Locke glanced at the screen, a deeper frown cinching his brows. Decoy never called anyone without good reason. “What is it?”
“Folk has Willow on the line.” Decoy’s steady calm flooded the car. “She’s still driving and Nicky’s holding the phone. Folk’s patching it through to Mateo.”
Mateo duly returned his phone to me. For long seconds, nothing happened. Then Mateo’s phone buzzed with a call and it was Willow’s young voice that broke the tense quiet.
“Dad? Don’t shout at me, okay? I’mdriving.”
Locke tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “When, in your whole damn life, have I ever fuckin’ shouted at you?”
“Just because it’s not loud doesn’t mean it’s not shouting.”
“Wills, don’ttechnicalityme. You’re in deep shit.”
“I’m eighteen?—”
“I don’t give a fuck!” Locke thundered, his tone low enough to keep his promise but with enough force to validate Willow’s theory. “Youlied to me. You told me you were going to Maddie’s tonight for band practice, then straight home. Then your mum blows up my phone telling me you’ve taken Nicky from school and fucked off up the motorway in your car. What am I supposed to do with that?”
“How does Mum know I’m on the motorway?”
Locke laughed like Alexei had taken over his soul, low and without humour. “You don’t get to know that. Not until you’re off the road. Now listen to me while I tell you exactly what you’re going to do.”
He read her the riot act, directing her to the service station I showed him on the phone screen tracking her progress. “Nash and Cam might catch up with you first. Do whatever they tell you and wait in the car park until I get there.”
“But—”
“No. You don’t have the driving experience to argue with me right now, and you have your brother in the car with you. Do you have any idea how worried your mum is?”
“Mum’s always worried,” Willow snapped. “If she had her way, I’d live in the attic box room for the rest of my life.”
“That’s not fair.” Locke changed lanes, spying the exit up ahead that would take us from the motorway to the A-road. “And even if it was, do you think this bullshit behaviour is going to change her mind? Christ, Wills. Your mum thought I was an idiot for buying you that car in the first place. Help me out here. Why the fuck have you done this?”
“I wanted to see Uncle Logan. I miss him.”
“I miss him too. And I’m sorry I haven’t taken you to see him in a while, but that was all about to change. If you’d talked to me about it, I’d have told you that.”
“Howam I supposed to talk to you?” Willow shouted. “You’re so weird at the moment. Like—like something’s really hurt you, but you won’t tell me what, and I thought if I could just tell Uncle Logan that you needed him, everything would be okay.”
Her voice shattered, emotion getting the better of her, and I felt her frustration like it was my own. How many times had I looked at my dad, at Cam, atNash, and known something terrible had happened, but our lives were too unbalanced and buried for me to ever understand? Tohelp? To be everything for them that they’d always been for me?
Locke didn’t speak.
He couldn’t, too choked by the hurt in Willow’s words, by the soft hitch of her breath.
I stepped in. “Nicky, honey? Are you there?”
The phone line crackled, then the long-suffering deeper tones of a teenaged boy reached us. “I’m here. Willow’s driving. I only answered the phone because it was Folk.”
“Good choice,” I agreed. “And I’m going to hang up now, but you need to go to that service station, okay? Get off the road before your poor parents have a collective heart attack.”
“Okay.”
The call ended. I dropped Mateo’s phone on the console and studied the burner tracking the Fiat. “They’re five miles out from the service station.”
Locke stared ahead, his gaze somehow distant and embedded on the road. “Where’s Nash?”
I relayed the question to Cam, wondering how much he’d heard in the last few minutes. Or if he’d tuned us out to concentrate on the road as the rain grew ever heavier.
“We’re a couple of miles behind.” He spoke over the road noise. “At least I am. Nash is ahead of me—motherfucker, slow down!”