“Soon.” I mouthed the word.
She nodded. “How?” So she knew we were in trouble. She knew this wasn’t a social call. Well, why wouldn’t she? When he pulled her out of the clubhouse, threw her into a car and locked her up in the motel?
I bent very close to her ear and whispered as quietly as I could. “Just be brave. Your dad’s going to come for us.”
She pulled away, eyes lighting up. She nodded enthusiastically. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, her face fell again. “How?”
I didn’t know the answer, just like I didn’t know if he would really come. I could only hope and pray.
“He has his ways. He knows things. Remember when Traci told you how wise he is?”
“Yes. Like Solomon.”
“Right. He’s very wise, and very brave. And you know something else? I know he loves you. He’ll come for you. I’m sure he will.”
I held her close, hoping I hadn’t just lied to her. All I could do was count the minutes and pray he somehow found us.
Rae. She came to mind again. Would she have told him? If he caught her? A little spark of hope flickered to life in my heart. It was our only chance. Maybe Rae had an attack of conscience. I closed my eyes and willed him to hurry, just as I willed The Scarecrow’s buyer to take his time. We needed all the time we could get, and all the help we could get. I pictured Fury’s Storm overtaking the motel, sweeping in on their bikes to carry us off to safety. I pictured it as clearly as possible—their faces, their voices. Lance pulling Gigi and me to safety. The way it would feel when he held me in his arms again—his strong, powerful arms. Arms that could crush a pitiful little toad like that Scarecrow person with no effort.
And then he would kiss me. I would close my eyes, tilt my head back until it rested in the crook of Lance’s elbow, and let me kiss me until nothing else mattered but us, and his lips, and the warmth of his breath and his body, so close to mine. He would be my hero.
I had to picture it. I had to get it down to every last detail. There was nothing else I could do to keep from sliding into a black hole of despair as minute after minute ticked by.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lance
I was never a patient person.
On my reports cards, my teachers used to make comments about how impatient I was. I could never wait my turn for things. I never wanted to stand in line. I was always the first one out the door when the bell rang—sometimes I would stand with one foot outside the classroom door, in the hallway, ready to take off the second I heard it ring. They always thought this was a bad sign, that I would grow up to be an impatient man. They used to give me those stupid writing assignments, too. I will learn to have more patience. Five hundred times in my notebook. I could have filled a whole notebook with the assignments I had before I dropped out of school.
Patience wasn’t something I developed when I got older either. I didn’t like waiting for things. I couldn’t even be in the kitchen when there was water on the stove. I had to distract myself with something else until the water boiled. Otherwise I would go crazy and wonder why I was trying to boil water when I could just call the pizza place to get pasta delivered.
One of the first things I wondered after Gigi showed up at the clubhouse was how I would learn to be patient with her. Kids needed patience. It seemed like she was already a good reader. She obviously knew how to tie her shoes at the age of seven. She was potty trained, and I was glad I missed out on that. She had all her bases covered. Still, there were things to be patient about. Listening to a story that could have taken twenty seconds but turned into five minutes. Hearing the same jokes over and over. Listening to her read slowly, slowly. I knew some kids liked to watch the same things over and over, too. I remembered the stack of movies I saw in her room—it wasn’t a big stack. She would be in the habit of watching them over and over.
I would have to deal with all that. I would have to learn how to be patient. It scared me at first. After thirty years, how would I all of a sudden learn how to be patient? Then I figured out that it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I didn’t mind being patient, because I wanted to be good to her. It came naturally, I guessed.
When it came to waiting for Fury’s Storm to show up at the motel so we could ambush The Scarecrow, I went back to square one. Just as impatient as ever.
It was torture waiting for the entire club to show. I understood why Flash wanted me to wait, but I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to go in there, gun in hand, to blow that son of a bitch’s head off his shoulders.