Page 63 of Taken for Granite
“Relax. I used the hotel’s wi-fi.”
“No. No, there’s nothing to relax about,” Juniper said, stumbling over her words. This was bad. So, so bad.
“I just told her I was moving and wanted to say goodbye. It seemed like a dick move to just vanish on my bestie,” Chloe said. “Besides, they don’t know Amelia. How could they?”
Juniper ran a hand through her hair in frustration, unable to believe that such a smart kid could make such a dumb move. “They have your phone. They have your contacts. Fuck.”
Chloe’s eyes went big. “Holy shitsnacks. I didn’t think of that.”
“Language,” Juniper said reflexively. “Can wi-fi be traced?”
“It uses an IP address, so yes,” Chloe said.
Tas watched the exchange, saying nothing until that moment. “We gain nothing with panic now. Let us make haste and depart.”
Despite sounding extraordinarily old-fashioned, he had a point. Flapping their hands and pulling their hair wouldn’t help. They needed to put as many miles between them and the motel as possible before the Rose people arrived.
“Let’s go. There’s a general store on the way out of town. We’ll stock up on supplies there,” Juniper said. They’d reach Tungsten by nightfall—fingers crossed—but it was a ghost town. She didn’t expect to find a roadside Travelodge but hoped that at least one of the empty buildings could provide shelter for the night.
Tas stayed on alert. Even though he was in his human form, he did not wear a shirt and gave no indication that the chill in the morning air affected him. No one commented on the shirtless man on an autumn day in the Yukon.
Chloe sat in the backseat of the SUV. She had her nose buried in a paperback historical romance they picked up that morning, but the pages didn’t turn.
“I’m not upset,” Juniper said. She hated seeing her sister sulk. They made it out of Watson Lake without a shadowy organization showing up to capture her boyfriend, so yeah. Gold stars all around.
“You are. I can tell. I fucked up,” Chloe said.
“I’m not, not really, and we all make little mistakes.”
Chloe snorted. She looked at Juniper and grinned. Juniper tried her best to keep a straight face, but her sister’s silent laughter made her snort. Soon they were both giggling like mad.
Tas looked between the sisters. “I do not understand what is funny.”
“Little. Mistakes,” Chloe gasped.
“I never said I was perfect,” Juniper said.
“Remember when you forgot I was allergic to penicillin?”
“It was just a rash.”
“You’re allergic to penicillin too. How could you forget? I could have died, Junie. Anaphylactic shock.”
“Honestly, I don’t think Mom ever told me I was allergic. It’s something I sort of figured out later,” Juniper said. Antibiotics had always given her a stomach ache and hives, which she assumed was part of being sick.
“Or that time it snowed, and you forgot to check if the schools were closed and made me go to school?”
“It was only a few inches!”
Chloe snorted. “That’s what she said.”
“You are way too young to laugh about that, missy,” Juniper said, alarmed at the potential dick joke.
“Or how about the time you borrowed way too much money from Mickey? And then you had to steal a gargoyle and then we had to flee the country? Yeah, good times.”
Smartass.
“That one is my favorite mistake,” Tas said. He leaned over and planted a kiss on Juniper’s cheek.
