I haven’t thought about her flight. Or about her secret visit to see Charlie. I haven’t thought about her at all lately.
She continues. “So I’ll need a ride to O’Hare Airport while Mom and Dad are at mass.” She’s never flown before, and she says it like she’s bored.
“Impeccable timing. When do you come back?” “I’ll be back Friday before dinner service. You’re welcome.”
I laugh. Sometimes Rowan just leaves me speechless. “Okay,” I say. “What do you want me to, like, say to Mom and Dad when they get home from mass to find their youngest child missing? I mean, can I tell them the truth? Are you going to give me all the information about where you’ll be and stuff?”
“I’ll have my cell phone with me. That’s all they need to know. But yeah, I’ll give you the address and stuff too in case Charlie is secretly an ax murderer. But don’t give it to them. Please.” She licks her pinkie and smoothes her eyebrows, then deposits the tweezers back into her bag as I turn down the alley behind our home and park a few buildings away so nobody sees me—I don’t want my dad to force me to come inside. “Maybe we can talk tonight.” She gets out and waves, then saunters down the alley toward the restaurant like she owns the world.
And I totally want to be her.
I meet Trey and Sawyer at the library. They’re up in the loft on the corner couches where you can see everyone approaching but still have a private conversation. I plop down next to Sawyer, kick off my shoes, and curl up into him, and he slips an arm around my shoulders and kisses the top of my head. And I feel like this exact moment right here, this feeling of warmth and love, is what I have been waiting for my entire life.
Trey watches us. He smiles a small smile and doesn’t look away. And then he sighs and leans forward, elbows on his knees, and says, “All right. Number one: nobody here gets hurt.” At first I think he must have new information from Sawyer that I haven’t heard yet, but then I realize it’s a command.
Sawyer nods. “I hear you, bro. We hear you. No crazy stunts. No matter what.”
“Of course,” I agree.
While I was gone, Sawyer filled Trey in on a few of the minor but important details—the tree, the grass, the tiny stop sign, the old building with ivy on it.
I pull the note Sawyer gave me this morning out of my pocket and hold it out. “We need to destroy this or something,” I say. “Yours, too.”
Sawyer pulls his note out and takes mine. “We have a shredder in the office. I’ll take care of it. From now on, only verbal communication, and we don’t talk about g-un-s in school. Does Trey know about your secret phone?”
Trey raises an eyebrow.
“It’s just a temporary throwaway,” Sawyer says. “Don’t bother trying to text her.”
I give Trey my new cell number and watch him enter it into his phone. “Sawyer, can you get away from the proprietors long enough to drive by some schools? The list is in your hand—can you memorize them before you shred that?”
“Yeah,” Sawyer says. “I’ll drive around tonight and tomorrow morning before school.” He looks at the addresses. “Some of these are way out there.”
“Are you safe to drive?”
“So far.” Sawyer squinches his eyelids shut and rubs them. “The vision keeps playing in the windows down there, though, and it’s giving me a headache.” He points to the wall of glass on the main floor below us. “And in the face of that clock.” There’s an old school clock on the wall opposite our couch.
“What about your windshield and mirrors?” I ask, worried, knowing how distracting that is, and how much worse it could be for Sawyer going out into city traffic.
“Not bad,” he says lightly. “But . . . things are getting worse. The noise is driving me insane. I think—I feel like it’s happening very soon.”
Trey lifts his head. “I’ll go with you to look at schools,” he says. “I’ll drive.”
I bite my lip. I want to go, but I haven’t been pulling my weight at the restaurant. “That’s a great idea,” I say. I glance outside and then at the clock. “Maybe you guys should go now before it gets dark. Do the close ones. It’s rush hour.”
Trey gets up and blows out a sigh. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it hard, fast, and often.”
“Dot-com,” I mutter, getting up. “Okay, be safe.” I give them each a hug. “Talk it through from the beginning, maybe. Trey might have some good questions that will trigger something—anything—about day, time, place. Maybe identifying features of the . . .” I almost say “shooters,” but now I’m scared to use the word. “Bad guys,” I say. And that triggers my memory. “Oh,” I say, turning to Sawyer. “Can you zoom in on a close-up of the, ah, weapon and the whiteboard? I’m not sure if the weapon’s information will help anything, but I thought of it earlier when Officer Bentley was at school. I could see a logo on his. Is there a way to trace something like that? Or, like, figure out how many bullets a . . . thing . . . can shoot just by looking at it?”
Sawyer looks at me with this face dotted with little hints of surprise—in his eyes, the corners of his lips. “Good one, gorgeous,” he says. “I’ll check them both out in slo-mo tonight when I get home and I’ll call you.”