"Oooh, a riddle. I like those. Not," she said. "I'm going to find everything out eventually, anyway, if I'm coming along. You might as well tell me."
Levi shook his head. "No, you won't. Not unless everything goes terribly wrong. But I'll tell you that the man I stole it from is a bad, bad guy. And what I took will mean that he'll leave me and a whole bunch of the rest of us alone for a very long time."
Without warning, he hit the brakes and swerved down a narrow, unmarked dirt road. Harper peered out the windshield, but all she could see was more cornfields and a group of outbuildings, an old-fashioned Pennsylvania barn with overshot walls above a stone foundation with prefab storage units and various sheds around it.
"What do you think you're doing now?" Harper demanded.
"There's a barn ahead," he said. "We can hole up in there."
Of course. Hole up. Why hadn't she thought of that? She shook her head. This was like something out of a bad action flick. "Sure we can. Until what?"
"Until they're looking ahead of where we are. They'll pass by, and we'll be behind their search line."
Harper frowned. "Just how many people are we talking about here?"
They neared the barn. It might be empty this time of year, late spring before any of the harvests were in. She bet that Levi would know that, too-she bet that he knew a lot of things.
"Not a clue. Probably? A lot. He's got the Baltimore police in his pocket, and I have good reason to believe that his influence crosses state lines."
It just got better and better. Of all the cars out there, why'd he have to take hers?
He pulled to a stop in front of the barn. "Well?"
"Well, what?" Harper returned.
His amber eyes were laughing again. "Well, open the door. We can't get in through a closed one."
"Go ahead," she returned, folding her arms across her chest.
"Fine," he said. He put the parking brake on, killed the engine, then waggled the keys at her before stepping out of the car and shoving them into his pocket.
Well, it'd been worth a shot.
He sauntered over to the barn, and she couldn't help but admire the long lines of his body as he walked the big doors out of the way. He didn't seem to hold the fact that she shot him against her-though, of course, it had mostly been his fault. Then again, he didn't seem to stay shot, either.
What was he? She wasn't the type to get freaked out by much of anything, but the magical healing thing still threw her for a loop.