I studied his face. Either hewastelling the truth, or he had one hell of a poker face. "You serious?" I said.
"Yup. And the wheels –"
"Don't tell me," I teased. "Also bullet-proof?"
"Not exactly. But close."
"Oh c'mon," I said. "How can something be sort of bullet-proof?"
"It's the way they're constructed," he said. "Even if they're punctured, they'll keep going, at least long enough."
"How?"
"Polymer rings."
"What's that?" I squinted at him. "Oh never mind. You're just messing with me."
He didn't confirm or deny it. Instead, he asked, "How good are you at keeping secrets?"
"Pretty good," I said.
Probably too good, at least according to Erika.
"Glad to hear it," Lawton said. "Because I'm counting on that."
Chapter 32
I watched the road ahead, looking for clues to our destination. "Is this where you tell me where we're going?"
"Call it a trip down memory lane," he said.
Considering his choice of car and his veiled comments about wanting to keep me safe, I should probably be been scared. But somehow, I wasn't.
It was like standing on the edge of some cliff and looking down, feeling the danger, but clinging to safety. I let my gaze shift to Lawton. He was sitting back in the driver's seat, one hand over the steering wheel as he navigated the afternoon traffic.
He was solid.Anddangerous. I felt myself swallow. And that's when I knew. If this thing were a cliff, I was in big danger. Because so help me, I wanted to jump.
I turned sideways in the seat to face him. "C'mon, give me a hint," I said.
It wasn't quite the peak of rush hour, but it was getting close. We'd just made it out of the residential section and were pulling onto I-75. Lawton slid into traffic, and eased into the fast lane.
"You haven't guessed?" he said.
I had a rough idea of where he supposedly grew up. From the street signs, it was easy to see which direction we were heading. "Detroit?"
"Yup."
"Which part?"
As for me, I'd grown up in Hamtramck, a city almost completely surrounded by Detroit. But I'd been avoiding Detroit itself for years.
In high school, I used to spend a lot of time in Greektown or sometimes on the Riverwalk. And once, I spent an entire afternoon in the Institute of Arts, admiring the marble structure outside, and hundreds of paintings inside.
But after Kimberly Slotka, a girl from my American history class, got carjacked and pistol-whipped for her used Camaro, I guess I just stayed away from the whole area. Most of us did. Mostly we stuck to our own neighborhoods, or ventured out into the suburbs.
Downtown was supposedly on an upswing, with young professionals and hipsters moving in where others had left. In my few recent visits, I'd seen some of this firsthand. But then there were the parts I would never visit, places where pizza deliveries required an armed guard, if they delivered at all.
Today was a weekday, and it was still light out, so there were parts of the city that wouldn't be too bad. But other parts, they weren't good at any time.
