I stare at Derby. “Is this your way of being useful?”
His grin drops. “No. My way of being useful is telling you she’s scared, broke, tired, and telling enough truth to be dangerous.”
Amelia goes still.
Derby looks at me, not her. “Could be trouble. Probably is. But she ain’t some planted sweetbutt with a recording device in her bra. She’s a woman with a kid who ran until her wheels gave out.”
“You know that after thirty minutes?”
“I know fear when I see it.”
Something ugly flickers behind his eyes.
There’s more there than he’s ever told me. Derby is a brother. Loyal. Violent. Funny when it suits him. Mean when it doesn’t. He keeps his past like most of us do, buried under miles, ink, and the roar of an engine. I’ve never asked much. Men come to the Kings with names, scars, and lies they eventually grow tired of carrying. We don’t dig unless the dirt starts moving on its own.
Tonight, his dirt shifts.
Amelia looks up at him like she’s seeing the crack too.
He looks away first.
Interesting.
Sophie notices.
Of course she does.
The front door opens, and Wildcat comes in wiping grease off his hands with a shop rag. He’s lean, twitchy, and too damn smart for his own survival. He got the name not just because the mascot, because he looks half-feral when cornered and has a habit of solving technical problems by swearing at them until they surrender.
“Truck’s clean so far,” Wildcat says. “No hardwired tracker. No obvious airtags taped under the wheel wells or inside the cab. I’m still checking boxes and bags. Found a dead phone wrapped in a sweatshirt. Hers?”
Amelia nods. “It has a new number. I turned it off.”
“Turning it off don’t always kill the trail,” Wildcat says.
“I threw my regular phone away outside Richmond. That one is old. I brought it in case I needed to call 911.”
Wildcat glances at me.
That tracks.
“Keep looking,” I say. “Anything with Vale’s name comes to me.”
He nods and disappears back outside.
Amelia watches him leave. “You’re really checking my things?”
“Yes.”
Her jaw sets. “There are private things in there.”
“I expect so.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Not as much as someone finding you because we cared more about your privacy than your safety.”
Her eyes flash. “That sounds exactly like something Jeremy would say.”