Free Wild Sky 2 by Suzanne Brockmann, Melanie Brockmann Page B

to the hospital,” Cal suggested to Dana, even as he motored to follow Milo and Garrett, “and claim Amnesia Guy is my… Well, brother won’t work. He had something of a white supremacist vibe, but—”
    “Don’t even think about it.” She cut him off.
    “It’s one way to find out fast if he’s lying,” Cal noted. “About the amnesia.”
    “And if he is lying, and I’m sure he is,” Dana argued, “then you’ll have just given him another clue to help him track Hoshitski over here.” She gestured to me with her head.
    I held the door for Calvin, and after he went through, I stopped Dana with a hand on her arm and said, “For the record, you didn’t have to use blackmail. Saying please and asking for my help would’ve been enough. I know how badly you want to find Lacey. I really do—”
    “Yeah, see, with blackmail?” Dana extracted herself from my grasp. “We don’t have to have this conversation. I want to find her. Fast. I don’t have time to cry about it.”
    And with that, she walked away, taking her flashlight with her. I had to hurry to keep up and not be left in the dark.

Chapter Six
    After dropping off a very quiet and subdued Garrett at the CoffeeBoy, where his car was still parked, Milo and I asked Cal for a ride to the public beach.
    Coconut Key Beach had become the unofficial spot to meet for Milo-and-me time. And, considering the day we’d had so far, I really needed some quality Milo minutes.
    I knew Cal had a physical therapy appointment that afternoon—PT was a three times a week deal for him, and it would be for the rest of his life. He’d recently started lifting weights to keep his upper body healthy and strong, and it was starting to show. He’d always been wiry and strong, but now his shoulders were filling out.
    “Keep your phones on,” Cal warned us both as he pulled into the vacant beach parking lot. “Both your burner and your mom-phone.”
    “I will,” I said. Because my overprotective mother sometimes tracked me via my cell phone, I’d gotten a burner like Dana’s and Milo’s. I’d become a pro at juggling them.
    “And keep your eyes open,” Calvin added.
    “You, too,” I said.
    “Yeah, well, I’m driving, not…” He made embarrassingly loud smoochy noises.
    Milo laughed as I slammed the car door closed. “Good-bye, Calvin.”
    But Cal rolled down the window. “How worried should we be?” he asked. “About Garrett knowing what he knows?”
    “I believe him,” I said. “You know, when he says that he wants to find Jilly, that he’s worried about her…? He really cares about her—which is weird, I know, but he’s not going to mess that up.”
    “I feel that he took me very seriously,” Milo added.
    “So…we trust him,” Cal said.
    “We kind of have to,” I said.
    “Hell just froze over. Would you rather team up with Garrett McDouche or suck the toes of a swastika-wearing neo-Nazi with a Hitler mustache and an aversion to soap and water?” He didn’t wait for us to respond—he answered it himself. “A few hours ago, I probably would’ve at least considered the nasty toes thing.” Cal pushed the button to send his window back up. “Eyes open,” he said again before it closed and he pulled away.
    “Ew,” I said, watching as he drove out of the deserted beach parking lot. No one else was here. It was too cold. “That’s one powerful hatred of Garrett McDouche.”
    “It is.” Milo was laughing, and as I met his eyes, I knew what he was thinking, even before I touched him. I had kind of weird, skinny feet, but he claimed that he loved my toes. Elegant , he’d called them once, right before he’d kissed them. In fact, that same day he’d kissed me in a lot of unusual and interesting places. And I knew as he stood there smiling at me, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the ocean breeze, that he was thinking about that, too.
    We were alone at last, so I reached for Milo and he extracted a hand to intertwine his