Shift (Shifters #5)(35)

“Not sure. Maybe eight miles?” My words were choppy, spoken around my chattering teeth, but they both seemed to understand me.
Jace frowned and shifted the car back into Drive. “According to the GPS, the road’s a dead end.”
I pulled off my gloves and dropped them in my lap, then held my hands in front of the vents. “Yeah. But it dead-ends right in front of the thunderbirds’ nest.”
Jace hesitated with one hand on the gearshift. “Kaci’s only a few miles away. We can’t leave her there.”
“You got a better idea?” Marc didn’t sound hostile, exactly, but he was definitely impatient, and I was glad I’d missed the first half of the road trip, even considering the bitter cold and the airplaneless flying.
Jace shrugged. “She must be terrified on her own.”
“She is.” I used the toes of one foot to pry off my opposite shoe, then stretched my frozen toes toward the floorboard vent. “But we can’t get her back without either evidence or a fight, and the three of us don’t stand a chance against several dozen thunderbirds. Especially since they have the home field advantage.”
Jace’s jaw tensed and his hand tightened around the wheel, but his foot stayed firmly on the brake pedal.
“Let’s go,” Marc insisted. “There’s nothing we can do for Kaci without proof that Malone’s guilty, and if we miss our flight, she’s as good as dead.”
“Please,” I said when Marc’s order had no impact on him, a fact which made me vaguely sick to my stomach. “You know if there was anything else we could do, I’d be the first one to suggest it.”
Jace’s hand twitched around the steering wheel, then he nodded once, briskly, and hit the gas so hard gravel spewed behind us. I’d have flown forward if I hadn’t been buckled in. Marc hit his forehead on the back of my headrest and let out a string of Spanish profanities too fast for me to understand.“Watch it, asshole,” he finished at last, glaring at Jace in the rearview mirror. “We’re no good to her if you plant us in a ditch.”
Jace scowled, but slowed to a speed less likely to sling us into the next dimension. “You getting warm yet?” He glanced at me briefly and turned right onto the first paved road I’d seen, running perpendicular to the thunderbirds’ long private drive.
“Yeah.” But my teeth were still chattering. “How far to the nearest gas station? I’m starving.”
“We gotcha covered. Marc, grab the…”
But Marc was already lifting a bulging white plastic bag over the front seat into my lap. “It’s probably cold by now, but it’s better than candy bars and soda. And there’re a couple of bottles of Gatorade by your feet.”
“Thanks, guys.” For the next twenty minutes, I devoured convenience store chicken strips, potato wedges, fried mozzarella sticks, and corn dogs. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in weeks. A Shifter’s metabolism runs much faster than a human’s, and if I’d had to Shift, I probably would have passed out from hunger.
When the bag was empty, I wadded it up and dropped it at my feet, then started on a bottle of purple Gatorade. “So, where are we going?”
“Roswell.” Marc twisted in his seat, and his face came into focus in my side-view mirror. “We should be there in a couple of hours. Our flight leaves at nine-fifteen.”
“You’re serious? Roswell has an airport?”
“Nope.” Jace grinned. “We’re booked on the first available flying saucer. Hope you don’t get space-sick.”
I couldn’t suppress a grin of my own; it felt good to finally be smiling again, after so much fear and pain. Even if the jokes were stupid, and the smiles were only temporary, and neither could truly hide the seething anger and growing bloodlust consuming us all on the inside. “You only think that’s funny because you weren’t on my last flight. Whatever we take off in better have jet engines. Or at least a couple of propellers.”
Movement in the rearview mirror caught my attention, and I glanced up to see Marc scowling at Jace. I twisted to face him. “What’s wrong?” My question seemed somehow too trite, yet too complicated to have any real answer.
“How safe do you think Kaci is with them? With the birds?”
“Having second thoughts about leaving her?” Jace’s smile was gone.
“No,” Marc growled. “We had no choice. I just want to know how bad off she’ll be when we get there. Does she have anyone to talk to? Anything to do? Do they even know what to feed her?”
“Assuming we make the deadline, she’ll be fine.” I had little doubt about that, after seeing Brynn with her daughter. “They’ll stand by their word, unless I break mine. I made sure she has plenty to read, but there’s nothing I can do about the company. Fortunately, they seem inclined to leave her alone. They don’t like outsiders, and as weird as it sounds, they think of us as practically human.” 
“Meaning what?” Jace asked.
“They look down on us, and they don’t trust us. Including Kaci. But they don’t want to hurt her, either. She’ll be fine, so long as we make it back with the smoking gun in two days.”
“What about food?”
“She’s a teenager, not a baby.” Jace swerved to pass the first car we’d seen since leaving the gravel road. “She eats the same things everyone else does.”
But I knew what Marc meant; Kai had asked for carrion. “I told them to make sure her food was fresh and well cooked.” In animal form, our stomachs can handle raw meat, but even a cat won’t eat rotting flesh. And in human form, Kaci couldn’t eat either one.
Marc nodded, apparently mollified, and scooted onto the driver’s side of the backseat, so he could see me better. He leaned against the window, and when he blinked, his eyes stayed closed a little too long. He looked exhausted, and I realized then that he and Jace probably hadn’t slept at all since Kaci and I had flown the coop. My father had sent them west immediately, hoping they’d be close enough to help by the time he heard from us.
“How did you guys get out?” I asked.
“Huh?” Jace frowned at me, and Marc blinked slowly in incomprehension. They really needed sleep.
“From the ranch. How did you get out? That was before the ceasefire.”
“Oh.” Marc rubbed both hands over his face, then blinked again. “Your dad went out the front door again, gun a-blazin’. While the birds were all flocking around him, we snuck out the back door and into the woods in cat form, each hauling a backpack.”
“Why the hell would they fall for that again? They’d just caught us sneaking out!”
“They didn’t fall for it.” Jace gave me a lopsided grin. “It was a hell of a race, but they didn’t follow us into the woods. I think they’re totally helpless when they’re earthbound.”
“Well, at least now someone can go out for food and supplies. So, how did you get your car?” I ran the fingers protruding from my cast over the door handle, then stopped and glanced at Jace again. “Wait, this isn’t yours.” Now that I’d warmed up and eaten, I realized that the upholstery was dark gray, when it should have been black.
Jace grinned again, impressed. “Nope. Dodd took us to a rental place, then took Teo, Manx, and Des to Henderson in his company car.”
No fair. Dodd had two cars, and I didn’t even have one. But then again, Carey Dodd had a good job, and—like most toms—no family to support. Whereas I wasn’t even drawing a salary, thanks to the tribunal, which had found me guilty of infecting my ex-boyfriend a few months earlier. Officially, working as an enforcer for free was considered my “community service.” If it wasn’t work I enjoyed, I’d have called it indentured servitude.
“Why don’t you take a nap?” I suggested, reaching back to squeeze Marc’s hand as he yawned again. “We’ll wake you up when we get to the airport.”
Marc started to refuse; I could see the frown building. But then he gave up and sighed. “Can you make sure smart-ass keeps us on the road, somewhere below light speed?”
I nodded and smiled, refraining from telling Marc that Jace was actually the better driver. Behind the wheel, Marc made The Fast and the Furious look like Driving Miss Daisy.He looked unconvinced, but ten minutes later, he started snoring and I looked back to find him passed out against the window, using an empty backpack for a pillow.
“So, how come you’re not falling asleep at the wheel?” I whispered, to keep from waking Marc. Normally he was a very sound sleeper, but I had no doubt that if he was ever going to wake without warning, it would be during a private conversation between me and Jace.
“He drove most of the way here.” Jace’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror.
“And you could sleep through that?”
Jace shrugged. “I figure if he’s planning to kill me, he’ll wait until he has enough justification to avoid the death penalty.” He was still smiling, but his eyes showed no humor. “So…how long do you think that’ll be?”
My hands went cold in spite of the heater blowing full blast, and I twisted to look at Marc again, to reassure myself that he really was sleeping. “Jace, I can’t do this right now.” My words came out so soft I could barely hear them, yet they left a bitter taste on my tongue.