Jonathan swallowed. “You do realize that’ll be trickier than it sounds, right, Dess? Remember what you said about them maybe having guns?”

“Absolutely. But we can’t just leave him out here with real Grayfoots chasing him. Who knows what they’ll do to him?”

Jonathan couldn’t argue with that. Melissa’s car couldn’t outrun those two Mercedes even if it wasn’t about to conk out. “I guess I could fly over and get Jessica after midnight falls.”

“What about Melissa?” Dess said. “We’ll need her if we’re going to get into Angie’s mind. You actually going to hold her hand?”

Cold fingers stroked Jonathan’s spine at the thought. He’d touched Melissa exactly once before, for an emergency jump across a hundred yards of angry tarantulas. In those few seconds her tortured mind had flooded into him like a wave of nausea; it was something he never wanted to repeat.

He sighed. “I guess I’ll have to. But what about you and Rex being alone in Saddleback? It’ll take me ten minutes to get Jessica there, and that’s the deep desert—darkling country.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Dess kicked the duffel bag on the floor in front of her, which let out a clank. “I think our big problem right now is Rex staying alive until midnight.”

“Yeah, you got that right. Those guys in the Mercs looked pretty pissed.” Jonathan took a deep breath. “Okay, we go after Rex and save his sorry ass from the Grayfoots.”

He accelerated still more, squeezing every drop of speed out of his father’s car.

Dess scrunched down into her seat. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

15

11:34 P.M.

OUT OF GAS

As they crossed the county line, Rex kept his eyes locked on the road ahead. “Are they giving up?”

Angie turned to stare through the back window, then let out a string of curses. “No, still with us. And if they’re risking Bixby at this hour to catch us, that means they’re in a really bad mood.”

Rex gripped the steering wheel, trying not to scream with frustration. In all his detailed planning, it had never once occurred to him that the real Grayfoots would show up. “How did they know we were meeting?”

“No one followed me, Rex, I’m positive.”

“What about your phone?”

“They couldn’t have tapped it. That number I gave you was a disposable cell phone I bought last week at the Tulsa Mall. Never used it before you called, so they couldn’t have…” Her voice turned cold. “You didn’t call me from your house, did you?”

Rex didn’t answer for a few critical seconds, and by the time he found the right words, it was too late to lie.

“Was I not supposed to?” he finally managed.

She let out a groan.

“You mean, my phone is tapped?” he cried.

“Only for the last two years. Pinhead.”

Rex drove on, waiting for the burning sensation of a knife slipping between his ribs, but all he heard was Angie muttering beneath her breath. “Jesus. Maybe you really are just a bunch of kids.”