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approach. “You’re helping me out here, and I do appreciate it, but I need to make the rules.”
    He shrugged his arms open. “You know how I feel about rules.”
    “Seriously, Aidan.”
    “I’m being serious. I’m also trying to be responsible, for once. We’re in this together now.”
    Together. Before I could say anything else, before I could make him repeat the promise, I was caught in his arms, pressed against him. I could feel the muscles of his chest, the wiry strength of his shoulders. I felt the urgency of the moment coursing through me, and underneath that, his warmth.
    I did feel safe, almost. And I also felt the sheer thrill of being so close to him. Aidan. Aidan. Aidan. I doodled his name on the notebook of my mind.
    We unfolded ourselves from the hug. He kissed me softly on the mouth. It was different from before, somehow. Quieter. More nourishing, maybe. But just as good.
    I went back into the house to get my bag. Aidan said he was going to wait outside and text home to say he’d be late. I ran my hands through my hair and splashed some cold water on my face. Then I grabbed a can of pepper spray my mom had bought me at the hardware store.
    “We’re single ladies,” she’d said at the time. “We need to watch out for ourselves.”
    Outside, Aidan was waiting for me in the driver’s seat of his Mercedes—I could make out the dark shape of his profile from a distance, his head bowed over his phone. I shut the door to my house, locked it, and headed down the path to the driveway. As I walked, the cool metal ofthe pepper-spray canister shook in my jeans pocket. My mom had always wanted me to be prepared for dangerous situations, but somehow I wasn’t sure if what was happening right now was the kind of thing she’d had in mind.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
    THREE
    I WAS RIGHT—THE WeStore facility was in a forgotten corner of Scottsdale, a good ten-minute drive from my house. I’d been to this particular area of town before, back when I’d brought some stolen goods to hock at the Finer Things Pawnshop.
    It wasn’t pretty—certainly nothing like where we lived, where every house, tree, and desert vista seemed to have been conjured up by an interior decorator to the universe. This was the area of town you only knew about if you needed quick money, or a gun—maybe even drugs.
    As we pulled up to the security gate in front of the WeStore complex, I caught myself instinctively checking out the locks. Tre, my friend and tutor in all things larcenous, had shown me how to break into gated communities and disarm systems, among other skills. But there was no hacking, reprogramming, or code-breaking necessary now. My mom had kindly seen to that. Aidansimply rolled down his window and held up the access card to the digital reader. A little red light flashed and the gate swung open. Totally legit and supereasy.
    So why was my heart racing?
    We drove on in through the entry, and up a long driveway lit by towering street lamps. At the end were rows and rows and rows of identical concrete sheds with orange-painted roll-down doors.
    Maybe it was my recent visit to juvie hall, but to me they looked like jail cells, each block labeled with a letter. The buildings were surrounded by asphalt, a big sea of a parking lot, which was empty but for a few cars.
    I tensed. “This place is creepy.”
    “Well, normally people come here in the daylight,” Aidan muttered. “Now which way?”
    I ignored his crack and squinted into the dark outside of the car. “That sign over there says Units 70–90. Aisle G.”
    Aidan pulled up in front of the block and parked. Before he turned off the car I noted that the dashboard clock glowed nine P.M . The endless day kept going.
    Without the music from his stereo and without the gentle hum of the Mercedes’s engine, the quiet felt violent and sudden.
    “Guess we should actually