“Thanks so much for this, Lucas — ” I began, but he just waved me off.
“No worries. It’s not like you’re leaving me stranded. I’ve got the Beemer SUV as a backup if I need to go out.”
I raised an eyebrow at Connor, wondering what the hell Lucas’s primary car was if the Beemer was merely a “backup.” He didn’t respond, though, and only said to Lucas, “No, we do appreciate it. With everything going on….”
The cheerful expression quickly faded from Lucas’s face. “I know. But we all have to keep up appearances, and that means not missing any appointments, right?”
“Right,” Connor agreed, although I thought I saw him wince slightly, and knew he must be thinking about a certain dark appointment we needed to keep out at Damon’s house.
“Well, here you go,” Lucas said, and held out a key with a leather fob to Connor. He took it, holding it as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it. “I’ll go open up the garage for you. Heading to Sedona, huh? Oak Creek Canyon might be slippery.”
“Oh, I’m going to take the 17, even if it’s going the long way around. I figured that would be safer.”
Lucas nodded, appearing a little relieved. I couldn’t blame him; that road was twisty and treacherous on a good day. On a morning like this, where you’d be more likely than not to come upon sudden patches of ice? Not the sort of place I’d want someone driving my borrowed car, that’s for sure.
“Well, we need to get going — ” Connor began.
“Oh, sure. Come on. And Angela, you can just let yourself out the front door.”
“Thanks, Lucas,” I said again, no less awkwardly, and waited as Connor gave me the key to the FJ. After that I headed back out to the SUV, walking gingerly on the icy flagstones of the front path, and sighed in relief as I let myself in and slid behind the steering wheel. Since it was cold and I wanted to get the heater going, I went ahead and put the key in the ignition and started up the engine.
A flash of red in the rearview mirror told me Connor was backing out of the driveway and about to start heading toward downtown. I squinted at the car he was driving, and my mouth fell open slightly. It was — well, I didn’t know what it was, since sports cars weren’t something you saw a lot of in Jerome. There was slightly more flash in Flagstaff, but more along the lines of Damon’s Range Rover or the Audi SUV that one obnoxious client of Connor’s had driven. Whatever the sports car might be, I was just glad Connor was the one driving it, not me.
I headed back into town, feeling my stomach clench as a pale sun slowly rose higher in the sky. It was easy to distract myself with thoughts of cars. That way I wouldn’t have to think about what was coming next. How on earth could I possibly survive another confrontation with Damon…with what Damon had become?
But I couldn’t completely lose it, because I had to stay focused on getting back to the apartment in one piece. I’d already passed one fender-bender at the intersection of Butler and Route 66 where someone obviously lost control and slipped into the intersection, getting sideswiped by a pickup that couldn’t quite maneuver out of the way in time. Luckily — or not, depending on how you looked at it — I made it to the alley without incident, then pulled into our designated parking space. Connor hadn’t told me to do that, but I figured it made the most sense, since we’d be leaving right away in Lucas’s car.
I was just getting out of the FJ when Connor emerged from the building’s back door. He must have parked on the street in front and come through the access hallway on the ground floor. In one hand he held his phone, but he slipped it into his pocket as he saw me.
“That was Marie. Damon’s still at the house, so we need to go.”
The lump that had been steadily growing in my stomach seemed to balloon to twice its size. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You have to.” His green eyes bored into mine. “If I can, then so can you. Besides, there’s no one else. If we don’t — ”
“Then more people will die. I get it.” I gulped in a breath of icy air, and although it bit at the back of my throat, it also seemed to brace me, give me the strength I needed to get moving. “Okay. Okay. Let’s go.”
He led me back through the building, through the hallway that always smelled like an odd mixture of dust, beeswax, and mildew, and out to the street. The red car was sitting at the curb, looking very out of place against the dirty snow piled on the sidewalk.
“What the hell is this thing, anyway?” I asked, after he’d opened the door for me and then gone around to get in the driver’s seat.