Jace never looked back.

“I disabled the cars by the back building but couldn’t get to any of those,” I said, waving toward the three additional vehicles parked in front of the main house.

Jace shrugged. “They won’t catch us.” He turned onto the road too fast and we fishtailed, but then the car straightened and shot away from the house. I glanced back to see that—so far, at least—we were not being followed. Malone would send his enforcers after us, but with any luck, theirs were the tires I’d slashed, and it would take a few minutes for them to regroup.

I stared out the window at the trees as they raced past, afternoon sunlight blinding me in the gaps. Thoughts tumbled over themselves in my mind, but because I couldn’t focus on them, they were more like background static than true cacophony. I was beyond the capacity for rational thought. Too stunned to focus.

In a matter of minutes, everything had changed for the worse. My days of blending into crowds were over, and I’d be lucky if Marc ever spoke to me again. And it would take a miracle to keep him from trying to kill Jace the moment he had time to indulge his rage.

Two long, tense minutes later, we turned from Malone’s street onto the narrow, badly maintained road that cut through the woods and up the side of the nearest hill. “About a mile and a quarter,” Marc said. “On an overgrown trail on your right.”

Jace nodded acknowledgement.

“What did you do to Dean?” Marc asked, and I twisted in my seat to face them both, horrified all over again by the purple swelling taking over the right side of Jace’s head.

He hesitated, as if he were considering his answer. Finally, he exhaled heavily. “Let’s just say Colin Dean and the Joker now bear more than a passing resemblance.”

Marc nodded curtly, then stared out his window. I tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look up, though the tension in his posture said he knew I was watching him.

Several minutes later, we turned right and pulled to a stop behind the rented Pathfinder. We scrambled out of the car and I transferred all of our stuff while Marc put the rest of his clothes on and Jace tossed Lance into the cargo hold, still bound and unconscious, but breathing. We shot him up with one of the tranquilizers to keep him quiet. Then we backed out of the drive and onto the road, this time with Marc behind the wheel and me in the passenger seat.

As we pulled onto the highway, I tried to touch his arm, but he jerked away from me, and my heart broke all over again. And guilt was like salt rubbed in the wound.

“Are we going to talk about this?” I asked, and Jace went still in the backseat.

“No.” But a second later, Marc’s fist slammed into the dashboard, leaving a sizable dent and a smear of blood. “Fuck! You two have incredible timing.”