“I’m not sure,” Philip said wearily. “There’s an antsy feeling, but probably too late to do anything about it. Comes on fast.” He grimaced. “It was happening when I told Kyle to stop the car, but I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“Guess we’ll need to be on our toes then,” I said. “And you still don’t get to drive.”
I’d hoped for a laugh or at least a smile, but Philip merely looked at Kyle’s hands, tight on the steering wheel. “Locking me down would be better,” he said.
I stiffened in response to the implied threat, even though he’d been the one doing the implying. “And how do you want to do that?” I demanded. “Go back to the Tribe? Or have us tie you up in a hotel room? You think you’ll be cool separated from me the next time one of your fits comes along?”
“Handcuffed in the trunk?” he suggested, but it was clear he wasn’t completely serious. At least I hoped not. He gave me a half-hearted smile. “We need some sort of plan. Tranqs don’t always work well on me, and I’m not sure they’d work at all when I’m in that state.”
“I guess we’ll find out,” I said and rubbed the back of my neck. I had a bit of my own headache going on. “How the hell can we plan ahead if we don’t know what triggers it, we have no warning, and we don’t know how to stop it?”
“The episodes are short, which helps,” Philip said, but his expression grew serious. “If this happens again, I want to get locked down. I’m not kidding,” he said at my stubborn expression. “Cuffed and duct taped like a mummy in the trunk would do it.”
“We’ll talk about it then,” I said stiffly before anyone else could enter an opinion. Kyle and Naomi glanced at each other, but they recognized I wasn’t in the mood to discuss this any more. I crossed my arms over my chest and defiantly closed my eyes, and before I knew it I was asleep again.
Chapter 13
The feel of the car slowing down woke me. I opened my eyes to see dawn turning the eastern sky purple and a shift in scenery as we took an exit. Sitting up, I hastily swiped a hand across my face in case I’d drooled. “Where are we?”
Philip gave me a smile. “About an hour past Birmingham. We’re stopping for breakfast. Waffle Shack okay with you?”
“Yeah, I can handle that,” I replied. I’d have to order off the dollar menu, but with any luck that would hold me until I had a chance to call the bank and figure out the deal with my account. Past Birmingham. A flutter went through my gut. Before this, the farthest I’d ever been from home was Talladega, twenty minutes east of Birmingham. Every mile we drove took me beyond that old record. Scary and exciting all at once, but thinking about the distance reminded me of something else I needed to do. “Crap, does anyone see a pay phone? I need to call my dad and let him know I’m okay.”
Kyle looked at me in the rear view mirror. “It’s best not to have any contact.”
The smile I gave him was stiff. “Yeah. That’s not an option,” I replied. “I’m not going to let my dad think I’ve just fucking disappeared.”
To my relief Kyle gave me a slight nod, then drove past the Waffle Shack and to a gas station where a pay phone stood at the back of the parking lot.
“You can’t tell him where we’re going,” Naomi warned as Kyle parked. “The less he knows, the better.”
“Uh huh,” I said, pretending to be distracted by the search for quarters in my purse.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she retorted.
I looked up and gave her a reassuring smile. “Means I heard you,” I said. “It’s cool. I understand.” Didn’t mean I would obey her.
Kyle rolled down his window as I got out. “Remember,” he said with his typical calm tone, “it’s easier to convince someone you don’t know anything when you really don’t know anything than when you try to hide it.”
Damn it, he had a good point. I nodded once, then jogged over to the phone. My dad wouldn’t be awake yet, but I could wait another four hours and still not have any guarantee he’d be up, much less awake.
I hung up after the third ring to keep it from going to voicemail and wasting my quarters. It would take a few tries to wake him up anyway. I knew that from long experience. Second try and two rings earned me a “Mmmmf” that sounded like him.
“Hey, Dad, sorry to wake you so early,” I said. “I called to let you know I’m going out of town for a few days.”
“Angel? Wha . . . ?” I heard rustling that sounded like him sitting up in bed. “Why? Where?”
“Some of the people with my medical condition are missing,” I said. “I have to go to, um, another city to look for them.”
“Another city? What, New Orleans?” More rustling. “I don’t understand.”
“No, farther away. A lot farther.” I grimaced. The car was on the other side of the lot, and I knew that even a tanked zombie wouldn’t be able to hear the conversation, but Kyle’s warning still resonated through me. “I can’t really say where I’m going, Dad. It’s safer for you that way.”
“Safer? Ah, shit.” The sleep was gone from his voice now. “What about your job?”
I smiled at that. He was so proud that I’d held a job for a whole year, and he knew how much it mattered to me, even beyond having the access to brains. “I’m calling work next to take vacation time,” I told him. “It’s cool. I got plenty of time saved up. I’m gonna tell them that I’m visiting a sick aunt in—” I thought quickly. “In Denver. A sick aunt in Denver.”
“A sick aunt,” he repeated. “In Denver. You expect people to believe that?”