“I suspected it was something like that,” I said. I smiled. “Less emails, and no using your phone in school unless it’s an emergency. Houndstooth is going to make a move late this afternoon.”

Kenzie put her hand out and stopped herself from spinning.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“He doesn’t want to see me or say hi?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“He probably had a good excuse. He’s good at those. It took me a while to figure out.”

“He doesn’t want to tip off the villains about his relationship to us.”

“It makes sense,” Kenzie said.

“Do you want help with homework while we wait? And you can eat your lunch?” I asked. “If that nervousness has eased up.”

“I’ll eat,” she said. “Help with homework would be a good way to kill the time, too.”

“Perfect,” I said.

I stepped away to look at the whiteboards while Kenzie got ready.

Her voice small and quiet, I heard Kenzie remark, “At least I get to see him on camera.”

Shade 4.5

I watched over the group.

We were getting settled in. Tables were moved, whiteboards arranged, and chairs put together. It was starting to look more like a hideout. Sveta was doing her name in a fancy script on her board, Kenzie was doing homework, and I had plugged my laptop in, with my notes up, but it wasn’t my focus in the moment.

Byron had taken his turn. Two hours and fifteen minutes after we’d parted ways, Tristan was back at the hideout. He’d taken off his black jacket and folded it over the back of a chair, and was doing some of the setup stuff, while wearing a red t-shirt, jeans, and chukka boots. He was athletic, and I remembered Byron hadn’t given me that impression when I’d seen him.

“Hey Tristan,” I said.

He’d moved over to his whiteboard, and stepped back and away to look my way.

“Hey, what do you think?” he asked. He extended a hand, indicating his work: he had sketched out a rough floor plan of the room. The area was an open-concept apartment, a bathroom closed off, the rest of it without walls, which gave us our room to maneuver, and it looked like Tristan was trying to figure out where the other things we needed might go. A list of bullet points said ‘cot’, ‘mini fridge’, and ‘team sign’.

I frowned a bit as I saw that last one.

“Team sign?” I asked.

“Sure. I figured it would be good for morale. We could have Sveta paint it and put it up on the wall. Something nice to remind ourselves that we’re a team.”

“I could paint something,” Sveta said, looking away from her work. “I’m kind of anxious to have a name, and we’d have to decide that first.”