My mouth went dry. I sat still in that booth, feeling my heart slow. I was being led down a path, and I didn’t like where he was taking me. “What are you saying, Snark?” My voice had grown hoarse.
“They’re going to blame everything on you.”
One second.
Two.
There is no way.
Three.
I couldn’t think.
Four.
Did he really say that?
And five—
I jerked forward. “How?”
He looked around and hushed me. “Settle down. You need the least amount of attention as possible right now.” He stopped talking and leaned even closer. “Good. You have colored contacts?”
“What?” My mind was racing. “Yes. Why?”
“Does your school know your real eye color?”
“No. I used the fake birth certificate you gave me. I have brown eyes on there.”
“Good. Good.” He nodded in approval. “You’re doing all the right things. What are your eating habits?”
“My eating habits?”
“They can track you like that. You have to be a completely new person.”
“Who’s tracking me?”
“Who do you think?” His eyes narrowed.
A waitress came at that moment with food and coffee. Two glasses of water were poured next, and she waited a second to ask, “Anything else?”
Snark looked around, poking at his toast. “Jelly?”
She gestured to the window. A whole tray of jelly and jam was there, pushed up against the window frame beside us.
“Ah, gotcha.” Snark grinned at her. “Thank you. I think we’re good.”
She glanced to me, but he said for me, “She’s not a breakfast eater. She’s good to go.”
I glared at him as she left. “I am too a breakfast eater.”
His eyebrow went up as he reached for the creamer for his coffee. “That’s new, too?”
“No. That just happened like normal. I have early classes.”
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed and then shrugged. “I thought maybe you were really selling all the new changes. Really dedicated, ya know?” He winked at me as he stuffed a forkful of eggs into his mouth. Eating around it, he said, “I was coming to warn you. Kian has definitely made it known that he wants to see you. He wants to talk to you.”
My mouth went back to being dry. It was the damn Sahara Desert in there now. “And if he finds me?”
He took a big bite of his toast, ripping it off, and he pointed the end at me. “Don’t tell him anything. You remember what I’ve always told you. Don’t trust anyone. Got it?”
“Even you?”
He grunted. “That’s probably a good idea, too.”
I sighed. Right before I went into hiding, I asked Snark for advice. That was Snark’s last words to me. Don’t trust anyone. It wasn’t hard to follow his advice, but it wasn’t funny when he said I couldn’t trust him. I had to trust someone. Right? An old emotion was starting to settle on my shoulders again. I didn’t want it there, but I knew once it got there, it wasn’t going away.
Hopelessness.
“If he shows up…” He swallowed his food, jerking his head up and down. He took a sip of his water next before clearing his throat. “And we have to face the fact that he’ll probably find you.”
“But you just said—”
“I know what I said, but his family are some rich bastards. Powerful, too. They’ve got the means to find you. Hell, they might’ve even tracked me here. I could’ve led them right to you, for all I know, but I’m telling you…” He stuffed the rest of his toast into his mouth and went right back to pointing at me. “If that happens, if he shows up, you don’t say a word to him. I don’t want you to incriminate yourself. You got that?”
“Incriminate myself?” I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even remember what day it was. “How could I do that? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know that, they know that, but you don’t know what his lawyers are thinking. Trust me, Jo—”
He was going to say my name.
I pounded on the table in my rush. “Joslyn.”
“What?”
“Joslyn. That’s my name.”
“I know.” He frowned at me, swallowing the rest of his food. “You go by Jo, right?”
“Oh.”
His eyebrow lifted. “You’re strung tight.” A look of approval flashed in his eyes. “That’s good. You might get through this without too much damage then.”
The way he’d said that was like I was preparing for battle.
“What?”
I lifted my head. “Huh?”
“You made some sound. What’s wrong with you?”
“Just…this.” I waved at the table, gesturing to my eyes and then to the coffee in front of me. “I got free of Edmund, but I’m still hiding. I’m starting to think I’ll always be hiding.”
“Probably.”
I was scared. Right then, I was really and truly scared. I didn’t want to hide for the rest of my life. I didn’t mind my life as Joslyn, but hiding and always looking over my shoulder? I didn’t want to do that. And for what? Why? Was Kian really that much of a threat?
“Yes.” Snark’s hand fell to the table.
I had said that last thought out loud, but I didn’t take it back. I couldn’t. I was really thinking that. What danger was I really in?