“Let’s go,” Marc insisted. “There’s nothing we can do for Kaci without proof that Malone’s guilty, and if we miss our flight, she’s as good as dead.”

“Please,” I said when Marc’s order had no impact on him, a fact which made me vaguely sick to my stomach. “You know if there was anything else we could do, I’d be the first one to suggest it.”

Jace’s hand twitched around the steering wheel, then he nodded once, briskly, and hit the gas so hard gravel spewed behind us. I’d have flown forward if I hadn’t been buckled in. Marc hit his forehead on the back of my headrest and let out a string of Spanish profanities too fast for me to understand.

“Watch it, asshole,” he finished at last, glaring at Jace in the rearview mirror. “We’re no good to her if you plant us in a ditch.”

Jace scowled, but slowed to a speed less likely to sling us into the next dimension. “You getting warm yet?” He glanced at me briefly and turned right onto the first paved road I’d seen, running perpendicular to the thunderbirds’ long private drive.

“Yeah.” But my teeth were still chattering. “How far to the nearest gas station? I’m starving.”

“We gotcha covered. Marc, grab the…”

But Marc was already lifting a bulging white plastic bag over the front seat into my lap. “It’s probably cold by now, but it’s better than candy bars and soda. And there’re a couple of bottles of Gatorade by your feet.”

“Thanks, guys.” For the next twenty minutes, I devoured convenience store chicken strips, potato wedges, fried mozzarella sticks, and corn dogs. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in weeks. A Shifter’s metabolism runs much faster than a human’s, and if I’d had to Shift, I probably would have passed out from hunger.

When the bag was empty, I wadded it up and dropped it at my feet, then started on a bottle of purple Gatorade. “So, where are we going?”

“Roswell.” Marc twisted in his seat, and his face came into focus in my side-view mirror. “We should be there in a couple of hours. Our flight leaves at nine-fifteen.”

“You’re serious? Roswell has an airport?”

“Nope.” Jace grinned. “We’re booked on the first available flying saucer. Hope you don’t get space-sick.”

I couldn’t suppress a grin of my own; it felt good to finally be smiling again, after so much fear and pain. Even if the jokes were stupid, and the smiles were only temporary, and neither could truly hide the seething anger and growing bloodlust consuming us all on the inside. “You only think that’s funny because you weren’t on my last flight. Whatever we take off in better have jet engines. Or at least a couple of propellers.”

Movement in the rearview mirror caught my attention, and I glanced up to see Marc scowling at Jace. I twisted to face him. “What’s wrong?” My question seemed somehow too trite, yet too complicated to have any real answer.