“Yeah. Sorry about the whole snatch-’n’-grab. We didn’t think Malone would let you just walk out.”

Lance shook his head, his hair catching against the carpet. “He wouldn’t have.”

“So, I just need to clarify a couple of points, then we can let you ride up front with the rest of the grown-ups.” I smiled, hoping he could see my friendly, reassuring expression in the fading daylight, but not the new slice across my face, which hurt with each word I spoke.

“Okay…” He was hesitant to trust me, and I didn’t blame him. But I stood a much better shot at convincing him than Jace did.

“Are you the one who killed the thunderbird? We heard it was totally justifiable. He was trying to butt in on your kill?”

“Yeah!” Lance’s face brightened, and his relief was obvious even in the dying light. “It was my kill. Anyone else would have done the same thing.”

I smiled again and nodded like a bobble-head doll. “So you killed him?”

“Yeah, but it was…”

“Great, thanks.” I turned to Jace. “Tape him back up.”

“What? No!” Lance shouted, and resumed his struggle. But as long as he couldn’t partially Shift his hands—and I’d certainly never taught him how—there was no way he could tear through the tape binding his wrists.

“You got it.” Jace dug in the bag at his feet and came up with a roll of duct tape.

“Where the hell are we going?” Lance demanded as I returned to my seat.

Jace leaned over to hold Lance still long enough to tape his mouth. “To New Mexico.” Our prisoner fought harder, actually rocking the van a couple of times as he kicked. “Oh, don’t worry,” Jace said, smiling at him coldly. “I’m sure you’ll have a chance to plead your case in front of the thunderbirds.”

Jace faced forward again, and we all tried to ignore the desperate racket from the back. After ten minutes of Lance’s nonstop, wordless begging, Marc turned the radio up, and Guns N’ Roses cautioned our passenger to live and let die.

If he got the message, I heard no sign.

The guys insisted I take the first sleeping shift—the only thing they’d agreed on since we left Malone’s—but I was hesitant to leave them both awake at once. Unfortunately, my exhausted body won that particular battle of wills, and I slept for four straight hours.

After the switch, Marc napped, Jace drove, and I Shifted my right arm over and over, gritting my teeth through the pain, until it no longer hurt in human form. An hour into that leg of the trip, when he was sure Marc was asleep, Jace shot me a sideways glance, as I concentrated on the wave of fur rippling over my arm from the elbow down.

“What happened with Marc?” he whispered.

I glanced into the backseat before answering. Marc was truly sleeping; I could tell. “He said I have to choose. And one of you will have to go.”

Several full minutes of tense silence later, he whispered again. “So…what are you going to do?”

I could only shrug. “I don’t know.” And I had no one to talk it over with. Everyone I would normally have gone to for advice was either busy running the Pride, itching to kill the other man in my life, or dead. How could I possibly be so alone, when I never seemed to have any privacy?

After twenty-two hours, two more doses of tranquilizer for Lance, four bathroom breaks, and four different sleeping/driving switches, Marc shook me awake where I dozed in the front passenger seat. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and noted that the sun was low in the sky. Again. “What time is it?”

“Four-fifteen. We’re about half an hour away from where we picked you up.”

Barring disaster, and accounting for the part we’d have to walk, that meant we’d arrive with less than a quarter-hour to spare.

Lance was sleeping off his latest injection and Jace was snoring lightly from the middle row. “Want me to call my dad?”

He nodded stiffly. I’d hoped he’d warm up a little, given time, but so far he showed no sign of a thaw.

I autodialed my father and gave him an update, promising to call him as soon as we had Kaci. He swore he’d be standing by with a phone to toss out to Beck when the Flight was satisfied with the proof we’d brought.

“Faythe, are you okay?” my dad asked, after the details were worked out.

“Fine.” Technically that was true. There was nothing physically wrong with me. But he could tell there was something we weren’t saying.

I dreaded telling my father almost as badly as I’d dreaded telling Marc.

Jace woke up while I was on the phone, and when I hung up he handed me two bottles of Coke and four protein bars—the makeshift dinner we’d bought at the last pit stop. We ate in silence, and my nerves consumed me as surely as I consumed my meal.

We were almost there. The thunderbirds would either accept our proof or they wouldn’t, and there was nothing we could do about their decision, either way. Kaci would either live or she wouldn’t, and there was nothing we could do about that, either. But I was willing to die trying.

Twenty-five minutes later, Marc turned right onto the narrow gravel road leading to the nest. Three miles along, we met the first obstacle—huge rocks spanning the entire width of the road in a random arrangement I was sure the thunderbirds had personally placed. We had to leave the car there and hoof it the rest of the way.

Lance blinked in the last rays of sunlight when we opened the back hatch, and he began struggling immediately.