Slayers: Friends and Traitors by C. J. Hill

enough to leave home herself? What would their father tell her about him? Had he already ripped Dirk out of all the family pictures?
    Dirk didn’t let himself think about it. He’d already made his decision at camp. Now he just had to carry through.
    From the bank, he went to a store and bought a few things he’d need for a road trip. Then he dropped off a letter to Tori at a post office. He didn’t know her address, but her father’s senate office address was easy enough to find. She’d get the letter. Picking up his car was trickier. Dirk was half afraid his BMW either wouldn’t be where he’d left it or that his father would be sitting in the front seat, waiting for him. Dirk hadn’t told his father where he parked, but there were only so many long-term parking places in the D.C. area. It wouldn’t have been hard for his father to check them.
    It might have been better for Dirk to walk away from the car. He didn’t want to do that, though. Driving was the easiest way to get to California unnoticed, and he could sell the Beemer once he got there. The money would see him through until next summer.
    Dr. B had taught all the Slayers how to do surveillance work. Dirk never thought he would use it to stake out his own car. His first task was to look around the perimeter of the building at possible places other people might be doing surveillance: the roofs of nearby buildings or suspicious maintenance vans on the street. Homeless people who sat near the building’s entrance were also suspect. When Dirk didn’t find anything suspicious, he walked a few streets over, found a homeless guy who looked moderately sober, and paid him twenty dollars to walk inside the parking garage and see if any of the cars near his had people waiting in them.
    When that checked out clear, too, Dirk finally went in. His BMW was just where he left it. Still locked, nothing moved. He was almost disappointed. Maybe his father didn’t want to find him. Maybe his father didn’t care that Dirk wasn’t coming back.
    No, that wasn’t it. His father was so positive that Dirk would return home, apologetic and contrite, that he hadn’t bothered to track down his BMW.
    Dirk was tempted to turn on his phone and check his messages, but he didn’t. He knew he would have to listen to message after message of his father screaming at him, and besides, cell phones could be tracked. Better to leave it turned off until he decided what to do with it.
    With one last measure of precaution, Dirk took out a flashlight and checked the underside of the car for a tracking device. He didn’t see any. He got in the car and drove away.
    By the time Dirk made it onto the beltway, it was six o’clock. The highway was jammed with commuters going home. He’d heard the only place where the traffic was worse than D.C. was L.A. He made a note to avoid that part of California. He would go to a university town somewhere. He’d fit in there. No one would notice one more teenage boy around. No one would question why he was there. No one would care.
    An image of Bridget flashed through Dirk’s mind. She would care that he wasn’t coming home. Every year when he returned from camp, she had a stack of pictures she’d drawn for him. Usually pictures of him at camp. She thought he stood around playing a lot of volleyball in flowery fields. Bunnies often hung around watching him.
    Leaving like this was so painful, and yet he didn’t see another way. A clean break, that’s what he needed. A new life.
    By nine o’clock he’d made it to Staunton. Even though it was dark and he was tired, he had no plans to stop. He needed to put as much space between him and Virginia as he could.
    Dirk’s first hint that something was wrong came in a flash of dragon vision. He was so good at minimizing his dragon sight, at pushing it away so it didn’t distract him, he didn’t sense the dragon until she was nearly on top of him. Kihawahine was gliding high above the road, coming toward