“Hey! You’re headed to Bixby!” The knife flashed in the corner of Rex’s eye—he smelled steel inches from his face.

“Oh, crap.” He swallowed, finding it easy to sound scared. “Just headed home by reflex. Sorry.”

He heard a growl rise in her throat, but no burning blade of steel pierced his ribs just yet.

“Listen,” he said. “There aren’t any exits before Bixby except the access road. We can follow it through Saddleback.”

“Don’t try to mess with me, Rex. That’s inside the contortion!”

“Yeah, but we can go straight through to the other side of the county. You’ll be in and out of the blue time inside ten minutes.”

“Dammit, Rex…” She looked at her watch.

“Maybe the Grayfoots will be afraid to follow us in!”

Angie’s voice suddenly grew very calm. “Okay, keep driving. It’s before eleven-thirty, so you can get me out by midnight. But if you stop anywhere in this county, Rex, I swear I’ll kill you.”

“Hey, don’t threaten the driver. I won’t stop, okay?”

Unless of course, I happen to run out of gas.

There was movement in his peripheral vision, and the glimmer of the knife disappeared. “All right, then,” she said.

Rex breathed a sigh of relief. Things were going more or less according to plan. Jonathan and Dess might have shown up a bit too early, but at least Angie hadn’t stabbed him yet.

“They’re catching up,” she announced.

He looked in the rearview. Idiots. They weren’t supposed to overtake them or force Rex to drive over seventy-five, which would draw cops like flies.

Couldn’t Jonathan and Dess do anything right?

“Like I said, the Grayfoots probably won’t follow us into Bixby. Right?”

“If they know I’m meeting with one of you midnighters, they might make an exception.”

“But maybe not.” Rex pushed the accelerator a bit farther down, trying to make it look convincing. The old Ford’s engine began to make a grinding sound, and Rex hoped he wasn’t screwing up Dess’s calculations too much.

Of course, the most worrying question was whether Angie would go crazy when his car ran out of gas right smack in the center of the emptiest, least traveled part of the county.

Rex swore under his breath. It would have been better if Dess and Jonathan had shown up ten minutes later. As it was, Angie would have too much time before midnight to wonder if this had all been arranged. Or she might get lucky and have a passing car pick her up.

Still looking backward, she swore. “There’s two of them now.”

“Huh? Two of what?”

“Two cars following us, you pinhead.”

“How could there…? Oh, crap!” he shouted. It had to be the police. “Does one of them have a flashing light on top?”

“No, they’re both black Mercedes. Standard Grayfoot issue.”

“Mercedes…?”

A few seconds later Rex let out a strangled little laugh of pure amazement. On the other side of the highway, headed into Broken Arrow right on schedule, was Jonathan’s father’s car, complete with him and Dess in the front seat, their expressions of surprise briefly visible as they flashed by.

“Oops,” Rex said softly.

“What?”

“You actually let the Grayfoots follow you!”

“I thought we already covered that,” Angie said. “They’re closing in! Doesn’t this thing go any faster?”

“I guess it does,” said Rex, and pushed the pedal to the floor.

He looked down at the gas gauge, which hovered just above E.

But not for much longer.

14

11:27 P.M.

CHANGE OF PLAN

“So, Flyboy—clue me in here. Was that Rex we just saw speeding down the other lane?”

Jonathan’s eyes swept the highway frantically. Now that the shock was wearing off, he’d realized they needed to turn around. Fast. “Yep.”

“And that was Angie sitting next to him?”

“I don’t think it was his mom.”

“And—now this was the confusing part—there was this big black car chasing them, right? Like we were supposed to be doing? I mean, this isn’t one of those time travel things where we just saw ourselves in the future, is it?”

“Not unless ten minutes in the future we’ve got a pair of Mercedes between us.”

“There were two of them?”

“That’s what I saw.” Although at this point Jonathan wasn’t completely sure what he’d seen.

Then he spotted a familiar exit, a mile up. He could pull off here and head back west without getting completely tangled in downtown Broken Arrow’s web of warehouses and alleys.

Dess tapped her fingers on her window for a few seconds. “So that means Rex’s plan isn’t going very well, is it?”

“Nope. Hold on.” Without slowing at all, Jonathan brought the car off the highway. Dess crushed against his shoulder as she leaned into the turn.

“Seat belt?” he suggested. He heard the slithering sound of vinyl as Dess scrambled to secure herself, then the click of a metal clasp.

He found himself glad that Melissa and Jess were still back in Bixby. Rex hadn’t wanted them all inside Broken Arrow together in case this whole thing was some kind of Grayfoot trap.

Frankly, Jonathan had never thought much of the plan. It was pretty complicated, which always meant there were lots of things that could go wrong. Being involved in Rex’s schemes had taught Jonathan that someone was always late (usually Jessica) or didn’t pass along the message (usually Beth) or simply didn’t do what they were supposed to do because they didn’t feel like it (typically Melissa). And even if all the midnighters decided to play their parts, there were always cops, or parents, or teachers to screw things up.

Of course, even with all his doubts, Jonathan hadn’t actually thought of this particular possibility.

“So wait,” Dess said as they zoomed through the dark underbelly of a cluster of overpasses, huge concrete columns flashing past on either side. “The Grayfoots really did know that Angie was meeting with Rex?”

“Yeah. They must have been following her or something.”

“Stupid cow.”

“That’s usually the problem with brilliant plans: not-so-brilliant people.”

Dess shook her head as they climbed onto an entrance ramp and shot back up onto Highway 75. “Wow. So this afternoon, when Rex made us siphon most of the gas out of Melissa’s tank? That was kind of a waste of two hours.”

“My guess is that Rex feels the same way,” Jonathan said. “When’s he supposed to run out?”

“At exactly eleven forty-seven and… oh, wait. We’re ahead of schedule here, aren’t we?”

“About ten minutes.”

She looked at Geostationary. “Well, they were supposed to come to a stop right when they got to the middle of Saddleback. Of course, Rex looked like he was driving a little faster than we figured, which is less fuel efficient, especially in an old beater like Melissa’s car. So…”

“Pretty soon, right?”

“Yeah. About eleven-forty. Unless those guys in the Mercs have guns and shoot out their tires or something.”

“Oh, right. Good point.” Jonathan realized that he had been going a bit slower than maximum, not wanting to send Dess through the windshield if an eclipse sneaked up on them. But the more he thought about it, the worse trouble he figured Rex was in. He pressed the accelerator down harder.

“So, Dess, if you see any blue sweeping across the sky, you know what to do, right?”

“Grab your hand. No problem.”

Jonathan nodded. If he was sharing his midnight gravity with someone, they probably wouldn’t carry their momentum into the blue time. Two weeks before in the desert, Jessica and Dess had been whacked against their seat belts when his car had frozen and Melissa almost killed when she’d been, but nothing had happened to Jonathan.

Of course, no one had been crazy enough to test this hand-holding theory yet.