When the doors open, he grabs my hand. Head down, eyes down, I follow him to the elevator at the end of the platform.

“Give me the sweatshirt.”

The elevator doors close behind us.

“I thought . . .” My words catch in my throat. I clench my teeth. Hand over his sweatshirt. “I just thought back there . . .”

He faces the elevator door, waiting for it to open as it hits street level. “I know what you thought.” His voice is dry, quiet.

Of course he does. I rub the tear stains on my face. He knows exactly what I thought because he’s in the Swarm. He’s seen it happen a dozen times.

I follow him for several blocks to a parked Audi that beeps as he unlocks it. I’m not sure what I expected—not exactly a black Escalade with tinted windows, but not a silver car either, much less a nice one with leather seats. It feels normal, too normal, for the nameless gray-eyed attacker who seems to be stalking me.

He opens the passenger side door.

I tense. My first instinct is to run. There are a million different ways to get home from here—bus, taxi, on foot. The second I get in his car, I’m trapped. He could take me anywhere. Do anything to me.

But hasn’t he had those chances already? On the pier? In the stairwell? So far everything he’s done has gone against the Swarm’s MO. This guy holds answers I’ve spent the last two years searching for. He knows how the Death Mob operates, who’s heading the organization. With both of my leads dead, I can’t walk away from that. I’m not sure he’ll say more than a few words at a time to me, but it’s a risk I have to take.

He moves around the back of the car and climbs in the driver’s side without glancing my way.

Pushing my shoulders back, I step inside, hoping this isn’t the last time I’m ever seen again.

He starts the engine. Satellite radio blares acoustic rock.

It can’t be his music of choice. This car has to be stolen. I stare at the blue lights on the dashboard, waiting for him to turn the station to some kind of angst-ridden punk. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t adjust the seat or the mirrors either. Instead, he tosses his sweatshirt in the back and shifts the car into drive.

“Why exactly are you helping me?” It’s the lamest of my questions, but by now, he must know what I’ve been trying to do.

He pulls away from the curb and starts driving like a normal person in a very anti-Cullen Henking way. Dropping his shoulders, he leans toward the window and releases a little of the edge he’s carried with him since the library. “I told you.”

“You were vague.”