Two cars pulled in. A deeply tanned young man and woman got out of one car and three teenage boys got out of the other. As they walked into the diner, they were all talking.

“Weirdest thing I ever saw,” one of the teenage boys said. “Keeping pace with the cars.”

“It was creepy the way they kept trying to look into the car,” the woman said.

“I slowed down and took off my sunglasses,” her companion said. “They seemed okay with us driving on after that.”

“They’re looking for somebody,” another teenage boy said. “Did you see the roadblock? We saw a couple of cars the cops had pulled over and were searching. I think if you didn’t slow down enough for the Crows to look at you, they signaled to the cops somehow to block the road. Like if you didn’t slow down, you had something to hide.”

Jimmy dropped the hamburger on the plate. It wasn’t sitting so well anymore.

“We heard on the radio that roadblocks were being set up at all the towns in the Northeast,” the woman said. Then she shuddered. “A manhunt like this? Somebody must have done something really bad.”

The two groups split up as the waitress showed them to their booths. But other men eating at the counter turned to ask them about the roadblocks and the Crows who were pacing cars.

The men at the counter shook their heads and agreed that this was a bad place to be if the Others were looking for you. Crows and Hawks were often seen around the rest stops or small places like this. The men who drove delivery trucks and made regular runs along this route swore the Others knew their trucks and their faces. Didn’t bother them any. In fact, it was advantageous when some of their deliveries were made to little towns that looked human but weren’t.

Stomach burning and appetite gone, Jimmy paid for his meal and accepted the offer of a to-go container because leaving the food would give the waitress a reason to remember him. He bought a small bottle of water and went to the car.

As soon as he opened the trunk a few inches the bitch tried to push the lid up a little more.

“Get your fucking fingers back inside or I’ll slam the lid on them.”

Her fingers retreated.

He tossed the water bottle into the trunk. “If you mess yourself before I let you out, you’ll be breathing in the stink.”

He closed the trunk, got behind the wheel, and dropped the to-go container on the passenger seat. Then he headed south. He’d passed unmarked dirt roads that intersected with the paved roads. He’d take one of those as soon as he could.

• • •

Meg struggled to open the water bottle. After she got it open and managed a couple of sips, she felt the rough edge of the plastic screw top. Nothing a normal person would think about, but it might just be sharp enough to cut her kind of skin.

But not yet.

She screwed the top back on the bottle. She’d probably dump the water when she made the cut. She didn’t want to lose it, so she would wait. She needed to wait. She’d seen enough when Cyrus opened the trunk to know this wasn’t the right place to escape even though she’d heard voices and thought there were other people around.

Then the car made an odd turn and bumped hard. Because she was unprepared, her teeth snapped shut, catching the edge of her tongue—the spot that had prickled and burned a couple of times over the past few days.

Meg swallowed the blood, swallowed the agony, swallowed the words. She heard the warning blast of a truck horn and saw the moment when she would run away from Cyrus Montgomery.

• • •

Douglas Burke walked into the interrogation room, dropped a folder on the table, and sat down opposite Sandee Montgomery. They had taken her to Lakeside Hospital for treatment as soon as Monty called about the substance in the jar. Judging by the way her chest and shoulders looked, he thought the lab that tested for poisons and toxic substances would find a stew of caustic chemicals mixed into that skin cream. She hadn’t even noticed that something was wrong until she started to come down from whatever she’d taken, and he wondered what would have happened to her if she hadn’t gone outside when the kids were fighting, if Leetha Sanguinati hadn’t been injured from contact with her skin.

He had some thoughts about why she might have been targeted, but discussing that with the station chief would have to wait.

“Where’s CJ?” Sandee demanded.

“Not available,” Burke replied, giving her his fierce-friendly smile.

“I want a lawyer.”

“You can certainly call one, although you’re not being charged with anything.”

“Then why am I here?”

Burke sat back. “Where can you go?”

“Back to the apartment.”

He shook his head. “You broke the terra indigene’s no-drug rule and have been evicted, effective immediately. Your belongings are being held here at the station until you decide which train you’re taking tomorrow morning. Not a lot of choices first thing in the morning, but if you’re still in Lakeside when that first train pulls out, the Sanguinati will gather in force and hunt you down.” He opened the folder and put a handwritten list on the table, turning it for her to read. “These are the towns where you’re allowed to resettle. They’re still in the Northeast, but they’re all small. No Toland, no Hubb NE, no Shikago for you. Small, isolated towns where everyone will know your business before you have time to unpack. I imagine some of those towns would have need of a prostitute. That is how you earn a living, isn’t it?”