It took Neo a moment to process the question and make sure he hadn't misheard.

"A suitcase," he repeated, wondering, however briefly, if he might not have misremembered the meaning of the word—because there was no way Zeke had meant what he thought he meant. He had seen all their baggage, at least the physical part, and there had been no suitcases. Not that he could speak for the emotional baggage, but he doubted Zeke was talking about that.

"Yeah, a suitcase," Zeke replied, still crouching on the ground with his head half under the backseat. "You know, that thing where—"

"I know what a suitcase is," Neo cut him off, even though he had just questioned his grasp of the English language a second ago. "What do you mean, there's a suitcase?"

There was a shuffle, then a grunt. Then Zeke came stumbling backwards out of the car, looking decidedly empty-handed.

"It's heavy," he burst out, staring under the backseat like he had seen a monster there. "What the hell is that?"

"Let me."

Brushing past him, Neo knelt down beside the car, peering under the seats. Sure enough, there was a suitcase here—a massive shiny black thing, utterly nondescript except for its sheer size. Neo wasn't fazed. He knew, technically, that Zeke could lift heavier weights than him, but the voice of common sense was currently drowned out by the clamor of his remaining brain cells shouting about one-upping him. So, without hesitation, he reached for the suitcase handle…and couldn't move it an inch.

"See? Told you it's heavy," Zeke said triumphantly, watching him struggle. "What did they put in there? Bricks or something? Heave-ho!"

Reaching past Neo, Zeke made a hearty grab for the suitcase and yanked at it with him. The massive piece of luggage resisted, then slid forward, and the next moment they were both lying flat on their backs with the suitcase half on top of them.

So much for looking even half presentable, Neo thought as he scrambled back to his feet, brushing dust and pebbles out of his clothes and hair. Unbelievable. What on earth would the others say if they saw him like this? Or the fans? And all of that for a stupid—

"Hey, Neo?" Zeke said quietly, kneeling over the suitcase. "I think you should see this."

Neo was not in the mood for this right now, but something about Zeke's tone of voice made him hesitant to brush it off. "What?"

Zeke didn't answer. Which, in itself, was weird. Zeke always found a reason to talk more than he should, no matter if anyone had asked him or not. Willing silence, on the other hand, was a new and bizarre development that raised more alarm bells than an ominous suitcase under the backseat possibly could.

"What's in there?" Neo asked, rising to his feet and trying to keep his tone more sarcastic than he felt. "A bomb or something? Where would that even—holy fucking shit."

Zeke had been right to go quiet.

Not because there was actually a bomb in that suitcase.

Instead, it was filled to the brim with what appeared to be stacks and stacks of crisp, brand-new five-hundred-euro bills.

"Yep," Zeke said into Neo's prolonged silence. "That's what I was thinking too."

Neo just continued to stare.

"Hello? Earth to Neo?"

Blinking, Neo knelt down, picking up a random bundle of bills and flipping through it like he had any idea what he was doing. "Are these real?"

Zeke reached past him and pulled out a single bill to hold it against the light. "Real as it gets," he said. "Are you saying you can't tell a real from a fake?"

"No," Neo said flatly. "Can you?"

"How can you not tell if these are real?" Zeke retorted. "You're the European!"

"I don't look at the money I'm paying," Neo shot back. "I just spend it."

"How can you not look at it when you see it on the daily…oh well." Zeke tossed the bill back into the suitcase. "Wonder who this belongs to, though. This isn't yours, right?"

"No?" Neo stared at him in disbelief. "I don't even use cash anymore, I have a credit card."

Zeke pursed his lips and kept staring at the suitcase. "But if you didn't put it in the car," he said, "and I didn't put it in the car…who's flying this plane?"

"No one!" Neo burst out at once. "That's the problem! What do you think we're doing in this stupid parking lot?"

The moment the words had left him, he already wondered what the hell had possessed him to say that. Wordplay? Really? Must've been around Zeke for too long.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but nice one," Zeke replied, giving him a brief smirk—and, okay, fine. Neo could live with the loss of his sanity and dignity if this was the compensation. "But seriously, who left it in here? Whoever lost it in the car has to really miss it." He picked up another bundle of cash and flapped it back and forth. "You could pay off someone's student loans with this!"

"Or someone's house," said Neo, who had never gone to college outside his home country, where it didn't cost anything, and had no concept of how much it was abroad. All he knew was that it sounded like an awful lot.

"Or a lot of houses," Zeke added.

"And cars."

"And a pool."

They both sighed. Just because they were international celebrities now and making good money didn't mean they could suddenly afford fancy cars and mansions with pools.

"We should probably return this," Zeke mused. "Whoever's lost this will be really glad to have it back. Do we call the car rental or something?"

Neo shook his head. "A suitcase full of cash," he said. "In the wrong currency for this country? That's some illegal shit right here."

"What, like the mob or something?" Zeke's eyes lit up with excitement. "D'you think we should call the cops?"

Neo pondered that.

"Not now," he said. "They'll question us and keep us there for hours and we don't have time."

"I thought we were ahead of time."

"Not that far ahead."

Silence. Both of them stared at the suitcase full of money like it held the answer to all their questions—and, to be fair, money is the answer for a lot of questions, but in this particular case it wasn't helping.

"We could just leave it here," Zeke mused at length.

"In the parking lot."

"Sure." Zeke shrugged. "Let someone else deal with it. Not our money, not our problem, right?"

Neo pondered that too. It did sound tempting, admittedly.

"Besides," Zeke continued, "this probably wouldn't even be the weirdest thing that happened here. This place is obviously haunted, no one would care."

"Hauntings aren't real."

"That's such a boring worldview." Zeke sat down on the ground with his arms and legs crossed. "Live a little, Neo!"

"But they don't exist!"

"Not with that attitude, they don't!"

That doesn't even make sense! Neo wanted to say, but with his remaining unaffected brain cells he thought of a better response. "Look at the little baby who still believes in ghosts," he said.

"Look at the big guy who's terrified of birds," Zeke replied in the same tone.

Neo's eye twitched. "At least I'm scared of real things and not stupid ideas!"

"You're a stupid idea," Zeke muttered and turned back to the suitcase. "So do we leave this thing here now or not?"

Neo almost said yes—almost. Then his common sense kicked in.

"We can't," he said, pushing it shut again. "It has our fingerprints all over it, the cops would think it's our money! You wanna get arrested?"

"…Is that a trick question?"

"I don't." Locking the suitcase, Neo yanked at it, struggling to lift it into an upright position. "Plus, we don't have time. We need to—son of a—"

A warm hand brushed against his own, and he nearly dropped the entire thing on his foot. "On three," said Zeke, gripping the handle of the suitcase with his hands half wrapped around Neo's—an oblivious, casual gesture that shouldn't mean such an infuriating amount to Neo, and yet here he was. "One, two—go!"

Together they hauled the suitcase back under the seat, giving it another kick for good measure, but it didn't budge. Neo flexed his hands a few times to try and shake off the lingering feeling of Zeke's calloused fingers curled around his own, to no avail. Sighing, the common sense part of his brain reached for its baseball bat and whacked the stupid crush part with a stick until it whimpered and crawled off.

"That can wait," he said. "We can take it to the cops when we're in L.A." He dusted off his hands in a gesture that looked just a little too demonstrative, not that he noticed. "After the release party."

Zeke threw another glance under the backseat, then he closed the car door. "So we're just gonna ignore it?"

Neo returned back to the driver's seat. "You mind?"

"…Nope."

Turning the key in the ignition, Neo watched the car rumble to life, his hands closing around the cheap plastic steering wheel. Beside him, Zeke folded himself up in the passenger seat and tapped through his phone to get to the navigation system; and then they were off, quiet except for the rumble of the car and the music on the sound system and Zeke's occasional comments on roadside cows and funny signs.

"Hey," Zeke said at length, as the road grew narrower and more winding and the sun broke through the clouds. "Who do you think left that suitcase in there, though?"

Neo shrugged. "Don't care."

"I'm just wondering, that's all." Zeke gazed out the window, watching a single bird of prey spin its lazy circles through the sky. "I mean, it's a lot of money. What if they try to get it back?"

This time, Neo didn't shrug. The thought, for whatever reason, had never occurred to him.

"Even if they try," he said, trying to sound as calm and nonchalant as before, "it's not like they can find us." He sped up a little. "So who cares?"

Now he just hoped that was actually true.

Not that he'd ever tell Zeke that.