“Jesus.” He wiped a hand over his face.

“Or a Tesla.”

“Get the fuck out. You’re walking home.”

She laughed once, low in her throat, and the sound made him feel dizzy and powerful and accomplished. She was safe in his car, making jokes. Not on high alert as she’d been earlier. She was letting him take care of her.

He just needed to stop noticing how close she was.

“Here.” He handed her his phone. “Put your address in.”

“It’s locked. I’ll need your password.”

He turned to tell her and forgot to speak. Her haircut, he realized, was more elaborate than he’d originally thought. It was cropped close to the skull for a couple of inches around her left ear. Pretty. He’d have to ask Minami what the style was called.

“Are you embarrassed because it’s a string of sixty-nines?”

His mind took a brusque, inappropriate, sexual turn. Unavoidable, too. He’d been on the edge of it for a while, and it was getting harder to leash it back. “Two seven one eight two eight.”

“Your password is Euler’s number?”

They exchanged a surprised, plane-tilting look. Like they were only just now meeting.

“Are you a scientist?” she asked, suddenly curious, and it was the first time he could perceive this kind of interest in him on her part. She’d asked to use his body and volunteered hers in exchange, she’d gone through his documents with the efficiency of a DMV clerk, but she had not considered him beyond the here and now.

Until this moment.

“If I say yes, will you take it as proof that I’m the Unabomber?”

She smiled. A little wider than before.

“I’m not a scientist,” he admitted, loath to disappoint her. But it was the honest, if painful, answer. “I just studied science for a bit.”

“A minor in college?”

“Something like that.” No point in bringing up the rest.

“What do you do, then?”

“Boring money stuff.”

“I see.” She didn’t seem disappointed. She was still looking at him, searching. It was intoxicating, having her eyes on him. Her attention felt more precious than gold, stocks, market crash predictions.

“Are you a scientist?”

She nodded.

“What kind?”

“Engineer.” He pulled out of the lot, then turned to her when the soft weight of her hand settled on his forearm, a sudden shock of warmth in the blow of the AC.

Fuck. Just—fuck.

“Thank you,” she said simply. She sounded serious, as usual. Sincere.

“For not being a Tesla owner?”

She shook her head. “For being kind.”

He wasn’t kind. No one kind would wake up tomorrow and do what Eli was going to, relishing every moment of it. But it felt nice to have her think so.

“And for caring, I guess.”

There was something lost in her tone. Something that made Eli’s voice rough as he told her, “You should call the authorities, tell them what happened tonight. Take out a restraining order.”

She closed her eyes, leaning back against the headrest—a sign of deep trust if he’d ever seen one. Eli studied her slender throat, imagined burying his face in it, then reminded himself that he was about to merge into traffic.

Eyes. On. The. Road.

“It’s for your safety,” he added.

“It’s complicated.”

“I don’t doubt it. But even if you two have kids together, or you’re married, it doesn’t change that he could be very dangerous—”

“He’s my brother,” she said.

Eli winced. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” She turned toward the passing streetlights. “Shit.”

The resemblance was there, now that he knew to look for it. The height. The near-black hair. The eye color was different, but not the shape. “Shit,” he repeated.

“He’s not always like this. But when he drinks . . . well. You saw.”

“I did.”

“I don’t think he would actually hurt me.”

“You don’t think? Not good enough.”

“No.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “My . . . our father, our estranged father, died a few months ago. He left us a small cabin in Indiana, of all places—we didn’t even know he lived there. We disagree on what to do with it.” Her head rolled toward Eli. They were all alone, and it was disarming, how at ease she seemed. “Are you bored yet?”

“No.”

Her smile was dim. “It’s not easy to say no to someone who shares fifty percent of your genes.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

He nodded once.

“Brother?”

“Sister. No public harassment, but she’s always found highly creative ways to drive me nuts.”

“Such as?”

Eli thought about teenage Maya, screaming at him that he was ruining her life and she wished he’d been the one to die. Grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and soaking the cotton after being stood up for homecoming. Poking her nose through his things because she was “looking for batteries,” then following him around the kitchen to criticize his choice of condoms and lube. Bitching at him on the phone that he always left her alone, that he might as well have let her go into foster care—and then lashing out whenever he’d tried to spend time with her. “Siblings can be hard.”

“I’m sure Vincent would agree.”

“I’m not sure Vincent has any right to agree.”

She was silent for a long beat. But when Eli thought that was the end of the conversation, she said dully, “One day, when we were still kids, he was late coming home from a friend’s place. I waited for him, worried out of my mind, for one, two, three hours. Wondered if he’d been run over, or something. Eventually he did return home, but instead of being relieved, when I saw him in the entryway, I thought, ‘My life would be so much easier if he’d just disappeared.’”

He turned to meet her eyes. Found a bemused expression in them, as though she’d surprised herself by divulging something that was clearly a source of deep shame. And he surprised himself by saying, “When my sister was born, my parents kept saying how perfect she was, and I was so resentful, I refused to even look at her for weeks.”

There were no platitudes, no raised eyebrows, no attempts to soften what he’d just said. She just studied him with the same lack of judgment he’d reserved for her, as though he hadn’t just shared the most fucked up of stories, until he glanced away. He didn’t even know her name, and he’d spilled about something he’d never acknowledged before, not even to his closest friends.

Probably because he didn’t know her name.

“How do you think your brother found out your address?” he asked, mostly to shut down whatever that exchange had been. An anomaly. Had to be.

“Online?”

“Well, fuck.” He turned right, heading for North Austin—the same road he’d take tomorrow morning. He was going to drive it thinking about her instead of the day ahead, he just knew it. This girl, she was going to stick around, even if only in his head.

“Right. Fuck.” She did it again—leaned back against the seat, closed her eyes—and this time he took advantage and let his gaze roam over her. Her long, long legs. Her full chest. The beautiful, rounded curve of her ear. There was something jagged, sharpedged about her personality, but her body was soft. His type, really, if he even had one.

If it hadn’t been for her brother, he could have known for sure. What a fucking pity.

“How old are you?” he asked to distract himself.

“Six years, two months, and five days younger than you,” she said without missing a beat.

“Nice. Did you also memorize my social security number?”

“You should invest in some identity theft protection before you find out.”

“I will, if you take out a restraining order against your brother.” There he was again. Glaringly overstepping. “If you believe he won’t hurt you to get what he wants, you are too trusting.”

“I think you are too trusting.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Has it occurred to you that I could be the serial killer? Right here, in your car.”