“Okay, okay,” I said, crawling toward her. My fingers slid against the minivan’s gray carpets. With the exception of a few stacked newspapers and tied-off plastic grocery bags tucked under the rear seat, the inside of the minivan was pretty well kept.

She motioned for me to crouch down behind one of the middle seats. As I pressed my knees against my chest, I realized that despite the fact that I had followed her order to the letter, she still hadn’t spoken a single word to me.

“What’s your name?” I asked. She draped herself over the top of the rear seat, her feet kicking at the air as she dug around for something in the back. If she heard me, she pretended not to.

“It’s all right; you can talk to me.…”

Her face was flushed when she reemerged, a paint-splattered white sheet in hand. She pressed a finger to her lips and I wisely shut my mouth. The girl shook out the folded fabric and threw it over my head. The smell of fake lemon cleaner and bleach assaulted my nostrils as the sheet settled around me. I opened my mouth to protest, reaching up to yank it away from my face, but something stopped me.

Someone was coming—no, more than one person. I caught snippets of their back-and-forth, heard their feet slap against the pavement. The sound of a door opening stopped my heart dead in my chest.

“—I swear to God it was her, Liam!” The voice was deep, but it didn’t sound like an adult. “And, look, I told you she’d beat us back. Suzume, did you run into trouble?”

The other car door opened. Someone else—Liam?—let out a relieved sigh.

“Thank God,” he said, with a hint of a Southern drawl. “Come on, come on, come on, get in. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to stay long enough to find out. The skip tracers were bad enough—”

“Why won’t you admit that it was her?” the other voice snapped.

“—because we ditched her in Ohio, that’s why—”

Above the sound of Liam’s voice and the blood pounding between my ears, I heard another voice.

“Ruby! Ruby!”

Cate.

I pressed both hands against my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut.

“What in the world?” the first voice said. “Is that what I think it is?”

The first gunshot popped like a firecracker. It might have been the distance, or the army of trees and undergrowth muffling it, but it seemed harmless. A warning. The next one had much sharper teeth.

“Stop!” I heard Cate scream. “Don’t shoot—!”

“LEE!”

“I know, I know!” The engine sputtered to life, and the squeal of the tires wasn’t far behind. “Zu, seat belt!”

I tried to brace myself, but the car tossed me back and forth between the seats. At one point, my head cracked back against the plastic side paneling and drink holder, but no one was paying attention to the strange noises in the backseat when someone was firing a gun.