Lennox became bolder and shot up from the ground, speeding toward the towering structures ahead of her. Up high was where she wanted to go; she loved the view from above. Settled on the tallest rock, Lennox dangled her legs. It was intoxicating, being high up, the height sucking at her body. Slowly she leaned back, rolled onto a handstand and walked to the edge. She held the position for as long as she could and let herself fall. The drop was exhilarating, and she let out a whoop as she turned and spiralled up, up. It was not like her to act out of bounds, but these visits to the desert were her rebellion against her own and others’ boundaries. Ah, it was wonderful not to be doing what was expected of her, but taking a thrilling chance that somebody might be out in the middle of the night to see, to notice, to expose. After some time, she tired herself out and sat down on the edge, watching and thinking.

When Lennox, Max and Alex returned to the apartment, their parents disappeared into the bedroom to talk. Max and Lennox played cards for a while, before Lennox tired of it and sulked and felt sorry for herself. Alex was in her bed, reading and doing a crossword, and Max gave Lennox an exaggerated birthday kiss on the cheek before he went off to do whatever. Lennox was sitting at the table fiddling with the cards when the door to the bedroom opened and Jo walked out. Lennox widened her eyes at seeing her mom putting her weight on her injured leg—What?—but before she could say anything about it, Jo leaned on the crutches again and limped across the floor. She hadn’t noticed Lennox watching her, and Lennox said nothing. Later, Lennox thought about it, wondering, but right then she forgot about it when Jo and Ruben told their kids about the trip.

He leaned closer to her: “Just follow my lead, ok? There’s somebody following us, and we’re gonna lose him. Stay cool.” He was speaking in almost a sing-song, trying to seem like they were having a normal conversation, but Alex could see the tension in his body. He was tapping his foot and gripping the pole hard, his knuckles white. She nodded, and Lennox let out a puff of breath in relief, Alex being agreeable was a stroke of good luck. Max rolled his shoulders and prepared to get off the train, Lennox and Alex by his side. 

“Be prepared to move fast when I tell you to, and not before.” He tilted his head back, pointing his chin toward the train doors. 

The car came to a stop at the station, the doors opened, and people filed out. It wasn’t until people had started boarding the train and Lennox felt like she was going to burst from the tension, that he hissed: 

“Go!”

“Ok, so we go out the window.” Max looked down. “I hope you two break my fall, I’d like to keep my extremities intact, as well as this.” He pointed to his head. 

Lennox and Alex looked at each other. They hoped so, too. They’d never tried lifting anything as heavy as a person while flying, but thought that it might be possible to hold Max between them and lower him to the ground, slow-ish.

“Ready?” Alex sat on the windowsill, looking back at Max, who was having serious second and third thoughts. Lennox was about to follow Alex, but looked a question at Max. 

“Yeah, whatever. Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.” He tried to sound brave. 

A last look around, and they were hovering out the window, waving at Max to hurry, hurry! Then they were dropping, a little too fast for comfort. Holding Max was more difficult than they had thought, and all three of them landed in a heap on the concrete. 

“Ow, ow, ow.” Max was rubbing his butt, and Alex clutched her elbow. “That went well. I’m never doing that again. You two do the piloting and I’ll stick to marshalling.” 

Max was even more nervous than Lennox, and kept commenting on cars and people and lights and that everything was the wrong way around, until Lennox told him he would lose his tongue if he didn’t shut up.

The babble in the car made Lennox drift toward the other lane, and she jerked back the wheel to honks from other drivers and shoppers glancing their way. Max shut up. Alex had her eyes on the cab in front of them and didn’t look nervous at all.

Max watched the two girls in the front seat and tried to calm down. They were crazy, all of them, but at least they were in pursuit! of somebody in a cab. If he hadn’t been so scared, he would have laughed, but all the cars on the wrong side of the road completely weirded him out. He looked out the front windshield and tried to keep his mouth shut. 

They were occupied with looking at the screen, and didn’t notice the motorcycle until it stopped at the opening gate. Alex leaned forward in her seat, and as the man removed his helmet, she grabbed Lennox’ hand and squeezed so hard that Lennox yelped.

“Ow, ow!” Lennox tried to pull her hand out of Alex’. “You’re hurting me, let go!”

Alex dropped Lennox’ hand and they stared at the man getting off the motorcycle. He was wearing leather pants and a leather jacket, and smoothed down his short hair as he headed to the door. It was the third man from New York, who’d first followed them on the subway. He obviously knew the place well, because he opened the door and went in without waiting for anybody to answer his knock. 

Lennox took Alex’ hand. “Are you ok? Your hand is ice cold.”

Alex shook her head: “Yeah, just jumpy, I guess. You saw who that was, right?”

Max crept slowly between the trees, the house to his right, keeping an eye out for anything that could tell them what was going on. There was nothing. Voices were coming from somewhere, and a far-off burst of laughter almost made him wet his pants. The house was enormous, and it looked like it hadn’t been taken care of, like the forest. Light from a window was shining onto a tarp covering building materials, so perhaps somebody was renovating. It was a good idea, because paint was peel—

Movement from a third-floor window cut his thoughts off. Light was spilling out of several windows, and there was a figure standing close to the glass at one of them. There were crude bars on the window, which was strange, because none of the other windows he could see had bars, but that was not what had stopped Max’ breath.

Looking out into the night was Ruben.