He ended the call and set the phone back on the dashboard. “Screw this,” he muttered, then got out of the fast lane and cut in front of someone in a pickup truck loaded with hay bales so he could get off at the next exit.
Over the sound of the other driver’s indignant honking, Caitlin asked, “Alex, what are you doing?” The street they’d pulled off on had the incongruous name of Sunshine Boulevard, and seemed to be set in the middle of equally incongruous cotton fields. And here she’d thought this part of Arizona was just scrub desert.
“I’m not going to sit down in Tucson doing nothing while everyone else goes up against that bastard.” They turned under the freeway and then sped up the on-ramp, heading north toward Phoenix. “There’s got to be something I can do with this talent of mine.”
She couldn’t argue with that. It was true — Alex was quite possibly the only person who could face Matías’ magical coercion and not be affected by it. And she understood his need to be doing something. The dark warlock had murdered his grandmother. That demanded action…and retribution.
“Okay,” she said, very glad that her voice sounded firm and determined, and not frightened at all. For some reason, she couldn’t be all that frightened if she had Alex with her.
“Is it?” he asked. “You’re not scared?”
“No,” she replied. “I trust you.”
Without speaking, he reached out and took her hand, holding it tightly as he raised it to his lips and kissed it. “You’re kind of an amazing girl, Caitlin McAllister.”
“Am I?” She didn’t feel amazing. She felt worried and shaky. Not scared. Not for herself, anyway.
“Yes.” Another squeeze of her fingers, and then he let go so he could put both hands on the steering wheel.
They were going way too fast, that much she knew. The speed limit out here in the boondocks was seventy-five, and they were probably going at least ten, if not fifteen, miles per hour over that. All she could do was hope the cops were otherwise occupied, because neither she nor Alex had Matías’ neat little Jedi mind trick to talk themselves out of a ticket.
Alex’s phone rang, and he grabbed it off the dashboard. “Dad?” He listened, then said, “We’re heading back to Phoenix now. She’s where?” Caitlin heard him mutter something that sounded like a curse, although not loudly enough that the phone would pick it up. “Well, in a way that’s good. Maybe he won’t want to try something in a public place. Did you get hold of Uncle Luis or Aunt Andrea?”
Obviously the answer was no, because Alex looked like he wanted to swear again, although he managed to refrain.
“Okay, well, we’ll go straight there, and you can keep trying her cell. Can you give me the number, just in case?” He pointed at the glove compartment, and Caitlin opened it. Inside was a notepad and one of those little golf pencils. “All right — 602-555-7823. Thanks.” He lifted an eyebrow at her, and she showed him the number she’d just written down on the pad. “And papa, give mamita a hug for me, all right? I’m sorry I had to worry you two with this right now. I’ll let you know if we can find Zoe.”
This time the phone went into his pocket. Alex glanced over at Caitlin and said, “According to my cousin Zander — that’s Zoe’s little brother — Zoe went shopping with some friends. Civilians, which means they’ll be no help. They’re at a mall off Cactus Road. She was talking about going to the movies. That might be why she’s not answering her phone.”
“This just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know — if she’s in a movie theater with a bunch of civilians, in a way she’s kind of protected. I doubt Matías is going to make a move in a place like that.”
Alex did have a point. Even a warlock as cocky as Matías couldn’t very well attempt to abduct a girl in front of hundreds of civilians. His whole modus operandi was to coax, to persuade. Much more likely that he would wait until she was someplace else — walking back to her car, maybe, or separated from her friends when she went to the restroom.
“How far is it?”
“Maybe an hour. I guess we’ll just have to hope whatever movie she’s going to see is a long one.”
An hour, Caitlin reflected.
A whole hell of a lot could happen in an hour.
18
Alex did slow down to a more respectable seventy miles an hour once they reached the outskirts of Tempe. It was painful — after going almost ninety for the past forty-five minutes, he felt like he was standing still — but there was just way too much traffic and too many cops from various municipalities and counties around for him to be comfortable going faster. Even now he was speeding, but since everyone around him was also going around seventy, he didn’t feel too conspicuous.