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CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Ghosts


I tried to keep my mind on the little things while Summer drove. The sound of Riker’s heavy breathing from the backseat. The feel of the sun-warmed seat at my back. The blur of yellows and greens out the window as the desert landscape rolled by, painted in twilight. Then something black and gray flashed past my window. It jarred me back to active consciousness. “Stop!”

Summer let off the gas and glanced at me. “What?”

“Stop for a second, will you?”

She gave me a weird look but jammed the brakes. The Jeep ground to a halt on the rough dirt road.

I stuck my head out to look back the way we’d come, and there it was. A gray metal post mounted in the ditch beside the road, topped with a dull steel lockbox. A black wire ran out of this down to the ground, toward the road. It looked a lot like the sensors that parks use to measure visitors, but this box had a stubby transmission antenna on top. “Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Summer asked.

“It’s a road alarm. I didn’t see it on the way in.” That explained why there wasn’t a locked gate sealing off this road from the public. Locked gates drew attention. Rough jeep-tracks into the desert did not.

“Maybe no one’s—” Summer cut off as headlights splashed against the ridge ahead of us where the road turned. A car was coming.

I thought about telling her to gun it, but the road was probably too narrow. “Pull over!”

She wrenched the Jeep over onto the rocky shoulder. The other vehicle came into view; it was a dark SUV with tinted windows. If they hadn’t spotted us already, they would in a minute. They can’t catch me out here. If they did, I’d have a lot to explain. Greaves might guess my real reason for coming out here. If he didn’t, Evelyn certainly would. I needed a plan. I needed time! But my brain wouldn’t work. Not after the shock it had just received.

Summer threw on her parking brake and turned up the music.

“What are you doing?” I shouted.

She grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me to her. Then she was kissing me. It caught me by surprise. Total surprise. My brain still wasn’t operating, but my survival instinct died. A new one kicked in. I slid my hands around her waist, wrapped my fingers in the belt loops of her jeans, and pulled her in tight. She was warm and so soft. The road and the ghost-images of dragon bones faded into the background of my mind. Summer became my entire world.

A horn blared from very close by, and a man’s voice intruded. “Hey!”

Summer and I broke apart, doing our best to seem flustered. Which didn’t take a lot of acting on my part. The dark SUV had pulled alongside us. A man in security fatigues and aviator sunglasses stared at us through his open driver’s side window. The others were too tinted for me to see anything.

“Oh my God.” Summer sounded breathless, and I decided to believe it was because of how I’d kissed her. She turned the radio down. “Uh, hi.”

“This is private property,” the man said. There was a second guy in the passenger seat, but the interior of the SUV too dark to see their faces. I kept my own in the shadows, on the off chance that they might recognize me. I didn’t dare glance back at Octavius, but I prayed he’d stay asleep. If they spotted him, this would go south in a hurry.

Summer twirled a strand of her hair between two fingers. “Oh, sorry. We were just, um, talking.” Her cheeks flushed. “I swear.”

Damn, she was good.

“Yeah, sure.” The man glanced at his companion, who spoke into a phone. “False alarm. Just a couple of kids.”

I might have bristled at that a little bit, but I damn well kept quiet.

The guy with the phone hung up, and the driver made a shooing gesture. “Move it along.”

Summer made a big show of flipping her hair and thanking the “gentlemen.” I wanted her to floor it, but she drove off slowly. The SUV just sat there. I watched them in the rearview, waiting for them to whip it around and come after us. I didn’t breathe again until the Jeep’s tires crunched across the shoulder gravel and rolled onto the quieter highway.

We didn’t say a word until we’d put some distance between us and the SUV. At last, I couldn’t hold out anymore, and turned around to look behind us. The desert was all inky darkness. I let out a heavy breath. “I think we’re clear.”

“God. That was close,” she said.

“Yeah.” Some of the tension drained from my shoulders. “You’re a hell of an actress.”

“Oh, do you like that?” She did the hair-twirl again.

“Heh. I kind of did,” I admitted.

She gave me a side-look, and I could have sworn she was blushing.

Then I remembered what we’d found in in the desert valley, and the little bit of happiness faded.

Summer must have seen it on my face. God love her, she kept the music off and just drove.

I stared out the window and tried to make sense of the screwed-up world.


We rode in silence back to the parking lot for Big Mesa. My Tesla was there, apparently undisturbed. The usual thrill of seeing it was muted, now. Summer shut the engine off and helped me disentangle Octavius from Riker.

I put my thumb on the Tesla’s biometric scanner to disarm the security system. It beeped in soft recognition.

“What are you going to do?” Summer asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry. This really sucks.”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. I tucked Octavius into the passenger seat. He was so small and pitiful then, still fast asleep, as if trying to dream the visions away. Then I felt her hand on my shoulder and turned. She surprised me with a hug. A real hug.

I hugged her back. “Thanks for coming. Sorry it was, well, you know.”

She sighed. “Yeah.”

I didn’t want to let her go, but I’d already exceeded the proper hug duration. I let my arms fall against her sides. Maybe a little slowly. She eased back. Our faces brushed against one another. I held my breath.

Then her lips found mine and for three heartbeats, I forgot everything.

She pulled away, looking about as surprised as I felt. She was smiling, though. “Call me, okay?” She hopped into her Jeep. The engine roared to life, and she drove off with a wave.

I stood there like an idiot for a couple minutes, watching the Jeep disappear in a cloud of sand-dust. Then I saw Octavius, still asleep. He’d have ended up in the valley facility too, if I hadn’t smuggled him home with me. I brushed his rough back with my fingertips, lightly enough that I wouldn’t wake him. So little, so defenseless.

Dragons had never had a champion of their own, someone to look after them. Maybe they should. But it wouldn’t be easy to advocate for them without catching all the wrong kind of attention at the company. I could defend dragons, or I could work quietly on Connor’s problem. I probably couldn’t do both.



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Framed