I expect to see the man from the bathroom charging out into the parking lot. I expect to see him screaming, waving his arms, reaching for a phone that isn’t there—or worse, drawing a weapon and firing at our retreating taillights or something.
But there’s…nothing. Just the receding, ghostly glow of the abandoned travel center lights and the vast, swallowing blackness of the state line.
“We just stole a car,” I whisper. The words taste exactly like the vomit still coating the back of my throat. I look down at my hands. They’re shaking so much I have to shove them beneath my thighs to pin them down. “Noah. We really just stole a fucking car.” My voice rises. “They’re going to be looking for it now. We’re… we’re going to be on the camera.”
“Maybe,” he says, his gaze fixed dead ahead, his knuckles white on the leather steering wheel. “But we had to get out of there.”
I stare at him. In the dim, icy blue glow of the dashboard, he suddenly looks like a complete stranger. The rugged line of his jaw is set in stone, his expression dangerous and completely detached, his eyes dead. It’s impossible to reconcile this cold, calculated carjacker with the man who held me in the motel bed just hours ago, whose breath hitched against my neck when he touched me.
“You didn’t have to do this. I gave you a choice,” he deadpans, as he finally glances over at me.
But that’s it. I can’t take it anymore.
“Achoice?” I let out a rough, hysterical laugh that burns my bruised ribs. “You scooped up my dog and ran for a car! What was I supposed to do, Noah? Stand there in the freezing dirt and wait for the New Mexico State Police to find me at the scene of a grand theft auto?”
“You could have yelled for the owner,” he counters smoothly, not a single ounce of remorse in his tone. “You could have played the victim. Told them some terrifying fugitive tried to grab your dog and took the car. You could’ve told them I forced you to take me this far. You’d be safe and sound. You’d get a ride to the nearest station, call your mom, and get your spoiled ass back to California.”
“Are you serious? Without… Without—” I cut myself off, my throat constricting so hard it aches.Without you,I want to scream. Because, unlike him, my feelings didn’t die when he went under those black waters.
They grew. Catastrophically.
Noah doesn’t try to continue the conversation. He just reaches out with his good arm and adjusts the rearview mirror. He drives ninety miles an hour with one hand, his injured left arm resting stiffly in his lap, the dark fabric of his hoodie concealing whatever fresh bleeding the exertion just caused.
This is insane. All the safe driving he bitched about is just… out the window.
Bullet whines in the back. He paces the spacious leather bench of a vehicle that doesn’t smell like us. It smells like pine air freshener, expensive upholstery, and a faint hint of stale coffee.
It smells like a life we just hijacked.
I slowly pull my gaze from Noah and take in the interior of the SUV. The panic morphs into a heavy, sinking dread as I notice the victim's artifacts.
There’s a travel mug sitting in the cupholder, the stainless steel still radiating heat. A lanyard with a gym membership tag clinks softly against the steering column. In the passenger door cubby next to my leg, there’s a crumbled receipt and a half-empty pack of spearmint gum.
This car belongs to someone. Someone who is currently standing in a dirty, freezing bathroom in the middle of nowhere, washing his hands, completely unaware that his belongings and his ticket home just vanished into the night.
“He’s stranded,” I think aloud, my voice cracking. “He’s stranded out there in the dark because of us.”
“But he’s alive,” Noah corrects flatly. “Which is better than you tend to leave them. And me too, for that matter.”
I wince at the jab. But the horrifying truth is that I am sitting right next to him on my own accord. I chose to open that passenger door. I chose to get in.
“You said you weren’t a thief,” Noah mutters, his eyes flicking to me for a fraction of a second. A dark, cynical smirk touches the corner of his mouth. “Guess we’re both full of shit, Little Rabbit.”
Little Rabbit.I swallow hard.
The nickname sends a shiver down my spine, a jarring mix of terror and twisted affection. I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around my shins and pressing my throbbing forehead against the cool glass of the window.
Thegood persondelusion I’ve been desperately clinging to since Moccasin Cove finally shatters, the pieces dissolving into the adrenaline buzzing in my veins. I am not righting a wrong anymore. I am not just paying off a debt.
I am an accomplice. And besides, I was the original villain.
The quiet stretches between us as the minutes pass, heavier and more suffocating than the deafening crunch of screaming metal when we hit the mountain lion.
Outside, the desert is an ocean of black. The paranoia starts to spiral, tightening around my throat like a physical hand. Every pair of headlights approaching from the opposite lane looks like a Highway Patrol cruiser. Every reflective greenhighway sign counting down the miles to Tucumcari feels like a trap waiting to be sprung.
“Check the glovebox,” Noah commands, breaking the quiet about ten miles down the road.
“Why?” I ask, my voice muffled against my knees.
