Page 122 of Shatter

He doesn't ask.

His jaw works once.

"Kirkja." He turns back toward the door. "Now."

He holds it open.

This time, he doesn't have to jerk his chin at me.

I'm already walking.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Anni

The car isn't the silver one.

It's white, some kind of anonymous rental sedan with a pine-tree air freshener dangling from the mirror, and it's idling on the logging road past the back fence with its headlights off when I come through the trees.

Pierce leans across and pushes the passenger door open.

"Get in." His voice is barely above a whisper. "Quick."

I stand there in the sand with the dew soaking through my shoes and look at it.

The silver sedan is parked outside the Doubletree.

Aren's been sitting on it for days now.

"Where's your car?" I don't move.

"Where your friends can see it." Pierce glances past me at the dark line of the fence. "Anni, please. Get in before somebody notices you're gone."

My hand's on the door.

Behind me, through the pines, the clubhouse is dark except for the one light over the shop.

He's asleep up there.

On his back, one arm flung out across the empty place where I was, the bite I left on his shoulder going purple in the dark.

I pressed my mouth to his chest and said it over and over until my lips went numb, and he never heard a word.

My eyes blur.

I get in the car.

We drive south with the windows up and the radio off.

Pierce keeps both hands on the wheel at ten and two, the way Dad taught him, the way Dad taught me, and he doesn't look at me.

The dashboard clock says 3:26.

I sit with my hands in my lap and the blank drive zipped into the front pocket of my hoodie, a hard little square pressing against my stomach every time I breathe.

Nine dollars at the Walgreens on Monroe.

I filled it with Aziza's recipe spreadsheets and three years of Zizi's inventory, every file named something boring.