’s a rumpled piece of notebook paper smoothed out over her knees that she immediately tries to stuff back into her jean pocket. From my vantage point above her, though, I can read at least the first half of it: We love you. If you need help, look for

Look for who?

[page]“Well, Dorothy,” I say as I turn the key in the ignition. My mind scrambles to come up with some excuse that won’t make me look pathetic. “They’re not accepting freaks at this location. Looks like you’ve got two more hours of freedom.”

I swear, she can see right through the lie and she looks…unimpressed, to say the least. I put the car in reverse and she climbs up into the passenger seat, dropping the handcuffs into the drink holder between us.

Okay. Seriously. What the hell?

The girl sighs, but deigns to show me her trick. With the cuffs in one hand, she slides what looks like a warped bobby pin out of her pocket. I glance between her and the highway as she wiggles the bent end of the pin in a small hole on the handcuffs I’ve never noticed before. The metal arm springs open.

“Kid, you have the worst sense of self-preservation I’ve ever seen,” I tell her, because now I know not to use the handcuffs on her. I’ll stick to zip ties. She’s trying to teach me how to do my job, and while a tiny part of me is impressed she knows how to do this, a bigger part of me wants to stretch out across the highway and wait for someone to just run me over. All my anger from the morning has drained me to the point where I can only feel humiliated and tired about all this.

“I didn’t rescue you,” I remind her, but she reaches over—gloves and zip tie and all—and turns the radio on. I listen to hip-hop or I listen to silence, so naturally she finds the one station blasting out Fleetwood Mac and sits back.

“I don’t think so,” I said, switching it off.

She reaches over and turns it back on, this time cranking the volume up just as the song changes to something that sounds like it could be Led Zeppelin. And the look she gives me as I start to turn the dial again probably should have caused me to spontaneously combust.

“Okay, okay. Geez.” I’m going to think of it like her last meal before death row. She gets this. Only this.

Thirty miles later, the truck’s back right tire blows out just outside Black Canyon City. Who fixes it?

Guess.

Guess.

I’m not an idiot, I know I’m not. I’ve watched my dad change out his tire for a spare before, but I never had the experience of doing it myself. I barely get the car onto the shoulder of the highway without losing my shit. Meanwhile, Dorothy hops out of the car, her hands bound, and goes around to the back, looking for a spare I know old Hutch is too cheap to have supplied. The look I get when I meet her around back can be summed up in one word: Seriously?

Traffic is light enough on the I-17 today that we can walk along the outer edge of the nearby string of abandoned cars without fear of being spotted.

Jesus. Is this what it feels like for these freaks—these kids? Constantly having to look over their shoulders, jumping whenever a car buzzes by, because in those two seconds, one wrong glance means the jig is up? I only have to be worried about another skip tracer spotting us and swiping my score; she has to be worried about everyone from skip tracers to grannies with access to phones.

We stop next to an SUV, and she crouches down, inspecting the tire. Her eyebrows draw together, and her forehead wrinkles, like she’s trying to mentally measure if this tire is the same dimensions as the others.

Dorothy holds her hands out to me, and I stare at them, confused. She nods toward them, giving them a small jerk, and I realize what she wants.

“You gonna run?”

She rolls her eyes.

“Nice. Real nice.”

I only cut the zip tie, expecting her to take the gloves off herself. Instead, she carefully adjusts them so they align with the right fingers. They’re laughably oversized on her, reaching up past her elbows—almost like the way a superhero would wear them.