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Staying On Top(26)

By:Lyla Payne


“Where are we going next? Croatia? Serbia? Maybe some scary Arab country?”

The suggestions stopped me. “What made you guess those places?”

“Nothing. Let’s go.” He shouldered his pack. “Can I take that bottle of Germ-X from the kitchen?”

“Sure, I don’t care. But answer my question.”

He paused, glancing back out the window as though he thought jumping might be preferable, then sighed. “I keep a list of nonextradition countries taped inside my passport.”

“What in the hell for? You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s going to need to seek international asylum.”

“It’s part of my zombie-apocalypse plan.”

“If you don’t want to tell me, just say so.”

“That’s the reason. I’m prepared, that’s all.”

“Prepared like you have a blanket and flashlight in the trunk of your car, or prepared like you hired someone to build you a fully stocked underground bunker in your backyard?”

“I don’t drive my own car, nor do I have a backyard.”

“Those are examples. I’m trying to gauge your level of doomsdayishness.”

“That’s not a word.”

“Okay, but seriously, zombies? Out of all the things to be afraid of in this world—terrorists, North Korea, global warming, thieving accountants . . . you’re prepared for zombies?”

Sam didn’t reply. He grabbed the bottle of hand sanitizer from the kitchen on our way out through the garage, then climbed into the Jetta’s passenger seat. I wasn’t looking forward to more driving, but it appeared I didn’t have a choice.

The engine turned over and I told myself it didn’t matter why Sam had a list of nonextradition countries stored in his brain.

Except it might.

Discomfort tightened in a knot between my shoulders. Everything my dad had ever taught me, all the tricks I’d learned when forced to react in the middle of a con . . . they all boiled down to one thing: get to know your mark. Know their hopes, their fears, the desires that drove them, and eventually, one of those things would lead you to the answer of how to fool them.

But every last molecule in my body warned me that getting too close to Sam was dangerous. We already shared some kind of weird sexual charge, a fact that had made it way harder than it should have been to turn him down in St. Moritz and again last spring. The bottom line was that I didn’t trust myself with him, and that made me feel as though bugs crawled over my skin.

My self-control, my ability to not get emotionally involved, helped me survive.

“So, did I guess right? Where are we going?”

“We’re going to Serbia, so yes.”

“You want me to get us a car there that we don’t have to steal?”

“Borrow. We borrowed this one, and yes, if you can find one we can borrow there, that would be preferable. As long as we don’t have to go too far out of our way to pick it up and it can’t be traced back to you.” I risked a glance his direction, noticing that his hands weren’t clutching the seat belt quite as tightly as they did on the way up to the house. Progress. “We’re taking the train to Ljubljana.”

“My middle-European geography isn’t the best, but I’m pretty sure that’s not in Serbia.”

“It’s not. The train goes there from Jesenice. From there we take the bus to Belgrade.”

This time my peek caught a poorly hidden expression of horror, along with an actual shudder that worked its way down his spine. “The bus? Do you know how long that’s going to take? Have you ever been on a bus?”

I shrugged, trying my damnedest to hide a smile. We could fly or even drive in half the time, but that would be too easy, and it didn’t fit with the image I’d painted of my dad. I’d never been on a bus, but Sam didn’t know that and he didn’t need to. It couldn’t be that bad. “About ten hours total, according to my phone’s calculations. We take the bus through Croatia, then across the Serbian border to Belgrade. The towns where our passports are stamped are small and probably aren’t digital. It’s a good plan.”

In the lengthy pause that followed, I could almost hear his stubborn will crumbling. That this—a ten-hour train and bus ride in countries that were more than a little behind the rest of the world when it came to comfort and hygiene—would be the thing that made Sam flee for a first class ticket on the soonest international flight.

It only served to pique the curiosity I didn’t want to admit to. What kind of person rationalized stealing a car but balked at taking a bus for half a day?

It appeared I would never find out, because a few breaths later, Sam agreed.