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CHAPTER 2

TINK

The engine screams in time with the blood beating in my ears. Helmet claustrophobic on my head, clamping my hair to my scalp, visor steaming with sweat. Lights—streetlamps, traffic signals, neon—blitz past so fast I barely know where I am. Just that I’m moving forward, and not goddamn fast enough.

“Tink.”

Blue’s voice. In my ear. A low crackle. I ignore it.

“Tink.” Again. “Slow down. You’re going to—slow down.”

The signal ahead blinks to red and I hit the brakes so hard I nearly flip over my handlebars.

I settle, sit, breathing hard, as the cross-traffic on Oceanview roars past, four lanes of idiot drivers who wouldn’t have looked twice. A split second more and bikes growl to a stop beside me, one two three.

Blue. Fox. And Kit.

I tighten my grip on the handles.

“You okay?” Fox.

I don’t answer. Let the SUVs and pickups and tractor-trailers whipping past fill the warm night silence.

“Where…are we going?” Kit’s voice, this time, tentative but genuine.

I close my eyes, tight, trying to think, willing my brain to think, to make sense of everything that’s whirling around in there.

Where would Wendy go?

Where would Wendy go?

Where would be secret, safe⁠—

My eyes fly open.

“I know.”

Green light. Go.

Ninety seconds later I tear up to the Attaburger, the same one I took her to way back when, what feels like an eternity ago. I fishtail to a stop, parked diagonally across three spaces—who gives a shit, I’m off the bike and pulling off my helmet before the rest of them have even killed their engines, leaping like an Olympic vaulter and shouldering into the door.

“Wendy?” I sound crazy, I look crazy, I don’t care, glancing frantically around the grimy gray dining room and the rust-colored plastic seats. “Wendy?”

But it’s empty, empty except for a single solitary bag lady in the corner taking her sweet time over an order of fries. I spin on my heel just as the other three bang in from the parking lot.

“Move,” I bark, stiff-arming them out of the way as I stride to the bathroom. “Wendy?” No one. Nothing. Every single stall vacant, just a ragged strip of paper towel dangling in the breeze as I storm back out to the dining room. “Wendy?”

“Wendy’s is across the street,” says the visored guy behind the counter. I scowl at him.

Fox brightens. “Maybe she—” He sees my face and withdraws immediately. “Yeah, no, you’re right.”

There’s a small, hollow beat of silence.

“Fuck!” I wail, not caring that I must look like even more of a lunatic, and sink to a crouch. Head on my forearms, breathing hard.

This is all my fault. This is all my fault.

You lied to me.