Doomed (27 page)

I did my shift from two to five this morning, and nearly froze as I huddled by the window, listening to the radio and messing around with the last couple of levels of Pandora’s Box—just in case we missed something—until it was time to wake Eli up.

I stretch out and try to go back to sleep, but I can’t.
There’s a little voice in the back of my very drowsy brain nagging at me, telling me that something’s wrong. I can’t quite put my finger on it, though, at least not until Eli rolls over and puts an arm around my waist. His face is close to mine now, and I can hear him snoring softly in my ear.

And that’s when it hits me. Eli. In Bed. With Me. His hand shifts, tries to scoot up my stomach to my chest, and I grab his thumb, bend it back.

He howls and yanks his hand back to his side of the bed, but I’m already up, poking at him. “What are you doing? It’s only six thirty! You’re supposed to be awake!”

“What are you talking about?” He shoves his shaggy blond hair out of his eyes, then stretches.

“It’s your turn to take the watch!” I shout at him, and Theo stirs in the other bed, mumbles a protest.

“It’s fine.” Eli sounds irritated now as he reaches for the covers, pulls them up to his chest.

“But you promised! It’s your turn,” I repeat. I’m talking to myself. Eli’s already asleep.

“Damn it!” I’m furious as I storm over to the window to check the van. It’s bad enough that he shirked his duty, but now where am I supposed to sleep? There’s no way I’m crawling back into bed with him when he’s half-naked, and I’m not getting into bed with Theo, either. No way.

I glance down at the parking lot, then do a double take. Rub my eyes. Am I remembering something wrong? Is the van parked in a different spot than I think it is? I scan the area, but it’s empty except for a rusty old Camaro.

Panic makes my heart beat double-time as I walk back
over to the bed and shake Eli awake. “Hey, did you move the van?”

“Forget about the stupid car, Pandora. Come back to bed.” He buries his face in a pillow.

“Eli! Listen to me! Did. You. Move. The. Van?”

“What? No.” He’s annoyed, but also a little worried as he rolls over to look at me. “Why?”

“Because it’s gone!”

“Yeah, right, Pandora. I’m not in the mood to be screwed with.”

“Well, then I guess you should have stayed up.” I turn away to wake Theo.

Eli springs out of bed, then storms over to the window. “This better not be a joke, because it isn’t—”

He stops midsentence. Blinks a few times, then rubs his eyes just as I did. Looks again. “It isn’t there.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

I shake Theo awake. It takes a few seconds, as he’s dead to the world, but eventually he opens his eyes. Unlike Eli, he’s alert as soon as he sees the look on my face. “What’s wrong?”

“The car’s gone.”

“What?” He shakes his head, like he can’t quite make sense of what I’m saying.

“The van? You know, the Odyssey? It’s gone. Eli fell asleep and someone stole it.”

Again, there seems to be a time lapse between when I speak and when my words register with Theo. But as soon as they do, he’s out of bed and standing next to Eli, staring
down at the empty parking lot like he’s never seen one before in his life.

“What the hell happened?”

Eli shrugs, looks away. “I fell asleep.”

“You fell asleep?” Theo’s voice is dangerously low now, and I take a step back. I’ve never heard that tone from him before, and it sets every nerve ending in my body on alert.

“Yeah. I screwed up. Sorry.”

Except he doesn’t look very sorry, and I can tell that it’s getting to Theo. I know it’s getting to me. He’s ruined everything and he doesn’t even seem to care. “What are we going to do?”

I’m asking Theo, but he turns to his stepbrother, an annoyed scowl on his face. “Yeah, Eli, what
are
we going to do?”

“Hey, lay off! I didn’t do it on purpose.” He turns away, heads back to bed, and Theo snaps. He shoves him, and Eli stumbles. Hits the bed hard.

He comes up pissed, his hands clenched into fists and an ugly look on his face. “Don’t you fucking touch me!”

“Or what?” Theo demands. “You think you can take me? You can’t even stay awake after six hours of sleep—which was a lot more than Pandora or I got when we did what we were supposed to.”

“Yeah, well, we can’t all be you, Theo. We’re not all early-acceptance Harvard-bound idiots who think we’re better than everyone else. So get over it.”

“Look, I know you’ve taken screwing up to a whole new level, Eli, and I can appreciate that. But I’m not your father and this isn’t your safe little world where nothing ever
touches you. This is the real world, and you didn’t just make a mess of your own chances here. You completely screwed Pandora and me as well.”

“Like I said. Sorry.” Eli’s voice is openly mocking now, and I’m afraid Theo is going to beat the crap out of him.

Determined to keep the peace—or at least not let things turn any more violent than they already have—I say, “Come on, guys. This isn’t helping. We need to figure out what we’re going to do now.”

“Why don’t you ask Theo? He’s the one in charge. Right, bro?” Eli’s voice is downright antagonistic now, all the undercurrents between them rising to the surface.

“I have to be.” Theo mad dogs him, both staring him down and inviting him to start something. “You’re an asshole and a screwup, and I’m sick of it.”

Eli’s hands curl into fists and I step between them. “That’s enough. I mean it. Both of you need to stop.”

“Mind your own business, Pandora.”

Eli starts to brush around me, and I slam a hand into the center of his chest. “I said, that’s enough.”

Eli snorts. He tries to move around me again, but the room is small and he accidentally hits me with his shoulder. Hard.

I stumble, catch myself on the dresser, and the next thing I know Theo has Eli up against the wall. “Don’t fucking touch her.”

“It was an accident, Theo.” I tug at his hand, try to get him to let go, but he’s about as yielding as an 18-wheeler going ninety miles an hour. “He didn’t mean it. It was an accident,” I repeat.

“Yeah. Another accident. They happen around you a lot, don’t they, Eli?”

“Screw you!”

“Is that the best you’ve got? You sound like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum.” He lets Eli go, storms over to his backpack, and pulls out a pair of jeans.

“Where are you going?” I ask, as he drops his athletic shorts. He’s wearing navy-blue boxers that come to the middle of his thighs. I glance away quickly, stare out the window until I hear the zipper on his jeans go up.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Eli demands as Theo shoves his feet into his tennis shoes.

“The same thing I always do when you screw up. I’m going to fix it.” He slams out of the motel room.

I race after him, but he’s walking so fast I have to scramble to keep up. “Wait a minute! Theo! Hold on!”

He ignores me, keeps walking.

I latch on to his elbow, but he shakes me off. “Come on, Theo. Please. Talk to me.”

He turns then, and his eyes are such a deep, dark sapphire that the iris and pupil have blended together. It’s both beautiful and eerie to look at.

“I don’t want to talk right now, Pandora. I’m too busy trying to clean up after your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” The denial is instinctive.

The look he slants at me says he doesn’t believe me—and that he doesn’t care one way or the other. It makes my stomach hurt a little, though I don’t know why. I stumble back a couple of steps and he just watches me, his face shifting into a blank mask.

“Go back inside, Pandora.”

“At least tell me where you’re going,” I say.

“Where do you think I’m going? I need to steal a car.”

“Steal a—can you even do that?”

“You’d better hope so, because otherwise we’re stuck in this ridiculous motel while the world crashes down around us.”

I know he’s right. Even as I’m horrified at the idea of going from book thief to car thief in a little more than twelve hours, I know he’s right.

“Give me a second to get some shoes on. I’ll come with you.”

“I don’t need you to do that.” His voice is icy, harsh, but something flickers in his eyes, something that tells me he doesn’t want to do this alone.

“Yeah, well,
I
need to do it. So just chill out here for a second. I’ll be right back.”

I slip back down the hall and into the room. Eli’s lying on the bed, facing the wall. I don’t say anything as I grab my flip-flops and shove them on my feet. They’re not the best for running, but better than my Docs when the blisters on my feet have barely begun to heal.

“So, you’re taking Theo’s side now?”

I stare at Eli’s back, mouth agape. I can’t believe he even has the nerve to ask, can’t believe he thinks there’s any side
but
Theo’s in this whole thing.

Yes, I’m taking Theo’s side
, I want to yell,
because you’re a self-absorbed idiot.
But that’s not going to get us anywhere except in a bigger mess, so I swallow back the rage that is still burning in my throat at his utter and complete carelessness.

“There aren’t sides here, Eli. We need a car, so we’re going to find one. That’s it. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

He rolls over, gives me a lost-puppy-dog look that I might have fallen for if I wasn’t still so pissed at him. “I’ll go with you guys.”

Yeah, so then Theo could kill both of us? I don’t think so. “We need someone to stay here and watch the stuff we have left.” Although, now that I think about it, leaving Eli with that job—again—might not be the best idea we’ve ever had.

He must see the sudden doubt in my eyes, because he says, “I know I screwed up, Pandora. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

If he had just told Theo that, no bravado, no attitude, the last ten minutes would have gone a lot differently. “Look, I’ve got to go. We’ll talk when Theo and I get back.”

Eli sits up, looks me square in the eyes, and says, “You need to be careful, Pandora. Watch your back. There’s a lot more to Theo than he lets people see.”

I don’t know how to answer him, am not sure what he means. Especially since Theo doesn’t seem like the only one with hidden depths. Finally, I just say, “I’ll be fine and we’ll be back before you know it.”

“Yeah. Right.”

I slip out the door, knowing I’ve been gone more like seven or eight minutes instead of the one I promised Theo. I’m afraid he’s gone without me, especially when he’s not standing by the stairs where I left him. But then I look down at the parking lot and see him. He’s leaning against a light pole, one foot resting on its base, and he looks more like a
really tall model doing a layout for
GQ
than he does a teenager contemplating the best way to steal a car.

For a second, Eli’s warning runs through my mind—that there’s more to Theo than he shows to people. I think of all the different things I see lurking in his eyes sometimes, even when he’s so calm and in control, and decide Eli might be right. I just don’t think it’s a bad thing, at least not the way Eli’s trying to make it out to be.

I take the steps two at a time but pause at the bottom of the staircase. Theo’s watching me as intently as I was just watching him. I wish I could figure out what he sees.

“You ready?” he calls.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Instead of walking farther into Albuquerque, like I thought we would, Theo turns us right when we get to the parking lot, heads out of town. I follow along, even though I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Won’t we have a better shot at finding a car in the city than we will outside of it?

At the same time, Theo seems to know where he’s going, what he’s doing. It makes it hard to do anything but trail along in his wake.

We don’t speak as we walk, but it’s not as awkward as it sounds. Instead, it’s almost companionable, like we’re two friends out for an early-morning stroll instead of two criminal masterminds bent on breaking the law. Although in my case, I think “mastermind” could be replaced with “bumbling moron” to give a truer version of the situation.

“I’m sorry you have to do this,” I tell him.

“I’m sorry I made you open that damn box.” He shrugs. “Sorry doesn’t get the job done.”

“Why are you doing this? You could be at home, safe right now. Why are you here with me?” I ask him the question that’s been burning inside me all along.

The look he gives me is inscrutable, but still I feel like I’m missing something big. Something obvious. “Someone has to do it, Pandora. If I can help, if I can try to fix things, why wouldn’t I?”

Theo’s whole philosophy summed up in less than fifteen words. I can’t help feeling ashamed. I want nothing more than to hide from the mess I made, and Theo is running headlong into it, simply because it’s the right thing to do.

We’re about three miles out of town when we get to what looks like a decent-size ranch. We climb over the gate, and the whole time I’m hoping we don’t get shot. After all, everywhere we go these days it seems that people have guns.

Nobody fires on us though, thank God, and we follow the road that leads up to the house, though we’re careful not to actually walk along it. Not that the desert gives us much protection, but still. We don’t need to paint targets on our chests, either.

When we get closer to the buildings, I realize that the place is pretty run-down. The paint is peeling off the aluminum siding, and more than one window is cracked. But it’s obviously a working ranch of some sort; when we peer into one of the barns, we see five horses in stalls.

They’re nickering softly, moving restlessly, almost like they know what’s going on. Or like they’re waiting for their morning meal. I lean over to tell Theo this and see that he’s
already figured out the same thing. We’ve got a very short window of opportunity here if we’re going to find a car and drive off in it before the ranch owners catch us.

We walk around the barn and past three other buildings before we see four trucks parked between two of the barns. They’re working vehicles—big, well used, and capable of handling anything. Each truck also has a five-gallon can of gas in its bed. We’ve hit the jackpot. I wonder how Theo knew.